CHICAGO — The least understood part about Chicago is underwater, but a group of Shedd Aquarium researchers hope to change that.

Since last fall, a small team of explorers has ventured off the shore of Hyde Park to Morgan Shoal, a rocky outcrop in Lake Michigan that holds the sunken ship Silver Spray, lots of fish and some really hard-to-find creatures. It's as close to a wild coral reef habitat that the city has.

"There's so much going on beneath the waves that we don't understand and we don't appreciate," said Philip Willink, Senior Research Biologist at Shedd Aquarium.

The Morgan Shoal project was funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office for Coastal Management, U.S. Department of Commerce and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources Coastal Management Program.

The funding allows Willink and other researchers to study the wildlife, to figure out what’s at the bottom of Lake Michigan, what the geology looks like and what they should do about it. Researchers dive at the site and also use a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) — a robot similar to the one used to explore the remains of the Titanic.

In the next few weeks, Willink will deliver a report to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources that will include the researchers' discoveries.

During their trips to Morgan Shoal, they found fish like lake trout, brown trout, rainbow trout, smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, yellow perch and the endangered longnose sucker. They also saw rusty crayfish and virile crayfish, prehistoric isopods (aquatic forms of the potatobugs you find in your backyard) and amphipods, a cross between an isopod and a shrimp. They even located a freshwater sponge.

"Most of the bottom of Lake Michigan is sand and mud, and that's why this outcrop is interesting," Willink said. "And it has a shipwreck in it."

The Silver Spray, a 109-foot-long ferry, crashed in the shallow water of Morgan Shoal on July 15, 1914, on its way south to Hyde Park to pick up 200 University of Chicago students for a voyage to the steel mills in Gary, Ind.

An article from the Chicago Examiner at the time said the ferry listed on the tip of the shoal for three days with the cook still on board making stew as bystanders watched and built fires from pieces of the wooden hull as they floated to shore.

One hundred-plus years later, the boiler, propellers and yoke remain.

Willink will return to Morgan Shoal in the summer to look for more discoveries, including amphibians called mudpuppies, freshwater shrimp and gar. They are other examples of fish and animals that likely few Chicagoans know exist within a few waves of their commute along Lake Shore Drive.

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