How to find shipwrecks!

barney

Full Member
Oct 5, 2006
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FLORIDA
Interested in learning how to find accurate shipwreck coordinates to dive and fish? Check out this video to learn how to access a very useful database.



During the COVID-19 lockdown, I watched quite a few cool instructional and entertaining videos by my diving friends to help break the monotony. I've finally gotten around to doing one myself to help contribute to the cause. But this is for an even greater cause, as I see shipwreck exploration literally fading away before my eyes. The passion and desire for discovering, exploring, and identifying shipwrecks has all but evaporated--save a few pockets of effort here and there in the United States. So, I am going to try to reignite that passion by sharing some useful tools and resources to help find and dive (or fish!) shipwrecks. This first video shows how you can compile accurate shipwreck coordinates for many areas around the United States. No more combing through inaccurate hang numbers or dealing with bogus, phantom wrecks in many areas. There is so much information on this site, but I am starting with just the easy, straight-forward data and illustrate how we used this data to find the WILLIAM H. MACHEN in literally minutes while chatting online. It's a brave new world! In future videos I am planning on demonstrating how you can easily research archival information for shipwreck events in a given area, how to compile and curate a shipwreck database, and how use Google Earth to help you find and identify shipwrecks. So, if you like this sort of stuff, please subscribe and share this video. If you have any questions, please add them to the comments section of the video and I will do my best to answer. Enjoy!
 

Thanks Mike. I have all your published books. That alone is a treasure.
 

Excellent Mike! At attitude 26.834 off Lake Worth there are some interesting shapes (not a ship), oddly very symmetrical. Wonder why NOAA did not do the Treasure Coast.
 

Great video and inspiring that you were able to find that wreck from the comfort of your home! I subscribed to your channel.
 

This is amazing information that is produced by NOAA. Swath Bathymetry brings up amazing detail. Unfortunately the cost is prohibitive for the average treasure hunter. This does prove to me that NOAA is in the shipwreck business instead of what their real mission started out as. There is probably a couple of reasons why they didn't do work on the Treasure Coast. Two reasons maybe that NOAA doesn't want to find any old Spanish offshore wrecks for the treasure hunting industry. The other maybe that so many permits are current that they would have a hard time trying to get the Treasure Coast turned into a Conservation or treasure hunting restricted area.
Michael thanks for bringing this to our attention.
 

Thanks for sharing. Great information. Will subscribe!
 

Finding shipwrecks.

Super interesting. I'm looking thru areas that were surveyed off San Francisco & Columbia River at wrecks we've metered/dove in the past and using this converter ( https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/dms-decimal ) I transfer our Garmin #'s (degree/min/sec) and the conversion number doesn't agree with the calculator. Any ideas?
 

Super interesting. I'm looking thru areas that were surveyed off San Francisco & Columbia River at wrecks we've metered/dove in the past and using this converter ( https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/dms-decimal ) I transfer our Garmin #'s (degree/min/sec) and the conversion number doesn't agree with the calculator. Any ideas?

The position information on the bathymetric data website is in decimal degrees. Standard GPS is usually displayed in degrees, decimal minutes. Old school is degrees, minutes, and seconds (latitude or longitude). Most of you know that there are 60 seconds in a minute, and 60 minutes in a degree. Anyway...

So to convert to other formatting just multiply or divide the minutes or seconds of latitude/longitude by 60 to go from decimal degrees to degrees, decimal minutes. Do it again to go from degrees, decimal minutes to get degrees, minutes, seconds.

EXAMPLE:

30.04258°N
87.00662°W

is the same as:

60 * (0.04258) = 02.5548 --> 30° 02.555'N
60 * (0.00662) = 00.3972 --> 87° 00.397'W

Or, you can change the coordinate preferences in Google Earth or most plotters to do this automatically.

Cheers,
Mike
 

This is amazing information that is produced by NOAA. Swath Bathymetry brings up amazing detail. Unfortunately the cost is prohibitive for the average treasure hunter. This does prove to me that NOAA is in the shipwreck business instead of what their real mission started out as. There is probably a couple of reasons why they didn't do work on the Treasure Coast. Two reasons maybe that NOAA doesn't want to find any old Spanish offshore wrecks for the treasure hunting industry. The other maybe that so many permits are current that they would have a hard time trying to get the Treasure Coast turned into a Conservation or treasure hunting restricted area.
Michael thanks for bringing this to our attention.

That's a creative interpretation.
 

I was hoping there would be more information out by Howard Island so I can find Amelia. Maybe someday.
 

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