East Carolina University News

A participant in a diving field school last fall, graduate student Tori Kiefer is back to help a new set of students learn the joy of surveying shipwrecks. Last fall, Tori Kiefer was part of a group of East Carolina University graduate students who came to the waters of Wisconsin to learn about surveying shipwrecks, as part of a field school run by ECU. This year, she’s back in Wisconsin to help make sure the experience runs smoothly for a new set of ECU dive students. “It’ll be cool to see the students go through the process of surveying a ship and figuring everything out,” said Kiefer. “When I mapped a shipwreck last year, it was in shallow water, and that was the big challenge. For this year’s group, it’ll be the water temperature.

Partnering U.S. agencies have commenced surveying the historic shipwreck of an American lightship shelled and sunk by a German U-boat during World War I nearly 100 years ago. Teams from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, in partnership with the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), on Sunday, August 30, began a survey of the historic wreck of Diamond Shoal Lightship No. 71, the only American lightship to be sunk by enemy action during World War I.

A team of researchers led by NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries have discovered two significant vessels from World War II’s Battle of the Atlantic. The German U-boat 576 and the freighter Bluefields were found approximately 30 miles off the coast of North Carolina. Lost for more than 70 years, the discovery of the two vessels, in an area known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic, is a rare window into a historic military battle and the underwater battlefield landscape of WWII.

More than 153 years after it was lost in a violent collision at sea, government and university maritime archaeologists have identified the wreck of the ship Robert J. Walker, a steamer that served in the U.S. Coast Survey, a predecessor agency of NOAA. The Walker, while now largely forgotten, served a vital role as a survey ship, charting the Gulf Coast ‒ including Mobile Bay and the Florida Keys ‒ in the decade before the Civil War. It also conducted early work plotting the movement of the Gulf Stream along the Atlantic Coast.

Lost after a violent collision at sea, government and university maritime archaeologists have identified the wreck of the ship 'Robert J. Walker', a steamer that served in the U.S. Coast Survey, a predecessor agency of NOAA. Twenty sailors died when the Walker sank in rough seas in the early morning hours of June 21, 1860, ten miles off Absecon Inlet on the New Jersey coast. The crew had finished its latest surveys in the Gulf of Mexico and was sailing to New York when the Walker was hit by a commercial schooner off New Jersey.

Cape Fear Community College is sending out an S.O.S. to state lawmakers for the future of its Marine Technology program, one of the college’s oldest and most successful two-year job-training programs. In January 2009, Cape Fear Community College was informed by the N.C. State Board of Community Colleges that state funding for CFCC’s Marine Technology ship operations may be eliminated, effective fiscal year 2009 - 2010. The $571,000 in proposed cuts would eliminate funding for maintenance, fuel, repairs, and supplies on the college’s 85 ft ocean-going research vessel, the R/V Dan Moore. Additionally, these funds support the costs associated with the 53 ft R/V Martech and the fleet of small boats.