The Submerged Resources Center is a unit within the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

National Park Service The National Park Service (NPS) is an List of federal agencies in the United States, agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government, within the US Department of the Interior. The service manages all List ...

. The unit is based out of

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in the NPS Intermountain Region headquarters.

History

In 1976, the Submerged Cultural Resources Unit (known as SCRU) was formed and staffed by underwater

archeologist Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscapes. Archaeol ...

photographers A photographer (the Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who uses a camera to make photographs. Duties and types of photograp ...

, and service divers to provide the expertise required by managers of national parks with submerged lands. Renamed the Submerged Resources Center in 1999 to include natural resources, the core mission of the program has remained the same: to inventory and evaluate submerged resources in the National Park System and to assist other agencies, nationally and internationally, with underwater resource issues.

Projects

Projects the SRC have been involved in include work on USS Arizona, the shipwrecks of

Isle Royale National Park Isle Royale National Park is a List of national parks of the United States, national park of the United States consisting of Isle Royale, along with more than 400 small adjacent islands and the surrounding waters of Lake Superior, in Michigan. ...

, and mapping the shipwrecks of

Dry Tortugas National Park Dry Tortugas National Park is a national park of the United States located about west of Key West in the Gulf of Mexico, in the United States. The park preserves Fort Jefferson and the several Dry Tortugas islands, the westernmost and most iso ...

, among others.

Daniel Lenihan Daniel commonly refers to: * Daniel (given name), a masculine given name and a surname * List of people named Daniel * List of people with surname Daniel * Daniel (biblical figure) * Book of Daniel, a biblical apocalypse, "an account of the acti ...

, former Chief of the SRC, describes the founding of the unit and many of its exploits in ''Submerged: Adventures of America's Most Elite Underwater Archeology Team''.

References

{{Reflist National Park Service