The Mission Plan Blog: June 24 Blog: June 23 Blog: June 22 Blog: June 21 Blog: June 20 Blog: June 12 Blog: June 11 Blog: June 6 Blog: June 3 Blog: June 1 KS-520 Convoy SRVx Vessels of Interest Terms and Technology Meet the Team Funding Organizations Previous Battle of the Atlantic Expeditions Media Spot Mission Home Page

Meet the Team

David Alberg
Superintendent
Monitor National Marine Sanctuary

As Sanctuary Superintendent for the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, Dave Alberg serves as the onsite manager for the sanctuary and as the primary point of contact between NOAA and The Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Virginia, which is conserving the thousands of artifacts recovered from the wreck of the USS Monitor. Dave has an extensive background in cultural resource management, museum work and exhibits development and has been involved in a number of high-profile museum projects. In 1992, Dave began his museum career as the first curator for the Virginia Air and Space Center in Hampton Virginia and went on to serve as the Director of Exhibits and Collections for the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL. Most recently, he served as the Deputy Director for Nauticus in Norfolk, Virginia. Dave serves in the United States Navy Reserve and holds a bachelors degree in Museum Studies from George Mason University and a master's degree in Museum Education from the College of William and Mary.

John Bright
Archaeology Student
ECU

John is currently a graduate student in the Program in Maritime Studies at East Carolina University. He holds a BS in Biology, and previously worked for the North Carolina Aquarium at Roanoke Island. Additionally, John spent several years working as a recreational dive instructor and Divemaster in the Outer Banks. John's interest in the Battle of the Atlantic project stems from his present thesis work involving naval battlefield analysis. John is using GIS to spatially analyze the largest naval engagement to have occurred off the North Carolina coast during the Second World War: the KS-520 convoy battle.

Christine Buckel
Habitat Specialist /Diver/Photographer
NOAA NCCOS

Christine Buckel is a biological technician and technical diver at the NOAA lab in Beaufort, North Carolina. Since 2001, she has worked on several projects examining live rock and coral reef habitats off North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Puerto Rico, and Navassa National Wildlife Refuge. She holds a MS in marine science from the University of California at Santa Barbara and specializes in studying anthropogenic and natural impacts to marine habitats.

Tane Casserley
National Maritime Heritage Coordinator/Diver
Office of National Marine Sanctuaries

Tane Casserley, the National Maritime Heritage Coordinator for NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, specializes in 19th-century warships and deep-water archaeology. Tane holds a graduate certificate in maritime archaeology from the University of Hawaii and a master's degree from the Program in Maritime Studies at East Carolina University. He has led NOAA archaeological expeditions in the Florida Keys, the Great Lakes, the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, Alaska, the USS Monitor, he dove with the National Park Service on a sunken B-29 in Lake Mead, and most recently served as principal investigator on an expedition to document three German U-boats from the WWII Battle of the Atlantic off the coast of North Carolina. Tane's projects have used technical diving, remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), and manned submersibles. Tane is a dive instructor and certified trimix and closed-circuit rebreather diver with the National Association of Underwater Instructors (NAUI), as well as the Nautical Archaeology Society Senior Tutor for NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.

Dave Conlin
Chief, Submerged Resources Center
National Park Service

After undergraduate work at Reed College, Dave received a master's degree from Oxford University in Aegean and underwater archeology and then followed this with a Ph.D. in anthropology and archeology from Brown University. Following years of diving and research on the shipwrecks of the Aegean, Dave took a job as an underwater archeologist for the United States Navy. While with the Navy, he helped plan and execute the recovery of the world's first successful combat submarine, the Confederate submersible H.L. Hunley-lost off Charleston South Carolina in 1864. Following the Hunley project, in 2000, Dave moved to Santa Fe to join the National Park Service's Submerged Resources Center and continue diving on shipwrecks around the country and around the world. He has worked on numerous joint projects with the NOAA team including the search for John Paul Jones' ship Bon Homme Richard off the English coast, diving on a B-29 superfortress bomber in Lake Mead National Recreation Area and working on the wrecks of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Martin Dean
Managing Director
Advanced Underwater Surveys Ltd

Martin Dean is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and Managing Director of Advanced Underwater Surveys Ltd. (ADUS), a company that specializes in multibeam sonar surveys of wrecks. He originally worked in terrestrial archaeology before joining the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich as their underwater archaeologist. Five years later he became Director of the Archaeological Diving Unit in St. Andrews where, for 17 years, he assessed historic wrecks for the UK Government. He is fascinated by ship technology of all periods and has investigated wrecks ranging from Bronze age cargo carriers to a 20th century Russian nuclear submarine. He is obsessed with maximizing the potential of modern sonar technology for the study of wrecks and he can go on at great length about high-resolution multibeam sonar and how effective, efficient and objective a survey and assessment tool it can be in the right hands.

Brian Degan
Research Technician
NOAA NCCOS

Brian Degan is a Research Technician at NOAAs Center for Coastal Fisheries and Habitat Research in Beaufort NC. Since coming to the Beaufort Lab, Brian has participated in numerous dive research missions throughout the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and Southeastern United States. Dive missions have ranged in scope from monitoring marine protected areas to documenting the red lionfish invasion. Brian's main research interests are fish morphology, phylogeny, and fish habitat utilization. His role in this mission will be to assist in characterizing the fish communities using visual fish surveys and fisheries sonar.

Russ Green
Deputy Superintendent/Research Coordinator
Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary

Russ Green is the deputy superintendent and research coordinator at the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary in Alpena, Michigan. A former underwater archaeologist for the state of Wisconsin, Russ obtained his undergraduate degree from the University of Rhode Island and a graduate degree in maritime archaeology from East Carolina University. He has worked on dozens of maritime archeology projects along much of the east coast, the Great Lakes, Bermuda and Micronesia. Trained in mixed gas and rebreather diving, Russ has led several technical diving expeditions in the Great Lakes, and worked on the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor off North Carolina. He recently led the documentation of four historic shipwrecks resting in 200 feet of water in northern Lake Huron and assisted with the documentation of World War II shipwrecks in North Carolina's "Graveyard of the Atlantic."

Lauren Heesemann
Research Coordinator/Diver
Monitor National Marine Sanctuary

Lauren is the Research Coordinator for NOAA's Monitor National Marine Sanctuary and this will be her fourth Battle of the Atlantic Expedition. She has acted as coordinator for biological surveys and has assisted with education, outreach, communications, and logistics for the projects. She attended the College of Charleston where she received a Bachelor of Science degree in Marine Biology and Colorado State University where she received a Master's degree in Human Dimensions of Natural Resources. Drawing on her education and experience, Lauren works towards the preservation and conservation of natural and historical resources through research, education, and outreach.

Chris Horrell
Marine Archaeologist
BOEMRE

Christopher Horrell is a Marine Archaeologist for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement's (BOEMRE) Gulf of Mexico OCS Region office in New Orleans, Louisiana. Chris has over 16 years of experience organizing and directing field projects on both terrestrial and underwater sites. While working for the Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research (BAR), Chris worked on many underwater projects including a 19th century centerboard schooner, an early 19th century underwater deposit in the Apalachicola River, as well as several other historic and prehistoric sites along Florida's coast. Most recently, Chris served as a crew member on the Mardi Gras Shipwreck project; a site lying in just over 4,000 feet of seawater in the Gulf of Mexico. Chris is a NOAA divemaster and a member of the Register of Professional Archaeologists. Chris graduated from Southwest Texas State University with a BA in Anthropology and History, he holds a MA in Anthropology from the University of Texas at San Antonio, and a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Florida State University.

Joe Hoyt
Principal Investigator
Maritime Archaeologist/Diver/Photographer
Unit Diving Supervisor
Monitor National Marine Sanctuary

Joe Hoyt is a NOAA maritime archaeologist for the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary and is the Principal Investigator for the Battle of the Atlantic Project. He has worked on several NOAA projects in the Thunder Bay, Florida Keys and Monitor National Marine Sanctuaries since 2001. In 2004, he was awarded the North American Rolex Scholarship through the Our World Underwater Scholarship Society. He has worked on underwater archaeology projects in the Great Lakes, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and several inland rivers. Joe is also an avid underwater photographer and technical diver, and has crewed documentary expeditions on BBC's Planet Earth and PBS. Joe holds an MA in maritime history and underwater archaeology from East Carolina University's Program in Maritime Studies and specializes in Great Lakes and World War II maritime history

Doug Kesling
Manager of the Advanced Diving Technology Program
University of North Carolina Wilmington

Doug Kesling is currently the manager of the Advanced Diving Technology Program at the Center for Marine Science at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW), which has integrated into NOAA's new Cooperative Institute for Ocean Exploration, Research and Technology (CIOERT) also located at UNCW and FAU/Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute. The new CIOERT will utilize submersibles, ROV's, AUV's, enriched air nitrox and trimix open-circuit diving technology and rebreathers in support of NOAA's marine research directives. Doug will oversee the diving operations for the NOAA Divers.

John Kloske
Manager of Marine Operations
SRI

John Kloske is the Manager of Marine Operations in the Marine Technology Program at SRI, a partner in the Cooperative Institute for Ocean Exploration, Research and Technology. He has extensive experience in underwater operations specifically in the areas of sensor integration, software development and acoustic based navigation systems. Prior to SRI he worked at the University of South Florida as Director of Operations and for Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute on a wide variety of offshore projects including the support of manned submersible, AUV and ROV operations. John's qualifications include Bachelor degrees in Ocean Engineering and Marine Biology.

Evan Kovacs
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Advanced Imaging and Visualization Laboratory

Evan Kovacs is a professional underwater videographer and technical diver. Evan is currently working with the Advanced Imaging and Visualization Laboratory at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where he is helping to develop the next generation of 3D and 2D camera systems for underwater and hostile environment use. He started his filming career in 2002 on the History Channel's underwater adventure series, Deep Sea Detectives. His work can be seen on National Geographic, History Channel, Discovery Channel, NOVA (Emmy nominated for videography in 2009), CBC, NHK and elsewhere. Evan Kovacs has been diving for over 18 years and technical diving for more than 15. He has had the opportunity to dive and film wrecks, caves and archaeological sites across the US, along the islands of the South Pacific, the English Channel, the jungles of Mexico and the Dominican Republic, the D-Day beaches of Normandy, the Mediterranean, Thailand and others. Evan was participated in the filming and documenting in 3D of both the RMS Titanic and her sister ship, HMHS Britannic.

Maryann Keith Kovacs
Topside Camera/ Topside Manager
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Advanced Imaging and Visualization Laboratory

Maryann Kovacs started working at the Advanced Imaging and Visualization Laboratory at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 2005. She runs topside camera controls for High Definition and 3D camera systems, and specializes in stereography and image quality control. Her work has taken her all over the world documenting some of the most iconic shipwrecks, including Titanic and Britannic. She has also participated in multiple scientific surveys with the ROV Jason to film the unexplored deepest depths of the ocean.

Luis Lamar
Topside Camera/ Technician
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Advanced Imaging and Visualization Laboratory

William Lange
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Advanced Imaging and Visualization Laboratory

Mark Lawrence
Director
Advanced Underwater Surveys Ltd.

Mark Lawrence is a co-founder and director of Advanced Underwater Surveys Ltd. (ADUS), co-owner and director of SeaArch Ltd, a company that runs a diving and boat charter business in Scotland, and a director of MCDC Ltd., a local development company also based in Scotland. As a director of ADUS, Mark manages the delivery of the technical and logistical aspects of the sonar data acquisition, upon which the 3-D visualizations are based. Mark has been involved with a number of archaeological projects abroad, most notably the Byzantine Church Wreck Project off Marzamemi, Sicily with Dr Parker from the University of Bristol in 1992, the Kravel wreck (early 16th century) project in the Namdofjard near Stockholm, Sweden with an Anglo-Swedish team led by John Adams in 1994, and the HMS Pandora (18th century) excavation off the Great Barrier Reef, with Peter Gesner and the Museum of Tropical Queensland in both 1998 and 1999.

Mark's current focus is taking ADUS forward. To date, ADUS has provided high-resolution images of shipwrecks to a range of large international Salvage companies and Government Departments and Agencies to inform management decisions. ADUS has also just begun to undertake surveys of various sub- sea installations related to the renewable and oil & gas industries.

Charles Loeffler
Principal Investigator
Senior Engineering Scientist
Applied Research Laboratories
The University of Texas at Austin

Charles Loeffler is a senior engineering scientist at the Applied Research Laboratories with the University of Texas at Austin (ARL:UT). He received degrees in electrical engineering and digital signal processing from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and Rice University in Houston, Texas, respectively. After finishing graduate school, he taught at Colorado State University and then joined ARL in 1988. During his time at ARL, he was "on-loan" to the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and a program sponsor for sonar sensor and systems. ARL introduced him to the world of underwater acoustics, where he has developed multi-ping processing schemes to build images of the sea floor from data of various sonar systems, as well as high-speed array geometry-specific algorithms to process thousands of channels of data from these sonar systems. This research has taken him to experiments in various locations, including the lab's tanks, ARL's Lake Travis Test Station, a small boat in the Chesapeake Bay, on large ships in the Pacific, and in a few submarines.

John McCord
Education Programs Coordinator/Videographer/Diver
UNC Coastal Studies Institute

John McCord is the Education Programs Coordinator for the UNC Coastal Studies Institute (UNC-CSI). In this role, John is responsible for communicating the research, projects and activities of the institute to a range of audiences through a variety of education and outreach methods. John serves as the primary videographer on the Battle of the Atlantic Expedition, capturing the details of the project for both research and education purposes. Look for exciting video updates from John and the UNC-CSI production team as they document the progress of the 2011 Battle of the Atlantic Expedition.

Nathan Richards, Ph.D.
Interim Program Head
Maritime Heritage, UNC-Coastal Studies Institute
Associate Professor
Program in Maritime Studies, Department of History, East Carolina University

Dr. Richards specializes in maritime archaeological theory and method with a particular focus on cultural site formation processes of the archaeological record. He has been involved in field schools run by Departments of Archaeology at Flinders University (South Australia), and James Cook University (Queensland), and has been employed in cultural heritage management work by the State Governments of South Australia and Tasmania. His research has appeared multiple academic journals, he is co-author (with Robyn Hartell) of The Garden Island Ships' Graveyard Maritime Heritage Trail (Government of South Australia, 2001), and author of Ships' Graveyards: Abandoned Watercraft and the Archaeological Formation Process (University Press of Florida, 2008). Dr. Richards is an active member of the Australasian Institute for Maritime Archaeology and the Australian Association for Maritime History. He is an Associate Editor for the journal Historical Archaeology and is a Research Associate for the PAST Foundation (Columbus, Ohio).

Richards commenced as the Interim Program Head for CSI's Maritime Heritage Program as of January 1, 2011 after collaborating with the Institute over the last three years during the NOAA-led Battle of the Atlantic Expeditions (2008-present) and a 2010 summer field school in the waters adjacent to Oregon Inlet. He is also holds a joint appointment as an Associate Professor with the Program in Maritime Studies (Department of History) at East Carolina University (Greenville, NC) where he has taught classes in the history, theory, method, and ethics of maritime archaeology, field schools, and cultural heritage management since 2003.

John Roark
Technician
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Advanced Imaging and Visualization Laboratory

Becky Kagan Schott
Underwater 3D videographer / Photographer
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Advanced Imaging and Visualization Laboratory

Becky is a professional underwater videographer, photographer, and technical diver. She has over 17 years of dive experience logging thousands of hours underwater in various conditions and extreme environments to 350feet. She's a NAUI Scuba Instructor, and holds certifications in Cave diving, Trimix, Rescue, and several Rebreathers. Her projects have taken her all over the globe from documenting historic wrecks in Truk Lagoon, Japan and the Great Lakes, to capturing stunning video of marine life including tiger sharks, wild dolphins and deep sea mount ecosystems. She's also documented underwater cave exploration projects and photographed cave systems in the Bahamas, Dominican Republic and Florida. For past 3 years she has worked closely with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's Advanced Imaging and Visualization Laboratory using the latest in HD and 3D technology above and below the surface. With them she's shot in iconic locations around the globe. Becky is co-owner of Liquid Productions, LLC and holds a Bachelors degree from the University of Tampa in Journalism.

David Schott
Underwater 3D videographer / Photographer
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Advanced Imaging and Visualization Laboratory

David Schott is a Producer, Stereographer, and Professional Underwater Videographer. Diving since 1999, he's logged thousands of dives both open water and technical. David has worked as a safety diver, underwater camera operator, stereographer, and topside videographer on documentaries and educational DVD's from the caves of Florida to the Dry Tortugas. He is currently working as one of the primary underwater videographers documenting the deepest cave in the United States at over 400 feet deep. He also worked as a stereographer for the first Discovery commissioned 3D program and many other 3D programs both in-air and underwater. He has experience shooting aerials from planes and airships, trekking through the swamp, ice diving, and diving in extreme environments for the perfect shot.

Steve Sellers
National Dive Safety Officer
National Park Service

Andrew Nelson Shepard
Associate Director
NOAA Cooperative Institute for Ocean Exploration, Research and Technology
University of North Carolina at Wilmington (UNCW)

Andy Shepard is Associate Director of NOAA's Cooperative Institute for Ocean Exploration, Research and Technology (cioert.org). CIOERT is hosted by lead institution Harbor Branch at Florida Atlantic University, and co-managed by UNCW. As Associate Director, Andy engages in program management, research and technology development, and public outreach and education. He is currently lead investigator on CIOERT's Submerged Cultural Resources project, a partnership to support National Marine Sanctuaries' needs to map and explore deep wreck sites beyond normal scuba operations. Andy was an undergraduate at Bates College in Maine, and received a Master's degree in Marine Science from the University of Massachusetts. He served as a NOAA Corps Officer for six years, working on several NOAA ships, which conducted nautical charting and ground-fish assessment surveys, and at the Northeast Regional Fisheries Center, Woods Hole, as a research diver. He spent 22 years with NOAA's National Undersea Research Program supporting applications of undersea technologies to address NOAA ocean priorities.

Michael Skowronski
ROV Pilot/ Technician
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Advanced Imaging and Visualization Laboratory

Richard Stevenson
Underwater Videographer
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Advanced Imaging and Visualization Laboratory

David Sybert
Education Associate/ Diver
UNC Coastal Studies Institute

Dave is responsible for working with John McCord, Education Program Coordinator, to communicate the research and activities of the UNC Coastal Studies Institute to an assortment of audiences including local government officials, university faculty, teachers, K-12 students and the general public. This mission is fulfilled through a variety of education and outreach methods including workshops, publications, press coverage, multi-media and web based learning. Dave is also a member of the video productions crew and the UNC-CSI dive team.

John Wagner
NOAA
Office of National Marine Sanctauries

John is a Maritime Archaeologist with the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries' Resources Protection Team. John graduated from East Carolina University (ECU) with a Masters Degree in Maritime History and Nautical Archaeology. John's Master's Thesis involved examining the historical and archaeological record of the Battle of the Atlantic off the coast of North Carolina using theoretical approaches from the subfield of Battlefield Archaeology and geospatial theories common to Geographical Information Systems (GIS) research. This study has allowed archaeologists from NOAA and ECU to examine maritime battlefields from a different perspective in order to obtain a more holistic view of a particular wartime engagement. His current work revolves around developing and maintaining a database and GIS of oil carrying and oil-burning vessels lost in American waters that could pose a significant pollution threat to the environment. John is a Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) Divemaster, a NOAA Scientific Diver, and a member of the Register of Professional Archaeologists.

Paula Whitfield
Marine Biologist
NOAA NCCOS

Paula Whitfield is a Research Ecologist at NOAAs Center for Coastal Fisheries and Habitat Research in Beaufort NC. Her research interests include the characterization and monitoring of marine communities in temperate hard bottom reef habitats from 70 to 150 ft of water. One of her primary research objectives is to understand how physical factors such as water temperature structure the distribution of marine communities including the invasive lionfish off the NC coastline. Paula has been diving on North Carolina wrecks since the mid-1980's and on the 2010 expedition she will be involved in characterizing the marine communities associated with the shipwrecks off Hatteras NC.

Mike Winfield
Dive Operations
UNC Wilmington

Mike is currently working for the Advanced Diving Technology Program at the Center for Marine Science at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW), which has integrated into NOAA's new Cooperative Institute for Ocean Exploration, Research and Technology (CIOERT) also located at UNCW and FAU/Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute. He is a DMT, MPIC ( Medical Person in Charge), DSAT TRIMIX Instructor, and holds a BS in marine biology from UNCW.