It’s quiet underwater, just the sound of your own regulated breathing. Divers often feel weightless, unbothered by the large oxygen tank strapped on their back.
But that changes when you swim up to the wreckage of a centuries-old ship, and feel the weight of history move you and take you back in time.
“Without a doubt,” Charlie Beeker said of that moment immersed in the bright blue waters of the Florida Keys. “When people cross onto a shipwreck, there’s a feeling that comes over you that’s tough to explain.”
Beeker is the director of Indiana University’s Center for Underwater Science within the School of Public Health, and has explored and studied shipwrecks across the world for decades.
This summer, Beeker and a team of nearly a dozen IU students will revisit the site of a Spanish treasure fleet in the Florida Keys that Beeker helped transform into an underwater park in 1989 — the 1733 San Pedro Underwater Archaeological Preserve. The team will also survey the nearby 1733 San Felipe shipwreck.
The academic expedition is made possible through an agreement with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. This most recent agreement continues a 30-plus-year relationship with NOAA, and cements IU’s Center for Underwater Science as one of the oldest and largest academic diving programs in the country, despite being in a landlocked state.
The partnership also allows Beeker and his students to work in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary for the next five years, and is extremely beneficial to securing additional funding, he said.