Threats to Our Ocean Heritage: Potentially Polluting Wrecks

This open access volume focuses on the environmental hazards and cultural significance of Potentially Polluting Wrecks (PPWs), and how mitigation efforts have assisted in documenting and preserving the history of these sites. It is an important resource on the subject of Potentially Polluting Wrecks that synthesizes previously published information that was not academically or scientifically produced. This includes numerous international studies of shipwreck databases and threats posed by world war wrecks containing oil and other hazardous materials that could spill. This book evaluates these materials and presents new analyses and investigations with modern technology that assist in locating, documenting, and remediating polluting wreck sites. Consequently, this volume calls for increased ocean exploration missions to locate sunken merchant vessels that may pose pollution hazards and site assessments to determine any potential risks. This book is of interest to government officials, educators, archaeologists and practitioners working in the field of underwater archaeology.

This is an open access book.

Dr. Michael L. Brennan received his bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and Geology from Bowdoin College in 2004 and his master’s and PhD in Maritime History and Geological Oceanography in 2008 and 2012, respectively, from the University of Rhode Island.  He has conducted both deep-water and shallow coastal remote sensing, autonomous vehicle and ROV-based survey and operations and is familiar with a wide array of survey technology and capabilities. He has worked around the world in locations including the Black Sea, Bikini Atoll, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean. Dr. Brennan’s research interests include World War II naval history, geoarchaeology, environmental monitoring of shipwrecks, and bottom trawl fishing damage to shipwreck sites. He worked as an expedition leader for Dr. Robert Ballard’s Nautilus exploration program for eight years and has significant experience coordinating telepresence-enabled expeditions, especially with archaeological focus. Since joining SEARCH in 2017, Dr. Brennan has authored and coauthored numerous maritime cultural resources survey reports, which has included data processing and target selection, as well as National Register of Historic Places nomination documents. Recently, Dr. Brennan was a co-principal investigator for the data recovery and structural assessment of the Clotilda wreck in the Mobile River, Alabama and led the environmental assessment of the river and shipwreck.

Dr. Brennan has conducted site assessments of numerous Potentially Polluting Wreck sites, including serving as the archaeologist on site during the mitigation and oil removal operations at the wrecks of Coimbra in 2019 and Munger T. Ball in 2021. This work also includes ROV assessment of Coast Trader off the coast of Vancouver in 2016 and the discovery and ROV assessment of Bloody Marsh off South Carolina in 2021. He has also worked on numerous wrecks from Operation Crossroads, including those at Bikini Atoll as well as the wrecks of USS Independence and USS Nevada, sunk as targets off San Francisco and Hawaii following the nuclear tests in 1946.