Mission Logs April 30, 2006 Crunching data, wrapping up and heading home. April 29, 2006 Rough seas and small craft advisories make the going tough. April 28, 2006 The team explores the North America, a 19th century masted vessel. April 27, 2006 Today kicked off media day as the team provides an educational tour under water. April 26, 2006 Archaeologists kick off the photo-mosaic mission. Take a look at the newly developed sled technology in action! Mission Home Page

Russ Green, Archaeologist
NOAA National Marine Sanctuary Program

Casserley downloads video frame grabs to create a photo-mosaic. (Photo: Russ Green)

Russ takes a rest after loading the gear into the black Chevy Suburban. (Photo: Tane Casserley)

As the team reflects on the project's success one overriding sentiment rings loudest: We need to keep the momentum and return next year to the Florida Keys Shipwreck Trail. Not only are there more sites to document, but there is much more public outreach to be done. Every one of the dozens of folks we ran into over the last week were curious about what we were up to. Both the Miami Herald and the Key West Citizen today ran stories about the project. Passers-by at the Key Largo and Marathon docks and the reporters who visited us on-site were clearly fascinated with the technology being used. More importantly, they were fascinated by the shipwrecks themselves and the potential photo-mosaics hold for allowing non-divers to visit these one-of-a-kind historic sites.

Shipwrecks never fail to spark the public's curiosity. They are windows into our collective past-the only real-time machines we possess. Our team is fortunate to have had the chance to document a small fraction of the shipwrecks in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Although Commander Beckwith will move on to another NOAA Corps billet next week, we hope to lure him back to the Keys in 2007. There is much more work to be done along the Florida Keys Shipwreck Trail and he will surely see that we stay on schedule.