Symone Johnson - Shark Researcher and Knauss Fellow, NOAA narrates the first Full Moon series introduction. The ocean covers two-thirds of our planet but we know more about Mars than the deep seas.
We take it for granted, but when you think about it, light is amazing. light allows us to see the world around us.
Wildlife viewing is a popular recreation activity, but it is important to know how to interact with ocean wildlife so that you can make the right decisions. Irresponsible human behavior can disturb animals, destroy important habitats, and even result in injury to animals and people.
There is good news for people that want to protect the oceans. And that is marine protected areas, but in particular, in the United States, it’s National Marine Sanctuaries.
When I first started as a maritime archaeologist, you would go out in a boat, you would take a look at a spot on the land and another spot, and if they lined up right, you’d figure you were more or less over a shipwreck that you plotted, you’d jump into the water, you’d swim down, and there it would be. And you might share that with the other diver that was with you.
One of the things that we’ve learned when we look at shipwrecks in particular but other parts of archaeology is when something is preserved, when it’s set aside, it’s almost like money that you put in the bank. But it’s money that you can’t make another deposit to. Once you start taking it out, it’s gone forever. That’s why as archaeologists, we’re very careful to look and not touch, more often than not. In the time I’ve been an archaeologist, I’ve seen the technology change so much that if I could go back and say, “Hold on! Don’t dig that ship up now! Let’s wait thirty years or forty years because we’ll learn twice as much!” I would go back and have that conversation with myself and others.
NOAA's National Geodetic Survey explains the difference between the U.S. survey foot (sFT) and the international survey foot (iFT) and the importance of this distinction when working with map projections. It will be helpful to surveyors, planners and anyone who needs to convert map coordinates from meters to feet.
So much of history has really been tightly kept in a little box that archaeology is now cracking open. I started in archaeology when I was fourteen.
Maritime archaeology is the study, from what people leave behind, of how we as human beings have interacted with the oceans and with lakes and rivers.
I’ve seen ancient ships from a time when the Mediterranean was an expanding area of different cultures from ancient Egypt to the Phoenicians, to the rise of the Greeks and the Romans.