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

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.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2015   •
• Engaging the Public: Involving People Underwater, On Land, and Online in Maritime Archaeology

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 41