Presenter: Eric Terrill (Scripps Institution of Oceanography - UCSD)

Description:
Recent advancements in marine robotics and their sensors present wide-area survey opportunities for mapping and documenting submerged cultural resources. We report on the maturation of this technology and two expeditions to document WWII-era submerged archeological sites. In July 2018, a two week expedition was conducted in waters off Kiska Island, Alaska, one of the last and most remote islands in the Aleutian chain. The often-forgotten Aleutian campaign was the sole WWII campaign fought on North American soil and Kiska Island is one of the few U.S. territories occupied by foreign forces in the last 200 years. The second expedition will conducted in early 2022 in the channel between the Pacific Islands of Tinian and Saipan. During the final year of the war, these islands hosted several air-bases which supported long range bombing campaigns. Several aircraft crashed on takeoff in the deep channel, and have never been systematically located and documented. This talk explores the historical context of the Aleutian and Pacific Campaigns, project methodology, and results with an emphasis on the use of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) and other marine technologies applied to the archaeological survey. These projects have been funded by grants from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Office of Ocean Exploration and Research Office of Naval Research, and Project Recover.