Underwater Historic Preservation for Sport Divers: Florida’s Training Courses for Divers and Diving Leadership

Author(s): Della A Scott-Ireton; Jeffrey T. Moates

Year: 2015

Summary

Public efforts to support preservation of Florida’s historic shipwrecks began in earnest in the late 1980s with the development of the state’s Underwater Archaeological Preserve system. As part of the process, local sport divers received training to assist with recording and monitoring these historic wrecks. The success of this program led to the development of the Submerged Sites Education & Archaeological Stewardship (SSEAS) program targeted to sport divers, and the Heritage Awareness Diving Seminar (HADS) targeted to diving leadership. This paper describes these programs and how they are intended to encourage divers to become active in preserving underwater cultural heritage, monitoring wrecksites, and making their own discoveries, in the process producing information instead of simply consuming information.  While initial results have been encouraging, they also provide a lesson for orienting collaborative programs to the needs of the audience, rather than only to the needs of archaeologists.

Cite this Record

Underwater Historic Preservation for Sport Divers: Florida’s Training Courses for Divers and Diving Leadership. Della A Scott-Ireton, Jeffrey T. Moates. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Seattle, Washington. 2015 ( tDAR id: 433927)

Spatial Coverage

min long: -129.199; min lat: 24.495 ; max long: -66.973; max lat: 49.359 ;

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 41