Tangled, ghostly limbs barely tickle the water's surface from below. Elaborate roots grip lakebeds, though perhaps not as strongly as they did the forest floor. Such is the fate of millions of acres of prime timber--flooded in the wake of hydroelectric dams, sacrificed to make electricity.

Most of these drowned trees were left for dead long ago. But in western Canada, some of them are experiencing a reincarnation of sorts. Chris Godsall, a sustainable forestry specialist based in Victoria, B.C., has cut more than 1,000 submerged trees since January, a feat made possible by his invention of the world's first logging submarine.

This article was originally published with the title Diving for Dead Wood.

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