WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:01.270 --> 00:00:08.010 So much of history has really been tightly kept in a little box that archaeology is now 00:00:08.010 --> 00:00:09.670 cracking open. 00:00:09.670 --> 00:00:13.960 I started in archaeology when I was fourteen. 00:00:13.960 --> 00:00:15.700 And I figured, “What could I do? 00:00:15.700 --> 00:00:17.190 What was left to be found?” 00:00:17.190 --> 00:00:21.500 95% of the oceans remain unknown. 00:00:21.500 --> 00:00:26.320 So if you want to go explore, if you want to find something, the oceans are a tremendous 00:00:26.320 --> 00:00:30.720 place to work. 00:00:30.720 --> 00:00:41.280 My name’s Jim Delgado, and I’m a maritime, or underwater, archaeologist. 00:00:41.280 --> 00:00:48.210 Maritime archaeology is the study, from what people leave behind, of how we as human beings 00:00:48.210 --> 00:00:52.020 have interacted with the oceans and with lakes and rivers. 00:00:52.020 --> 00:00:58.329 It goes back thousands of years, tens of thousands of years, as people harvested goods from the 00:00:58.329 --> 00:01:03.690 sea, learned how to fish, built the first canoes to cross the oceans, to today’s modern 00:01:03.690 --> 00:01:09.829 times when big massive ships ply the oceans carrying oil, large numbers of people, and 00:01:09.829 --> 00:01:18.969 in the 21st century, still transport 90% of the things that people buy and use by water. 00:01:18.969 --> 00:01:21.600 In my career, I’ve been able to find a great deal. 00:01:21.600 --> 00:01:28.149 I’ve seen ancient ships from a time when the Mediterranean was an expanding area of 00:01:28.149 --> 00:01:33.210 different cultures from ancient Egypt to the Phoenicians, to the rise of the Greeks and 00:01:33.210 --> 00:01:38.779 the Romans, I’ve worked on ships from medieval periods, I’ve worked on ships in the far 00:01:38.779 --> 00:01:43.469 East, including a fleet that Kublai Khan, the Mongol emperor of China sent to try to 00:01:43.469 --> 00:01:46.729 invade and conquer Japan in 1281. 00:01:46.729 --> 00:01:53.689 I’ve been able to work on more modern wrecks too, from Titanic, to lost ships from World 00:01:53.689 --> 00:02:00.880 War II, to ships sunk at the end of the second World War that were lost when they were atomic 00:02:00.880 --> 00:02:07.310 bombed as the United States was testing this new and powerful weapon. 00:02:07.310 --> 00:02:13.080 No matter what type of history it represents, no matter how old it is or how new it is, 00:02:13.080 --> 00:02:17.260 for me the thing that is most powerful is when I see things on these ships that connect 00:02:17.260 --> 00:02:18.680 me to the people. 00:02:18.680 --> 00:02:21.200 Human beings built these ships with their hands. 00:02:21.200 --> 00:02:24.840 They sailed on them and operated on them, working with one another. 00:02:24.840 --> 00:02:28.950 Whether they’re up climbing and moving sails and hauling ropes, whether they’re down 00:02:28.950 --> 00:02:33.840 in an engine room shoveling coal or turning a valve, whether they’re firing a gun or 00:02:33.840 --> 00:02:36.090 taking a navigational sighting. 00:02:36.090 --> 00:02:40.230 In some cases they’re passengers, they’re sailing on these ships, to start a new life 00:02:40.230 --> 00:02:44.500 in a new land, or they’re exploring, or they’re going to fight someone. 00:02:44.500 --> 00:02:49.471 For all of that, when they live in that ship, they are their own community, they’re a 00:02:49.471 --> 00:02:55.180 village, they’re a town, and when you as an archaeologist dive on those ships, you 00:02:55.180 --> 00:02:57.970 find the evidence of what they did. 00:02:57.970 --> 00:03:00.860 And in some cases, you find them. 00:03:00.860 --> 00:03:07.100 And with that, you learn a great deal, not only about the ship, but about the people. 00:03:07.100 --> 00:03:10.020 Because ultimately, for me archaeology isn’t about things. 00:03:10.020 --> 00:03:12.150 It’s about people. 00:03:12.150 --> 00:03:17.830 The progression of how people have changed in response to the oceans, but now how the 00:03:17.830 --> 00:03:24.660 ocean is changing in response to us, that’s where I think it really becomes relevant. 00:03:24.660 --> 00:03:29.830 More of us need to be out there, bearing witness not just to new discoveries, not just to the 00:03:29.830 --> 00:03:32.440 past, but to what we see now. 00:03:32.440 --> 00:03:37.590 We need to share more of the oceans and why they’re important with the rest of the country 00:03:37.590 --> 00:03:41.940 and with the rest of the planet. 00:03:41.940 --> 00:03:46.140 When I first started as a maritime archaeologist, you would go out in a boat, you would take 00:03:46.140 --> 00:03:50.580 a look at a spot on the land and another spot, and if they lined up right, you’d figure 00:03:50.580 --> 00:03:54.660 you were more or less over a shipwreck that you plotted, you’d jump into the water, 00:03:54.660 --> 00:03:56.690 you’d swim down, and there it would be. 00:03:56.690 --> 00:03:59.680 And you might share that with the other diver that was with you. 00:03:59.680 --> 00:04:05.040 But these days, increasingly we’re using new technology, satellites that tell you exactly 00:04:05.040 --> 00:04:11.550 where you are on the surface, robots, highly sophisticated cameras, the internet, to broadcast 00:04:11.550 --> 00:04:17.999 what we do to a global audience so that you, the visitor, the person that’s looking on 00:04:17.999 --> 00:04:24.879 can participate in discovery, exploration, and most recently, even the excavation of 00:04:24.879 --> 00:04:28.520 a shipwreck in some cases thousands of feet deep. 00:04:28.520 --> 00:04:34.639 The way archaeology works is often times it gives us information that isn’t in the history 00:04:34.639 --> 00:04:35.639 books. 00:04:35.639 --> 00:04:37.979 In some cases, there are no history books. 00:04:37.979 --> 00:04:40.080 Ancient cultures didn’t write books. 00:04:40.080 --> 00:04:44.949 In other cases, that knowledge has been lost, the books have been burned or they’ve disappeared. 00:04:44.949 --> 00:04:50.509 In other cases, archaeology talks about things or talks about people who don’t usually 00:04:50.509 --> 00:04:52.490 get into the books. 00:04:52.490 --> 00:04:59.639 In the past, much of the history that was written was about men, about white men, about 00:04:59.639 --> 00:05:03.349 Europeans, about great explorers. 00:05:03.349 --> 00:05:07.410 You could hear about Columbus in the history books, but what about the Spanish sailors, 00:05:07.410 --> 00:05:10.680 and the Portuguese sailors, and the other people that lived and worked? 00:05:10.680 --> 00:05:14.180 At the time he’s sailing, what about all these different people that are out there 00:05:14.180 --> 00:05:15.909 fishing on the water? 00:05:15.909 --> 00:05:17.039 What about children? 00:05:17.039 --> 00:05:18.379 What about women at sea? 00:05:18.379 --> 00:05:22.689 And what about aspects of history that we haven’t heard much about because we either 00:05:22.689 --> 00:05:25.919 can’t read that language or those records are gone? 00:05:25.919 --> 00:05:31.070 That’s the power of archaeology, and in particular, that’s the power of maritime 00:05:31.070 --> 00:05:36.620 archaeology because unlike sites on land, many ships sink to the bottom, and unless 00:05:36.620 --> 00:05:42.349 they are found by somebody or a fisherman’s net snags something, they’re left alone, 00:05:42.349 --> 00:05:49.110 and they become almost like a time capsule for us to learn from. 00:05:49.110 --> 00:05:52.900 You would think that because the ocean is a harsh environment - it’s cold, it’s 00:05:52.900 --> 00:05:56.759 strong, it’s got currents, it’s full of salt - that everything is going to be eaten 00:05:56.759 --> 00:05:57.759 up. 00:05:57.759 --> 00:05:59.610 And in time, things do go away. 00:05:59.610 --> 00:06:04.490 But what we’re finding is that just like you have different climates on land, you have 00:06:04.490 --> 00:06:07.229 them the bottom of the ocean. 00:06:07.229 --> 00:06:10.080 So in some cases the water may be less salty. 00:06:10.080 --> 00:06:14.309 In the Baltic and in the Arctic, wooden ships are still very nicely preserved. 00:06:14.309 --> 00:06:18.729 I swam into a wreck in the Arctic, and in those freezing waters, there was a book still 00:06:18.729 --> 00:06:22.199 sitting on a shelf that you could open and read. 00:06:22.199 --> 00:06:27.680 And it had been on the bottom for nearly 70 years. 00:06:27.680 --> 00:06:31.440 There is good news for people that want to protect the oceans. 00:06:31.440 --> 00:06:37.169 And that is marine protected areas, but in particular, in the United States, it’s National 00:06:37.169 --> 00:06:39.190 Marine Sanctuaries. 00:06:39.190 --> 00:06:46.589 Sanctuaries were created specially to preserve, to protect, and to share why they’re important 00:06:46.589 --> 00:06:48.860 with the rest of the country. 00:06:48.860 --> 00:06:56.419 These areas are all very important because inside them, they protect not only coral reefs, 00:06:56.419 --> 00:07:02.949 and fish populations, or the migration routes of whales or sharks, they also protect thousands 00:07:02.949 --> 00:07:04.400 of shipwrecks. 00:07:04.400 --> 00:07:08.939 These wrecks are protected and they sit in a way as exhibits in an undersea museum. 00:07:08.939 --> 00:07:15.389 At Thunder Bay, hundreds of shipwrecks, almost perfectly preserved by the cold fresh waters 00:07:15.389 --> 00:07:20.330 of Lake Huron, are available for divers to explore and to dive in while the maritime 00:07:20.330 --> 00:07:25.259 heritage center back at the sanctuary’s headquarters in Alpena, Michigan, gives visitors 00:07:25.259 --> 00:07:28.120 on land a chance to see what these ships are all about. 00:07:28.120 --> 00:07:31.900 Why they’re important, what they look like, how they went to the bottom, and the people’s 00:07:31.900 --> 00:07:34.270 stories associated with them. 00:07:34.270 --> 00:07:39.159 On the west coast of California, we’re working now to document more of these shipwrecks and 00:07:39.159 --> 00:07:43.930 discover wrecks that the history books or old newspapers say to us are out there, but 00:07:43.930 --> 00:07:46.630 we haven’t yet seen or put our eyes on them. 00:07:46.630 --> 00:07:51.539 So over the last few years we’ve discovered a few of those wrecks, and most recently we 00:07:51.539 --> 00:07:55.249 found a wreck that wasn’t supposed to be there at all. 00:07:55.249 --> 00:07:59.969 It was a ship that had sailed out and disappeared almost a hundred years ago. 00:07:59.969 --> 00:08:05.490 It still remained undiscovered and one of the top mysteries of the ocean. 00:08:05.490 --> 00:08:10.990 Until a regular survey of Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, we found a shipwreck, 00:08:10.990 --> 00:08:16.289 and as we looked at it and examined it, it turned out to be this long-missing ship with 00:08:16.289 --> 00:08:18.219 fifty-six crew. 00:08:18.219 --> 00:08:23.340 So not only were we able to solve a mystery, not only were we able to say this is a very 00:08:23.340 --> 00:08:28.149 important wreck sitting here and protected in this sanctuary, but we were able to reach 00:08:28.149 --> 00:08:35.080 out to the families of those fifty-six men and say, after ninety-five years, we know 00:08:35.080 --> 00:08:40.330 where your grandfather, your great-uncle, your cousins - we know where they are. 00:08:40.330 --> 00:08:45.510 They’re at peace resting at the bottom of the sea, in a shipwreck that is now full of 00:08:45.510 --> 00:08:46.880 marine life. 00:08:46.880 --> 00:08:53.160 It is their grave, but it is also part of a rich and important marine sanctuary that 00:08:53.160 --> 00:08:56.590 has been set aside to protect such things. 00:08:56.590 --> 00:09:01.810 Not only do I think that gave these families some closure, an opportunity to say, “at 00:09:01.810 --> 00:09:07.850 last I know what happened,” but also some satisfaction, that we’re looking out for 00:09:07.850 --> 00:09:15.030 these guys, as we do so many other things in the marine sanctuaries system. 00:09:15.030 --> 00:09:19.380 One of the things that we've learned when we look at shipwrecks in particular but other 00:09:19.380 --> 00:09:24.970 parts of archaeology is when something is preserved, when it's set aside it's almost 00:09:24.970 --> 00:09:29.910 like money that you put in the bank, but it's money that you can't make another deposit 00:09:29.910 --> 00:09:33.650 to once you start taking it out it's gone forever. 00:09:33.650 --> 00:09:40.600 That's why as archeologists we're very careful to look and not touch more often than not. 00:09:40.600 --> 00:09:45.140 In the time I've been an archaeologist I've seen the technology changed so much that if 00:09:45.140 --> 00:09:51.020 I could go back and say, "hold on don't dig that ship up now let's wait 30 years or 40 00:09:51.020 --> 00:09:55.990 years because we'll learn twice as much," I would go back and have that conversation 00:09:55.990 --> 00:09:58.150 with myself and others. 00:09:58.150 --> 00:10:03.240 But by the same token to what we also learn is that these shipwrecks, not only are repositories 00:10:03.240 --> 00:10:08.300 of the past, they're the people's graves in some cases, also wonderful marine habitats 00:10:08.300 --> 00:10:13.870 full of life so why should I as an archaeologist go to the bottom and say okay we're gonna 00:10:13.870 --> 00:10:17.920 take all of this marine life off, we're gonna take away this home for all these fish and 00:10:17.920 --> 00:10:22.870 we're going to bring it to the surface, when it's there sitting as an untouched museum 00:10:22.870 --> 00:10:28.170 that meets all of those needs, or that's a beautiful place for divers to go and visit. 00:10:28.170 --> 00:10:29.670 That's why we have sanctuaries. 00:10:29.670 --> 00:10:31.500 That's why we set these areas aside. 00:10:31.500 --> 00:10:38.820 It's not to just go and take, it's to look, to observe, to appreciate, and in a few cases 00:10:38.820 --> 00:10:45.910 if it's that important to intervene, take maybe this or that, a doctor when he operates 00:10:45.910 --> 00:10:51.500 doesn't take everything out of you he might take a little biopsy as a sample to learn 00:10:51.500 --> 00:10:56.180 what's making you sick, and so that's how we approach it with shipwrecks. 00:10:56.180 --> 00:11:00.990 That's how we approach it with most any anything in a Marine Sanctuary. 00:11:00.990 --> 00:11:07.130 They are sanctuaries, they're conservation areas, they're sentinels that speak to how 00:11:07.130 --> 00:11:13.030 we are changing the oceans and how we're also working very hard to save the oceans and preserve 00:11:13.030 --> 00:11:14.460 what's in them. 00:11:14.460 --> 00:11:19.970 So we for the most part leave only bubbles and take only photographs.