Adventure writing at its best, Submerged is the first book on the remarkable story of America's elite underwater archeology team. Daniel Lenihan recounts experiences from his 25 years as founder and head of the award-winning Submerged Cultural Resources Unit (SCRU) team of the U.S. National Park Service, world-class divers - talented archeologists, historians, and photographers charged with the mission of surveying, mapping, investigating, and protecting shipwrecks and sites that constitute America's sunken heritage. In Submerged, Lenihan takes the reader on a kaleidoscope of the team's underwater experiences from 1975 to the present - from Florida caves to ancient ruins covered by reservoirs in the desert southwest; to a WWII Japanese submarine off the Alaskan coast; to the lower rings of hell to retrieve the bodies of drowned divers; to gripping accounts of personal survival in underwater caves, ships, and submerged buildings.Displaying a passion for extreme diving combined with disciplined professionalism as park ranger-archeologists, the SCRU team tackles astonishing, often harrowing assignments, including; The Isle Royale shipwrecks; Surveying ten large ships sunk from the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries in the middle of the frigid and deep Lake Superior. The USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor; Executing the largest mapping project ever conducted underwater, and his personal impressions as the first deep diver to explore and video the entire ship in 1983 Excavating the hull of the HL Hunley, the first submarine in history to sink an enemy ship, in Charleston Harbor during the Civil War Resurveying of the ships sunk by atomic bombs at Bikini Atoll, including the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga and Japanese battleship Nagato With an aggressive preservation ethic, the team discovers and documents shipwrecks from Florida to Alaska, and even studies the haunts of pirates and prehistoric cultures in Micronesia.This engaging book, written with a mixture of wonder, intensity, pathos and humor, records for the first time the historic and social significance of the underwater research programs conducted by this fascinating unit of the U.S. National Park Service. Sure to delight anyone interested in diving, archeology, American history, adventure, and rescure missions, this fast-paced volume brings an entirely new perspective to the marvels of America's underwater treasures.

This book presents an overview of the exciting new developments in underwater research in North America, ranging from new approaches for discovering submerged sites to an assessment of how these findings challenge the understanding of the North American past. Archaeological sites preserved on the world’s continental shelves are relevant to a wide range of major research questions and their importance increases with the heightened awareness of climate change and rising modern sea levels. Once thought lost forever, these sites survive underwater, preserved from the ravages of modern farming and development. To investigate the submerged landscapes, archaeologists use many of the same technologies developed for discovery of shipwrecks but, couple them with anthropological and environmental models to identify and study the way of life of people residing in these ancient lands. In this book, leading figures associated with submerged site exploration share an emphasis on the conduct and results of underwater research. It will be a fascinating read for advanced students of Archaeology, History and Environmental Studies. This volume was originally published as a special issue of The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology.