In September of 1908, the Alaska Packers Association ship Star of Bengal sunk near Coronation Island, Alaska, while on route from Wrangell, Alaska, to San Francisco. The ship carried a cargo of canned salmon and 111 Asian cannery workers, mostly Chinese. Of the 36 white crewmen, 21 survived, while most of cannery workers perished. The story of the wreck of the Star of Bengal left a lasting mark in the community of Wrangell, because of the tragic circumstances and disproportional loss of Asian cannery workers’ lives.

In 2022 and 2023, following the historic research and conversations with avocational divers who reportedly located the wreck, a group of researchers launched remote sensing and dive reconnaissance of two potential wreck locations. This presentation shares results of these survey and plans for further investigation, research, and community outreach.

Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary protects the prolific marine resources of Washington State. While shipwrecks are only a small portion of the sanctuary’s cultural heritage, their evaluation nevertheless presents opportunities to better understand the colonization of the Pacific Northwest. Of the dozens of shipwrecks lost within the sanctuary boundary, one stands out due to its sociopolitical contexts: Sv. Nikolai. A survey vessel for the Russian American Company, Sv. Nikolai went ashore near modern La Push, WA in 1808. The Russian, English, and Aleut crew members survived the wrecking and spent the next two years on a tumultuous journey across the Olympic Peninsula. In 2023, a joint team of researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and East Carolina University conducted remote sensing and dive operations in hopes of identifying the loss location of Sv. Nikolai. This presentation addresses the findings of the 2023 field season.

As Henry VII's favourite warship The Mary Rose launched in 1511, sank in the battle of the Solent, a 91-gun Carrack, and excavated from 1971-1982, when the major portion of the hull was raised. But most do not know that some of the structure is still left on the seabed, including the bow castle, parts of the bow castle were investigated between 2003-2005 but not all of it was recovered. Fast forward to Autumn of 2022, while filming on the Mary Rose site for a TV show, it was discovered by accident that the site had developed a significant scour pit due to the historic mooring buoy-chain, what the buoy had exposed was a collection of finds, some modern, victorian and also surprisingly Tudor, which included pottery, glass, timber, and human remains. This paper discusses the ongoing efforts to manage the site, record the changing dynamics and finds recently discovered.

SHIPS has been helping to expand Blue Growth in Plymouth in several ways; We were archaeological advisors for the sinking of the artificial reef HMS Scylla, and we have helped to create the dive trails locally. We have also promoted sports diving in the area, providing the local dive industry with histories and site plans of all the local shipwrecks. The development of The 1000 Tyres Project was created to clean up Plymouth Sound, but the project also engages divers who have an interest in ocean restoration. The 1000 Tyres Project was developed when the tyres were discovered while looking for shipwrecks in Plymouth Sound. This project has already removed tonnes of rubbish from the sea and foreshore. With the creation of the Plymouth Sound National Marine Park, SHIPS is working alongside the park organisers to help develop and further the sustainable economy of heritage and citizen science tourism.

In recent decades, publications focused on the archaeology of industry have increased, resulting in National Register eligibility consideration for structures and facilities of different terrestrial industries such as mines, factories, and railroads. However, there is still a shortage of research on maritime and offshore industrial development. Since the first offshore oil well was drilled off the Louisiana coast in 1938, pipeline and rig construction has escalated. Current research and publications on marine cultural resources in the Gulf of Mexico focus predominantly on historic colonial wrecks, war casualties, and buried paleolandforms; the prevalence of oil industry debris and wreckage is often seen as a simple hazard. Yet, this industry has been crucial to the Gulf region for over 70 years. With plans to construct additional wind farms in the Gulf, it is incredibly important that oil rig structures, wrecks, and other offshore oil features are considered and researched as historical resources.

3D documentation tools and methods are becoming commonplace in nautical and underwater archaeology, but the means to visualize, preserve, share, publish, and re-use the resultant models and underlying raw datasets are often inaccessible. The OpenHeritage3D platform has built a scholarly framework for the use and re-use of full resolution LiDAR and photogrammetry data portraying cultural heritage sites (McAvoy et al. 2023), and through partnership with the Submerged Resources Center of the U.S. National Park Service has extended a model to incorporate marine photogrammetry, multibeam sonar, and sub-bottom profile data into an authoritative archive which enables full-resolution streamable viewing and basic metrology to the general public, and a systems architecture ensuring proper provenance, interoperability, and reusability of raw data by current and future scholars.

For 25 years, divers exploring caves in Quintana Roo, Mexico, have been finding remains of humans who entered in the late Pleistocene or early Holocene. One of these was a young woman (Naia) of terminal Pleistocene age found with fossils of extinct mammals in the pit or natural trap of Hoyo Negro, 600 meters from a ground-level entrance. What were people doing far inside these dark tunnels? In 2023, our fieldwork focused on this question. We found disruption attributable to humans, including broken speleothems, chipped flowstone, and fire-altered rock, showing that Naia wasn’t the site’s only human visitor. The strongest evidence, though, was numerous, deep, rope marks at the rim above an ephemeral pool on the pit floor. Radiocarbon dating of nearby charcoal placed this water-gathering activity between 11,610 - 10,840 cal BP. Although she died centuries earlier, Naia was likely enticed to her death by the promise of water.