NOAA Ocean Exploration is dedicated to exploring the unknown ocean and unlocking its potential through scientific discovery, technological advancements, partnerships, and data delivery. An increasing scientific, economic, and strategic need to understand the ocean is contributing to a growing number of underwater cultural heritage finds. This presentation will focus on the NOAA Ocean Exploration mission and collaborative opportunities for the maritime archaeology community. The program supports maritime archaeology through grants, providing access to ship time and at-sea platforms, supporting the development and use of innovative technology, and offering opportunities to participate remotely on NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer expeditions. To enhance public understanding of the ocean, NOAA Ocean Exploration supports robust outreach and education programs for exploration activities and student opportunities that train the next generation of ocean explorers.

Underwater archaeological investigations by NOAA Ocean Exploration are often among the office’s most watched and interacted events on expeditions with its remotely operated vehicles Deep Discoverer and Serios. The selection of underwater cultural heritage (UCH) targets are not done arbitrarily. NOAA Ocean Exploration approaches its research in a collaborative way, identifying the collective scientific needs of the community rather than the objectives of a single scientist. Regional and campaign UCH priorities are developed with input collected from partners and stakeholders and expedition dives utilize telepresence technology to allow any number of scientists, students, and the public to interact and participate in expeditions in real-time. This enables subject matter experts to guide exploration live, ensuring highly useful data are collected while actively engaging the community of underwater archaeologists. This presentation will cover how to get engaged in expedition planning for collaborative UCH investigations and participate in future NOAA Ocean Exploration expeditions.

This paper outlines an interdisciplinary, community inclusive project which brings together historians, archaeologists, biologists, conservation scientists, photogrammetry specialists, GIS specialists, veterans and Micronesian researchers to focus on archaeological and biological research of WWII underwater cultural heritage in the waters of Saipan. The project leveraged existing bathymetric lidar to conduct machine learning to identify targets in waters up to 50 meters deep. Known and previously unknown sites were sampled for eDNA and corrosion measurements and recorded using diver-based and ROV photogrammetry technology. This data will contribute to questions about the health of these sites and their long term preservation, lending more information to how the sites function within the region’s Blue Economy. Collaboration with veterans for an adaptive rehabilitative event was held on island to train veterans in citizen science skills and engagement with local Micronesian non-profits and schools provided opportunities for knowledge creation and exchange.

The 2023 NOAA Saipan project included a significant public outreach component. A major part of the grant focused on re-visiting sites included in the WWII Battle of Saipan Maritime Heritage Trail to conduct monitoring and update site plans. Since these sites first were documented to create the Trail in 2008, they were due for a thorough inspection and evaluation, which also provided opportunity to collect eDNA for analysis. The key to completing this objective was engaging and training on-island volunteers, particularly veterans who wished to become involved in the project. Task Force Dagger Foundation members and their families also joined in the training and field work, maintaining ties with Special Operations Forces veterans. This paper discusses public engagement strategies developed to inform island residents of the project and to publicize the project farther afield, training developed for the citizen scientists, and educational materials produced for Saipan’s community and schools.

Toward engaging local communities and the broader public, the 2023 NOAA Ocean Exploration project “Exploring Deepwater World War II Battlefields in the Pacific Using Emerging Technologies” prioritized the inclusion of citizen scientists and the production of several public outreach products. While the history of World War II, the Pacific Theater, and the 1944 battle for Saipan is the foundation of the project, the team members made the decision to focus outreach efforts on engaging with the variety of sciences and technologies utilized to meet the primary objective of investigating World War II underwater cultural heritage. This paper highlights the project’s use of the “multimedia storytelling” approach and the ways in which non-linear narratives promote interaction and exploration among public audiences. Special focus is given to engaging young people on the island of Saipan and inspiring them to consider careers in science and technology.

Photogrammetry-based 3D recording was conducted on nine submerged WWII American and Japanese wrecks in 2017 and again in 2023. The authors used the scaled 3D models in CloudCompare, a point cloud analysis software, to visualize and quantify the differences between the two years. In this paper, the authors will explain the results and the methodology used, as well as discuss future prospects for ongoing monitoring projects in Saipan and other Pacific regions.

While shallow-water World War II underwater cultural heritage (UCH) related to the Battle of Saipan has been researched extensively, there is little known about deep-water UCH from the battle. During Ships of Discovery’s 2023 NOAA Saipan project, numerous methods were used for the location and identification of deep-water WWII UCH in order to expand context and understanding of the battlefield in deeper waters. Methods include machine learning analysis of topobathy LIDAR in ESRI ArcGIS Pro to identify potential offshore targets and ground-truthing targets by diver and ROV testing and tow board surveys. As a result, the team identified battle-related remains and documented a U.S. PBM Coronado seaplane and a multivehicle WWII LVT dump site. This paper discusses the challenges and outcomes of deep-water exploration into WWII UCH from the Battle of Saipan.

Recent advances in sensor technology and marine robotic platforms have enabled efficient data collection over large areas across oceans, lakes, and coastal regions. These efforts have resulted in massive amounts of data that contain rich information relevant to ocean exploration. However, processing these large datasets is costly and time consuming. In this presentation, we will describe recent efforts to leverage machine learning to automate processing of sonar imagery for the task of automated shipwreck detection. We will demonstrate tools to integrate machine learning output into geographic information system (GIS) software for further evaluation and visualization. Lastly, we will discuss challenges and opportunities for future work to enable accessible software tools for machine learning for ocean exploration.

As part of a NOAA OER grant funded project, the authors of this paper acquired geophysical and geotechnical data over multiple submerged and buried paleolandscape features in the Northwestern Gulf of Mexico. The project resulted in the acquisition of over 1,200-line kilometers of sub-bottom data (including both chirp sub-bottom and parametric sub-bottom) and 39 sediment cores. Throughout the project, the authors provided Mission Logs and Expedition Updates to the general public, academic talks at various conferences, developed university opportunities for lab analyses, and presented a 4-day short course for students and professionals. This paper will present several of the challenges encountered by the project team in communicating the project’s methods and results to a diversity of audiences. Using examples from the project’s collected data, the authors will summarize some of the challenges and provide recommendations for communicating submerged paleolandscapes research results to different audiences.