NOAA’s Stellwagen Bank Sanctuary shipwreck Lamartine listed on National Register of Historic Places

The carefully chiseled groove around the basin head’s manhole
allowed the manhole cover to fit flush with the slab’s surface.
(Photo Credit: NOAA/SBNMS and NURTEC-UConn)

The wreck of the Lamartine, a 19th century schooner that hauled granite for construction of streets, sidewalks and buildings along the U.S. East Coast, has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the nation’s official list of cultural resources worthy of preservation. The wreck lies within NOAA’s Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary in Massachusetts Bay.

Built in Camden, Maine, the 79-foot, two-masted cargo schooner was launched in 1848 and enjoyed a 45-year career along the Eastern Seaboard. The Lamartine is considered by historians as a representative vessel of New England’s granite trade from that era.

While hauling granite sewer heads from Stonington, Maine, to New York City on May 17, 1893, the Lamartine encountered a storm off Cape Ann, Mass. Heavy seas caused the schooner’s cargo to shift, capsizing the vessel.

One crewmember drowned as the schooner settled beneath the waves, and the captain and mate were tossed into the ocean. Luckily, a fishing schooner returning to Gloucester, Mass., saw the Lamartine sink, and rescued them.

“Lamartine’s cargo of cut granite reveals fascinating details about how granite quarried in New England met the demands of a nation growing increasingly urban,” said Craig MacDonald, superintendent of the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. “The shipwreck is a physical link to earlier generations who moved the stone and whose hands chiseled the granite blocks that built our great American cities.”

Scientists from NOAA and the University of Connecticut’s Northeast Underwater Research Technology and Education Center (NURTEC) documented the shipwreck with the university’s remotely operated vehicle during several research missions between 2004 and 2006. The fieldwork recorded the vessel’s features, including portions of its wooden hull, rigging and granite cargo. This information allowed sanctuary maritime archaeologists, with help from a local maritime historian, to identify the shipwreck and connect it with New England’s cultural landscape that is dotted with granite quarries on coastal headlands and islands.

NOAA and NURTEC scientists have collaboratively located and documented more than three dozen historic shipwrecks in the sanctuary using side scan sonar and an advanced suite of remotely operated and self-guided underwater vehicles. The Lamartine is the sanctuary’s sixth shipwreck site to be included on the National Register of Historic Places, administered by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s National Park Service.

The Lamartine’s location within Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary provides protection unavailable to shipwrecks in other federal waters off Massachusetts. Sanctuary regulations prohibit moving, removing or injuring any sanctuary historical resource, including artifacts and pieces from shipwrecks or other submerged archaeological sites. Anyone violating this regulation is subject to civil penalties.

Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary encompasses 842 square miles of ocean, stretching between Cape Ann and Cape Cod offshore of Massachusetts. Renowned for its biological diversity and remarkable productivity, the sanctuary is famous as a whale watching destination and supports a rich assortment of marine life, including marine mammals, seabirds, fishes and marine invertebrates. The sanctuary’s position astride the historic shipping routes and fishing grounds for Massachusetts’ oldest ports also makes it a repository for shipwrecks representing several hundred years of maritime transportation.

NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth's environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and to conserve and manage our coastal and marine resources. Join us on Facebook, Twitter and our other social media channels at http://www.noaa.gov/socialmedia/.

On the Web:
NOAA Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary: http://stellwagen.noaa.gov
NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries: http://sanctuaries.noaa.gov
NOAA Preserve America Initiative: http://preserveamerica.noaa.gov
Northeast Underwater Research Technology and Education Center: http://www.nurc.uconn.edu
Lamartine photos can be found on Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary’s website at http://stellwagen.noaa.gov/maritime/granite.html

COCOS (Feb 19-21): Bluewater dives & gremlins

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Inspecting Topside ROV Control Box
(Photo credit: P. Auster/NURTEC/UConn)

The ship made steady progress towards the island and we expected to arrive at Cocos by midnight and then the seamounts about four hours later.  The day was spent discussing multiple ways to integrate ROV, submersible and scuba diving operations in the most efficient manner.  The ROV team spent the day preparing Hela to dive.  This involved maintaining and securing multiple underwater housings, connectors and cables to the vehicle, securing cables on the deck and in the ROV control room and myriad other tasks.  On top of this they were chasing down “gremlins” in the ROV system.  The inevitable consequence of moving sophisticated electronic equipment that purposely is exposed to seawater, there were problems with communications between topside and vehicle systems.  One was solved and another emerged.

Bluewater diving atop the seamount
(Photo credit: P. Auster/NURTEC/UConn)

Meanwhile, the science party conducted blue-water dives using SCUBA gear and submarine dives using the the DeepSee submersible.  The scuba work will entail day and night blue-water dives over the seamount (the shallowest seamount peak is about 170 m depth) to collect gelatinous plankton (Madin), census fish (Auster), and photograph the diversity of animals that migrate to surface waters at night (Skerry).  The Undersea Hunter Group’s DeepSee submersible is rated to 1500 ft (457 m) and will allow 1 pilot and 2 scientists to visit the upper reaches of the seamounts.  However, everyone is eagerly awaiting the addition of the ROV to the operations mix.

DeepSee submersible descent to the Cocos Seamounts (Photo credit: P. Auster/NURTEC/UConn)

This National Geographic expedition is supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DRL-1114251. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

COCOS (Feb 18): Underway from Puntarenas

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Leaving port aboard the MV Argo
(Photo credit: P. Auster/NURTEC/UConn

After a sleepless night of unpacking, the ROV crew awoke early to fully assemble and test Hela.  By 11 am all of the major systems had been loosely assembled on both the vehicle and in the topside control room and were ready for a test.  Kevin flipped the main power switch and the screens came to life and glowed with video, sonar and vehicle information just as they should!  This is what we were looking for as the lines were cast off from the dock at noon and the MV Argo turned into the channel and headed out to sea, past the docks and fishing boats, past the mangrove forests, past the mountains and out to the open Pacific Ocean.  The air was warm, sky was clear and the seas were calm as we began the 36 hour passage to Isla del Coco (Cocos Island) and the Gemelas Seamounts.

Styrofoam cups await transit to the deep sea
(Photo credit: K. Joy/NURTEC/UConn)

Cups from a classroom...a side story

When oceanographers prepare for a deepwater dive (using ROVs or occupied submersibles) they often follow the long-running tradition of decorating Styrofoam cups, placing them in a mesh bag affixed to the vehicle, and exposing them to the extreme pressures of the abyssal realm.   The pressure thousands of feet below the surface can reduce an 8oz cup to the size of a thimble, resulting in a nifty souvenir from the seafloor.  Kevin Joy visited his son Sawyer's class before leaving on the expedition and had the students draw on Styrofoam cups – these will be attached to the Hela ROV or submersible during a deep dive, which will turn the coffee cups into shot glass size miniatures from Las Gemelas Seamounts.

This National Geographic expedition is supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DRL-1114251. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

COCOS (Feb 17): Best laid plans....

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DeepSee submersible onload
(Photo credit: P. Auster/NURTEC/UConn

The NURTEC team of Technical Director and Hela ROV pilot/technician, Kevin Joy and ROV pilot/technician Lance Horn from the University of North Carolina-Wilmington arrived in Puntarenas on February 14 with the hope of seeing our shipment at the dock after it cleared through customs.  The schedule allowed 3 days to assemble and test the ROV, checking that all the bumps and knocks during shipping did not damage our equipment.  Unfortunately, it took days to get our equipment from customs.  They checked on status morning, noon and night!  At least they had time to think hard about the layout of gear and how operations would commence on the MV Argo, our floating home for the expedition.  Needless to say they were frustrated during those days as the buzz of activities around them were all focused on preparing the ship, dive gear and submersible vehicle.


Meanwhile, the Undersea Hunter Group on-loaded the DeepSee submersible (top right) onto the support ship Argo.  After a busy day of onload, the ROV gear cleared customs late in the day and arrived at the port of Puntarenas around 2100 hrs.  The cloud of dust and glare of headlights coming down the dirt road to the dock was a welcome sight.  Everyone pitched in and all of the equipment was loaded onto the ship in two and a half hours.  That was the easy part - then began the task of unpacking crates, organizing equipment and making Hela ROV operational.  Work continued to the early hours of the morning.


This National Geographic expedition is supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DRL-1114251. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Cocos Seamount Expedition

On Monday, February 6th, NURTEC’s remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Hela, capable of diving to 1000 feet, departed UConn Avery Point to be air freighted to Costa Rica to support a National Geographic Society (NGS) expedition to explore a deep-water seamount in the Pacific Ocean.  The “Las Gemelas” (the twins) seamount lies about 40 nautical miles offshore from Cocos Island, which itself lies over 375 miles from the coast of Costa Rica.  The expedition is being led by NGS photographer, Brian Skerry (www.brianskerry.com) and Dr. Peter Auster, UConn Department of Marine Sciences is serving as an expedition scientist.


More news on this expedition to come.  Stay tuned.

This National Geographic expedition is supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DRL-1114251. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Florida Shelf Edge Exploration II

Pink Stylaster corals flourish on a rock outcrop. 
Photo courtesy of NURTEC and CIOERT.

 From September 12 to September 30, 2011, members of NURTEC’s remotely operated vehicle (ROV) operations team collaborated with the Cooperative Institute for Ocean Exploration, Research and Technology (CIOERT) and partner scientists aboard the NOAA vessel Nancy Foster to conduct an undersea exploration of Florida’s deepwater coral ecosystems.  The objectives of this expedition were to survey these shelf-edge habitats and assess abundance and diversity of reef fishes, corals, and other associated invertebrates.  While some areas were revisited from previous years, the team also explored new sites along Pulley Ridge and Pourtalѐs Terrace.

NURTEC's Kraken2 ROV. Photo courtesy of Andy David.

The science party utilized an array of ocean technologies including CTD, MOCNESS, multi-beam sonar to identify potential hard-bottom targets of mesophotic coral reefs and NURTEC’s ROV, Kraken2, to ground-truth these areas of interest with high definition video, digital still photography, and sample collection.  For the mission, Kraken2 was equipped with an array of custom designed sampling systems including a HD video camera, four additional SD cameras for a variety of viewpoints, a down-looking digital still camera for conduction quantitative photo transects, forward and down-looking paired lasers for sizing objects, a six function manipulator with cutting claw for sample collection, suction sampling tube and eight bucket array, auto-indexing quiver array for biota collection.  

Kraken2 ROV collecting coral sample with manipulator
and suction hose.  Photo courtesy of NURTEC and CIOERT.

Over the course of sixteen scheduled dive days, a total of 26 dives were conducted ranging in depth from less than 200 meters to 850 meters water depth.  The opportune weather conditions, cooperative effort of science, ship and ROV team, and performance of Kraken2 ROV produced hundreds of hours of undersea video, thousands of digital photos, and wide array of biological specimens collected for taxonomy, genetic sampling, and medical research.  In summary, the research cruise was a success and the resulting data/scientific insight will help assess the efficacy of establishing marine protected areas and understanding coral/fish associations.

For more information about the FLOSEE II Expedition, please visit FLOSEE II: Exploring and Mapping Shelf Frontiers off South Florida.