Artificial lake bottom on tv commercial???

I just saw a blip of an explore Minnesota commercial, that showed an underwater view of a young girl, surface diving into a lake… the bottom of the lake as sand, with scattered rocks about baseball sized, and they were pretty equally spaced about a meter apart, as far as you could see into the water… I can’t imagine any conditions that would have roughly equal sized rocks pretty evenly spaced amongst beach sand… I can’t imagine that being natural, and can’t imagine some producer, making a lake bottom look like that, especially with a commercial's for Minnesota Nature…

I backed up the commercial… does this lake bottom look natural???

Hmm... I've definitely seen sandy bottoms with rocks like this in ocean habitats. Waves can do weird things. They create incredibly repetitive (incredibly wave-like) patterns in the sand and those repetitive forces tend to equal regularity. The sand waves are usually very evenly spaced, and so it wouldn't surprise me if the rocks end up somewhat spaced out like that as a result.

Now, I really don't know much about lakes, but Michigan is centrally located amongst some of the largest lakes in the world. Lake Superior, as an example, behaves in many ways like the ocean. Similar wave and current dynamics and such. I wouldn't be shocked if there existed an ocean-like wave-dominated sandy shore on at least Lake Superior, if not many or all of the other great lakes. Now, what really makes me suspicious is the water clarity. Again, I don't have much lake experience, but all the ones I've been to are pretty dark and murky. This photo feels very...blue, and too clear.

That said, I would be surprised if they created a whole expansive set just for a commercial.

The rocks are nothing but what interests me is the light coming up through the sand. I have never seen that before in the wild. It looks like the spray on paving they do where thy put down a grid that resembles cobble stones or something and paint over it.

I have done a lot of fresh water snorkeling and have seen similar bottom conditions before, just not common. Does not look fake to me, other than the sand might have been added some time in the past.

if it were supposed to be northern MN, maybe with the sand... at my boss's cabin ( on one of the "best" recreational lakes in the state ) he has a very shallow long beach front, & when the lake was low a couple years ago, had to put in almost a 1/4 mile of boat dock, just to get to deep enough to park normal sized boats there... that level is not normal, & he probably gets by with 100-200 feet of dock on most years...

I was just thinking, looking at that picture, if a person did a bio tank, with a bottom that looked like that, it would probably seem fakey

It looks possible to me, as a guy who has floated over a lot of lake bottoms in a kayak. Even the water clarity, depending on the season. The whole thing could be AI, or a really badly maintained pool though.
I'd trust it 100% if it were a fat guy in camo dog paddling instead of that young woman.

I find it not so bad, the water in the distance looks pretty good.

Huron Lake:

The Bermuda Triangle ?

I dont think it's made up but maybe enhanced as everything is nowadays to drum up interest. Today's video enhancement technology is widely available and easy to use.

As to the water clarity, over here I fish quite a bit in the Sierra Nevada mountains. I guess you could call these alpine lakes. The constant snow runoff and lake flow to creeks and rivers allow these lakes to be some of the most beautiful and pristine waters you have ever seen. They are quite a few lakes that you can see trout schooling 60' or even deeper time of day and sunshine depending. Lake Sabrina in the heart of the Bishop mountains has some of the clearest water I have ever seen and it's not uncommon for many of the lakes in this region to look similar. Convict Lake is also very much the same. I believe this is due to water temp and flow because if you go to Lake Crowley during the summer months it's visibility is very poor but the water becomes much warmer and the plant and algae growth take over.

It's all just condition dependent and that's what makes traveling so appealing right? Certain places hold what seem like treasures to some and normal to others.