Adventure: Heritage under Sea Level

Underwater cultural heritage is fascinating due to the mystery of its location underwater and the historical context. It is often the reminder of a human tragedy – the ending of a journey and a loss of human lives. The discovery of a wreck or ruin allows stepping back into the past and reliving the last moments of the ship and its crew. Once out of the water and exhibited on land, objects from submerged archaeological sites are deprived of their context and lose part of their significan...

Micronesia, a near-magical word describes thousands of tiny mid-Pacific equatorial islands stretched over an area equal in size to North America. They exist in true versions of what is expected when using the overworked term ‘Paradise’, serving as small stepping stones across a very broad ocean. It comprises over 2,200 tiny originally volcanic mounts pushed up from pressures of interlocking plates beneath the ocean floor, now lying mostly dormant as low coral atolls after their ori...

Our cave diving expedition to Samar, Philippines, had already been a huge success. Three of us, with myself as team leader, William Hudson from Alaska and Thomas Bodis from Germany, had already discovered and dived three new caves deep in the jungle. Samar has arguably more limestone caves than anywhere else on the planet, so while anywhere else this might be extraordinary, here they were just the appetizers for our planned main course: Langun-Gobingob cave near the town of Calbiga. Langun-Go...

Four sculptures in human forms, made of concrete, will be submerged in November in the Mexican Caribbean – the first of 400 figures that will comprise the world's largest underwater museum. The Subaquatic Sculpture Museum will be situated in the West Coast National Park in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo, on the Yucatán Peninsula. The park receives nearly 300,000 visitors each year. The museum's mission is to attract some of those tourists in order to reduce the pressures ...