Tamara Thomsen:
When we did remove canoe one and canoe two, we were instructed to bring up pieces that looked like they had been worked by man — so, they either had fire on them or scraping associated with them that would've led to someone making this dugout canoe. And so those went in the tank as well. After we had soaked them in water for a period of time, we started noticing they have, like, little zebra mussels that were growing on them. Those fell away. And the algaes that were growing on, it fell away too as you change the water and began to purify it. We noticed that some of those pieces that were in there looked very different in color and texture to the two canoes that were in the tank. So, we decided that we would sample those and look at wood type and also look at get radiocarbon date analysis for those. It turned out that they represent — there's multiple pieces in there — but they represent three other unique individuals. So, now we move our number up to 10 canoes, and then this spring, again we're out monitoring the area seeing if there's other canoes that become exposed. We're not digging or excavating, but we're just kind of looking for what naturally becomes exposed on the bottom. We encountered six other canoes, the oldest of which is 5,200 years old.

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I truly believe that there's other canoes out there. We haven't found them all there. They're slowly eroding out of this slope, and that slope drops gradually from the shoreline out to about 14 feet, and then pretty abruptly down to about 35. They're all in this, kind of parked, you know, perpendicular to the shoreline, and it's just that uphill portion that's being exposed. And then they're all in about that 24 to 27 foot of water. That could be for a number of reasons that they're becoming exposed. Maybe there's more boat traffic or wake boats that are coming down into that bay. Maybe the weather systems have changed a little bit and there's more significant storms that are coming from that direction that are affecting this. But for whatever reason, they're slowly being exposed and being revealed to us so that their stories can be told.