Sharing love for underwater adventure | News
Get Dean Soderbeck on scouting and diving, and it’s hard to get a word on the lips. His passion for teaching young people the sport he loves is palpable.
Soderbeck has been advising Venture Crew, a coed youth development program with the Boy Scouts of America aged 13 to 21, for 23 years. His group, BSA Venture Crew 820, started out with eight Eagle Scouts with a particular interest: diving.
Today the unit has enough diving equipment to accommodate up to 50 divers for a “Discover Scuba” event or to equip 18 summer divers with the latest diving technology. You will explore lakes, quarries, shipwrecks on Lake Superior, the BSA Sea Base in the Florida Keys and the Bahamas. A few years ago his troop was featured in Boy’s Life, the national scouting magazine.
To make the sport “crazier”, Soderbeck hosts underwater basket weaving and underwater pumpkin carving at Square Lake. Later this month, the group will conduct an underwater beach cleanup on Lake Phalen.
Participants pick up discarded cans, glass, anchors and – last year – two steel picnic tables. A University of Minnesota backpack still had a sealed bottle of vodka and two glasses. It’s too late to argue, but “we didn’t drink it,” said Soderbeck. You will find hubcaps, tires and bicycles. Due to poor visibility from Phalen, the diving event takes place on Memorial Day weekend before the algae bloom.
Scouts are also introduced to ice diving. Soderbeck recalled the large amount of plastic goods found near the Manitou Island Bridge in White Bear Lake one winter. “We searched the ground looking for things not far from the boat dock. We found cell phones, fishing rods and reels, and loads of Tupperware that probably blew boats away.”
Pursuing one’s passion for underwater is the need to convey to the youth the importance of preserving the Great Lakes shipwrecks. Venture Crew partnered with the Great Lakes Shipwreck Preservation Society (GLSPS) a few years ago to expose venture scouts to dives on Upper Lake wrecks such as Madeira, Hesper and Samuel P. Ely. The non-profit volunteer group works to preserve the maritime heritage in the Upper Great Lakes region.
Soderbeck introduces scouts to famous divers like Jean-Michael Cousteau and GLSPS friends like Fred Stonehouse, a shipwreck hunter of the Great Lakes from the Upper Peninsula, and Becky Kagan Schott, a professional underwater photographer and cameraman who shoots for National Geographic and Discovery Channel. Both spoke at the Upper Midwest Scuba and Adventure Travel Show, an annual GLSPS fundraiser, at Jimmy’s Event Center last month.
Schott gave a lecture on the shipwrecks of the Truk Lagoon during World War II at the diving show. Schott actually enjoys diving the Great Lakes to snap haunting pictures of his shipwrecks, Soderbeck said. He serves as the company’s vice president.
“People don’t recognize the history we have in our own backyard,” said Soderbeck of the lost ships and their stories. He mentioned the recently discovered three-masted schooner, the antelope, which sank completely intact in 300 feet of water near the Apostles’ Islands. It was baptized when Abraham Lincoln was president. “Lake Superior is going nasty,” he remarked. “The waves can be as high as the ocean, but closer together. There are still a lot of wrecks that we don’t know about.”
Soderbeck is a master diver and certified diving instructor who logs underwater 40 hours a year. He doesn’t feel like diving deep. “It doesn’t appeal to me,” he admitted. “I take too much pleasure in watching the look on a child’s face as they dive into a pool for the first time.”
The 67-year-old Shoreview resident, father of two grown children, was widowed last year when his wife died of cancer. He owns Soderbeck Design & Construction Inc. His main job is to remodel upscale apartment buildings on the northeast metro. Coincidentally, he designed the former ReMax building on Highway 61 (next to the dental office south of Rudy’s) in White Bear Lake.
As a scout consultant, Soderbeck works to bring real adventures closer to young people. “The future and growth of any organization is youth,” he said. “We want to help teens today make the right decisions and support them in developing leadership skills, personal growth, service, and adventure activities like diving.”
He doesn’t know why, but Soderbeck says it’s getting harder to recruit young people to try the sport. It offers membership across the metropolitan area and even attracts kids from Southern Minnesota and Iowa. He estimates he’s covered 1,200 square miles.
“We offer youngsters the opportunity to go beyond their comfort by offering a wide variety of diving adventures,” said Soderbeck. “We only see some members once a year and some once a month, but that’s fine. We want them to make the right choices in life and we’re here to support them in any way we can.”
For more information about Venture Crew or the GLSPS, please contact Soderbeck at [email protected] or by calling 651-483-8596.