.jpg)
Cruise is sold out Dinner tickets still available
Ric Mixter Biography:
With keynote lectures at every major dive show around the Great Lakes in 2022, Ric Mixter is the most requested maritime historian in the midwest. Visiting museums, libraries, NASA and his live music concert “STORM”, thousands of audience members get a new appreciation for our unique inland-sea history through his spellbinding lectures.
Millions of television viewers recognize Ric as a shipwreck researcher, diving over 100 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes, including the Edmund Fitzgerald. He has produced over 30 programs for PBS and the Outdoor Channel, and appeared as a shipwreck expert on the History and Discovery Channels. Raising tens of thousands of dollars for Detroit Public Broadcasting during their fundraisers, he has shown that history can be engaging and entertaining in both documentaries and live stage presentations.
Thousands of dive show patrons and countless school kids know him as the energetic story teller who uses video like no other presenter can. Ric’s stories appear in books, magazines (including Michigan History Magazine) and in radio and TV news programs. Mixter’s YouTube videos have over 5 million views, covering shipwrecks in four of the Great Lakes and adventures in several foreign lands.
Ric started diving in 1991, and served as SCUBA cameraman on underwater expeditions to the Great Lakes largest shipwrecks, the Edmund Fitzgerald and Carl D. Bradley. He has interviewed dozens of shipwreck survivors over the past 15 years, including two from the 1913 Storm, two from the 1940 Armistice Day Storm and survivors from the largest shipwrecks in lakes Michigan, Huron and Erie.
With over 30 years of stories on historical preservation, Ric was awarded the C. Patrick Labadie Special Acknowledgment Award by the Great Lakes Shipwreck Preservation Society in 2022, and the 2009 Award for Historic Interpretation by the Association for Great Lakes Maritime Historians. In 2011 he was elected to their board of directors, serving a full ten years before his term ran out. Ric is also a board member for the prestigious Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, which runs one of the most popular shipwreck museums in the country. The Great Lakes Lighthouse Keepers Association elected Ric as their third president. He has hosted the largest dive show in Ontario twice and also MC’d the midwest’s largest show in Chicago. He was a frequent speaker at Ghost Ships in Milwaukee and an annual favorite at Michigan’s largest show.
Ric is also a pilot- flying not only single engine planes, but also has flight time in several military jets. These include the US Air Force’s Thunderbird F-16 Falcon, and over 100 hours of camera work in the B-52 Stratofortress. He’s flown in the Goodyear Blimp and countless biplanes and aerobatic aircraft and has also jumped several times from over 12,000 feet as a skydiver. Ric also adept to filming in helicopters, from flying over the jungles of Honduras with the Army, to being lowered in a rescue basket into Lake Huron by the Coast Guard.
Podcasts on www.shipwreckpodcast.com
Historical Documentaries:
Sunken Treasure 2012
Offshore Outposts 2011
Cement Boat 2009
Bombs Away 2008
Cutter Rescues 2006
Final Run: Storms of the Century 2005
Safe Ashore: The 1940 Armistice Day Storm 2004
Great Lakes In Depth (26 episodes on PBS and the Outdoor Channel) 2000-2001
Deep Six: Titanics of the Great Lakes 1998
The Edmund Fitzgerald Investigations 1997
Expedition ’94 to the Edmund Fitzgerald 1995
Best Adventure Yet 1993
Books & Periodicals:
“Bottled Goodbyes” 200 page book printed 2020
“The Wheelsmen” 300 page book reprinted 2015
“Nordmeer” Michigan History Magazine 2015
“McDougal’s Dream” Michigan History Magazine 2013
“Bombs Away” Winter 2011
“Shipwrecks of Saginaw Bay” Michigan History Magazine July 2014
“Voices of the Lakes” article in book 1993