Hunters
Shipwreck
Hunters
10A • February 10, 2017 | Cannon Beach Gazette | cannonbeachgazette.com
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of the Oregon Coast
Shipwreck
Hunters
SUBMITTED PHOTOS
Wreck of the Peter Iredale at Fort Stevens.
Galena, near Gearhart, 1906.
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Combing through
history’s wreckage
By Rebecca Herren
EO Media Group
E
Ever have a fascination
with shipwrecks? Did
you ever wonder about
the mysteries surround-
ing their demise, stories of
lost treasures, or about claiming
the rights to abandoned wrecks?
Maritime archaeologist Chris-
topher Dewey does and during the
Seaside Museum and Historical
Society’s History and Hops lecture
at Seaside Brewing Co. on Jan. 26,
he answered questions to unravel
a few mysteries and myths about
shipwrecks.
Dewey is a retired naval offi -
cer, an adjunct instructor at Clatsop
Community College and founder
of the Maritime Archaeological So-
ciety in Astoria. He is listed on the
Register of Professional Archaeolo-
gists and is a Secretary of the Inte-
rior and Oregon State qualifi ed ar-
chaeologist. If that wasn’t enough,
he is a modern day shipwreck hunt-
er in Oregon and Washington.
Unlike trea-
sure hunters, he
searches for, in-
vestigates
and
documents ship-
wrecks and mari-
time archaeolog-
ical sites. He and Christopher
Dewey
a team of volun-
teers search sites
using side-scan sonars, a magne-
tometer and a remote operating ve-
hicle much like Robert Ballard used
to fi nd the Titanic, the Bismarck
and the USS Yorktown wrecks, but
smaller.
He does not salvage or excavate
the wrecks he fi nds explaining, “I
am not a treasure hunter, I’m not out
there looking for ships full of gold
doubloons. I am an archeologist.”
Dewey jokingly says that he is
oftentimes referred to as a garbage
collector because he fi nds other
peoples garbage and lost things
throughout the world. “We search
for material remains underwater.”
According to Dewey, underwa-
ter archaeology looks at shipwrecks
and submerged land sites both his-
torically and prehistorically, mean-
ing Native American and the like.
“Nautical archaeology,” he said, is
not only about the ships, “it’s about
the information that connects us
to our past and it’s about maritime
cultures.”
One slide of Dewey’s presenta-
tion revealed a photo of a bronze
bow. “Entire areas in the Medi-
terranean are littered with these
bronze bows from galleons that
sank during the many battles that
took place there,” he said. An-
other slide showed a row of ves-
sel-like casks made out of terra
cotta. “These are the only things
left from this shipwreck from the
Bronze Age.” The 40 to 50 casks
found measure about 1-foot-wide
by 2-feet-tall. This style of stack-
able container held grains, oils
and wine.
Over the years, Hollywood has
glamorized shipwrecks and trea-
sure hunting in such movies as
“The Deep,” “Fool’s Gold” and
“The Goonies.” But who really
owns abandoned shipwrecks?
Up until 1988, divers could
sneak around and salvage a few
trinkets they found on abandoned
shipwrecks. But due to the damage
many historical wrecks received
from salvaging, the Abandoned
Shipwreck Act was signed into law.
Shipwrecks embedded in lands
in which they lie belong to the State
including rivers, lakes and up to
three miles offshore.
An archaeological site, Dewey
explains must be 50 years or older
in the State of Washington and 75
years in Oregon. He discourages
treasure seekers from making a
site claim for excavation due to the
mass amounts of paperwork and
the amount of money needed for an
excavation. “It’s expensive to claim
an excavation site and by doing so
many historical objects have been
lost to private collections.”
Sites around shipwrecks are as
important as the artifacts. “If they
had been lost into a private library,
there would have been nothing left
to see because the ship is gone,”
Dewey said, referring back to the
wreck with the containers. “So
there is a good reason to leave arti-
facts where they lie.”
The shipwreck of the Peter Ire-
dale is the most visible and well-
known wreck on the Oregon coast.
Located on Clatsop Spit, its skele-
tal structure towers above the wet
sands during low tide. Even though
larger and more famous shipwrecks
such as the Titanic and Peter Iredale
are intriguing, Dewey said less-
er-known ships that have wrecked
in the region equally capture his
attention.
One such wreck was found on
the Seaside beach in November
2014. Three men were metal de-
tecting in the dunes and uncovered
a large piece of wood. Dewey in-
vestigated and sent his data and a
drawing of a boat keel to the state’s
archaeologist. After much research,
the state concluded it was a 1950s
trawler.
It didn’t take long for the Cole-
wort Creek boat to be identifi ed.
The abandoned boat was located in
the Lewis and Clark National His-
torical Park and through word of
mouth, a relative and a photo, the
boat was determined to be a 1920s
square stern gillnetter owned by a
local man who transported milk
from a dairy farm to the Astoria
market.
The ongoing Beeswax Wreck
Project is a shipwreck near Ne-
halem beach. The ship is thought
to be the Santo Cristo de Burgos,
a Spanish galleon from 1693 that
wrecked sometime around 1700
between Cape Falcon and the Ne-
halem Spit.
OSU researcher gets up close and personal with gray whales
By Rebecca Herren
For EO Media Group
Summer vacationers are
not the only part-time residents
of our region.
About 200 gray whales
in the Pacifi c Coast Feeding
Group return every year. In-
stead of migrating with the
rest of the population north to
the Bering Sea, they cavort for
several months along Oregon’s
coastline.
Known as resident whales,
animals in the group do not
live in the area year-round.
Tracking gray whales
Oregon State University
graduate student Florence Sul-
livan studies gray whales.
She is part of a research
team for Geospatial Ecolo-
gy of Marine Megafauna Lab
or GEMM Lab, studying the
Pacifi c Coast Feeding Group,
gray whales that feed in the
southern waters between
northern California and south-
eastern Alaska.
At the Jan. 18 “Listening
to the Land” lecture present-
ed by the Necanicum Water-
shed Council and the North
Coast Land Conservancy at
the Seaside Library, Sullivan
noted that gray whales do not
feed during migration, which
makes the Oregon Coast an
important habitat for them on
their return migration to Alas-
ka.
The focus of Sullivan’s re-
search is to document the for-
aging behavior of the feeding
group, document the effect of
manmade disturbances, over-
The researchers’ viewing
location is concentrated be-
tween Titchener Cove and
Mill Rocks near Port Orford
and Depoe Bay. The team
uses a surveyor’s instrument
called a theodolite to track
and map the movement of
individual whales as they for-
age. The data collected shows
the whales’ traveling patterns
between kelp beds, how they
search for food and how they
interact with vessels.
New research techniques
such as Go Pro cameras and
aerial drones benefi t the team
to closely observe the whales’
patterns and behaviors, and hy-
drophones aid in recording the
ocean noise — natural, human
and mechanical — whales be-
come exposed to.
In an effort to gain a better
REBECCA HERREN/CANNON BEACH GAZETTE
Florence Sullivan, center, discusses the “Watch Out for
Whales” brochure with Lianne Th ompson, Jeff Gage, Ju-
dith Pearson and Jim Border.
all health, body condition and
the whales’ response to chang-
ing ocean conditions.
After the fi ndings are com-
pleted, Sullivan will work
with local communities and
whale-watching operators to
create scientifi c guidelines for
vessel operation in the pres-
ence of feeding gray whales.
understanding of the foraging
ecology of the gray whales’
feeding group, the team col-
lects samples of a particular
prey called mysid. Mysids are
small, shrimp-like crustaceans
found near the kelp beds.
“We think the reason
they’re attracted to these for-
aging hotspots along the Ore-
gon coast is an abundance of
mysid shrimp,” Sullivan said.
“During summer months, the
mysid can be really dense from
the sea fl oor to the surface and
really close to shore. We want
to know if this wealth of for-
aging is enough to get these
whales to disrupt their migra-
tion north, or is there some
other mechanism that makes
200 whales act differently than
the other 20,000? That’s what
we hope to fi nd out.”
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