A marine archaeologist has been called in to help identify what may be a canoe submerged in sand and covered with zebra mussels under the waters of the Straits of Mackinac. The find was made by The Michigan State Police Underwater Recovery Unit using sonar technology during a dive this summer, and the team would like help to determine whether it may be of historical significance.

The dive team is headed by commander Sergeant Larry Schloegl.

"Whatever it is, we want to find out and make sure we know because we don't want to be left with the question of 'what if?'" said Sgt. Schloegl. "It could be substantial; it could be nothing."

The 20-member team is familiar with finding lost treasure in the Straits.

In August 2002, while on a missing person search, the team came upon a large find, the coalcarrying schooner William Young, which was sunk in 120 feet of water a mile east of the present location of the Mackinac Bridge, in 1891.

Three years ago, the team found an extremely old musket in the waters of St. Marys River and, last spring, during a training dive, found a submerged late-1970s Pontiac Catalina wagon near the U.S. Coast Guard station in St. Ignace. Its owner is still unknown.

The dive team also found another item this year that Sgt. Schloegl believes could be a dogsled that was used years ago when postal mail was brought from the mainland to Bois Blanc Island over the ice.

Sgt. Schloegl said his dive team is eager to go back and research the two recently found items again, but would have to relocate them, since the team did not record the coordinates.

The dive team was founded in 1957 by then-State Police Corporal Bill Carter of Lansing, whose team then was made up of mostly former Navy divers. Mr. Carter died last year.

The unit is one of the first officially recognized law enforcement dive teams in the nation, according to Sgt. Schloegl, who has been on the dive team since 1997, and its commander since 2003.

The team includes four troopers from the Eastern Upper Peninsula, Craig Dorenbecker of St. Ignace, Clint Michelin of Munising, Steve Derusha of Newberry, and Grel Rousseau of Manistique.