The world’s oceans hold more than three million shipwrecks and other types of underwater cultural heritage (UCH), forming a vast submerged museum of human activity, innovation, and loss at sea. Often described as time capsules, these sites are far more than isolated moments resting on the sea floor. They offer multiple currents of insight into how societies have understood, used, and been shaped by the ocean—past and present. Shipwrecks sit at the nexus of humanities and science: between archaeological processes and evolving biological ecosystems, between the most complex machines of their time and today’s cutting edge technologies. Distributed across depth zones and ocean environments, they form a cultural network of datums that influence connectivity and dispersal, alter local and regional biodiversity, and interact with physical and chemical processes. Dr. Mires highlights the importance of interdisciplinary research and the growing need for collaboration between archaeologists and ocean scientists to address the stressors affecting UCH. Such partnerships are essential for developing ecosystem based management strategies that recognize these sites as both historical resources and ecological structures. This lecture introduces a framework for the emerging field of Maritime Heritage Ecology and presents case studies demonstrating how shipwreck research can inform contemporary management questions in a rapidly changing ocean.

Mires, Calvin H., Benjamin Haskell, and Kirstin Meyer-Kaiser. 2024. “Multi-use and Multi-vocal Challenges of Preserving Underwater Cultural Heritage in Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary.  In Threats to Our Ocean Heritage: Bottom Trawling, Charlotte Jarvis, editor, The Ocean Foundation and Springer Brief Publishing.
Mires, Calvin H., and Kirstin Meyer-Kaiser. 2023. “A Case Study in Maritime Heritage Ecology: Understanding How Structural Changes to the 1898 Shipwreck Portland Affect Biological Diversity and Colonization.” Journal of Maritime Archaeology; ttps://doi.org/10.1007/s11457-023-09359-2
Meyer-Kaiser, Kirstin and Calvin Mires. 2022. “Underwater Cultural Heritage is Integral to Marine Ecosystems” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 37(10):815-818; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2022.06.014