Page 10: of Marine Technology Magazine (September 2016)

View from the Top (Credit: Teledyne Seabotix/NOAA)

The “smoking gun” on the wreck of USS Conestoga, a single-purpose 3-inch/50 cal. naval ri? e, lies dislodged and inside the ship.

tory at age 10. documenting the wreck; together they created the ? rst-ever

Just four years later, growing up near the Santa Teresa foot- 3-D map of her tangled and scattered remains. Preserving Ti- hills in San Jose, California (now famed as “Silicon Valley”), tanic’s legacy for future generations is, like all the work he’s the 14-year-old with a love of the past talked his way onto a involved in, ensuring that the stories and the archaeological construction site where bulldozers were unearthing the burials records live on.

and artifacts of the Ohlone people who had lived thousands of In fact, as part of his personal decree to share his work with years ago in the area. others, including scholars and the general public, Delgado has

The outline of golden-stained ribs and the curve of a skull written more than 100 articles as well as 36 books and nearly protruded, fossil-like, from the sidewall of a trench, he re- 100 archaeological reports, in addition to giving numerous members, tantalizingly called him to his future path. He res- presentations worldwide. He recalls one of his fondest experi- cued more than 100 burials from destruction as well as many ences was when he became the “talking head” and archae- artifacts. The skeletal remains were reburied by the Ohlone ologist on the popular National Geographic documentary TV descendants. Later, beginning in his junior high school years, series The Sea Hunters, which ran from 2001-2006, with a he began working with local archaeologists, and at age 20, global audience of hundreds of millions.

joined the National Park Service. There, he learned to scuba Now, as he approaches the age of 60, Delgado has been dive while working as an historian and archaeologist for the steadily handing the baton to the next generation of historians,

National Park Service in San Francisco. archaeologists and shipwreck explorers. The man who has

Not surprisingly, his career has taken him all over the globe spent more than 43 years immersed in the world of underwater and to several hundred fathoms under the sea. He has been archaeology says his work never gets old.

part of some of the world’s most famous shipwreck investiga- Always on the move, a late afternoon phone call found him tions, 150 and counting, that range from wrecks dating from in mid-transit on land, with a few minutes to generously give 2,700 years ago to ships of a bygone steamer era like R.J. his views on the ? eld he has poured his life’s work into.

Walker, the U.S. Coastal Survey sidewheel steamship (NO- When Delgado began diving into the depths looking for his-

AA’s predecessor organization) and Titanic. tory under the sea, there was no Internet, no cell phones, and

Delgado actually made a trip to the unsinkable passenger mapping a wreck underwater was done by hand, by setting up liner in 2000 in a Mir submersible. Then in 2010 as chief grids, using tapes and writing notes on plastic slates covered scientist, he worked with a team of scientists responsible for with Mylar.

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