NPS SUBMERGED RESOURCES CENTER
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With increasing awareness of America’s underwater cultural heritage, the US National Park Service began documenting the location and condition of shipwrecks in the 1960s. This activity accelerated in the 1970s as park managers became more aware of the richness and importance of these submerged resources.
In 1980 the effort was formalized into the Submerged Cultural Resources Unit (known as SCRU) and staffed by underwater archeologists and photographers to provide the expertise needed in the National Parks.
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 cooperate with other agencies, nationally and internationally.
For more than forty years, the National Park Service Submerged Resources Center has been a nationally and internationally recognized leader in operational and scientific diving as well as the location, documentation, interpretation, and preservation of underwater resources--primarily cultural resources. The center embraces an interdisciplinary approach to resource management issues and works actively across disciplines to provide science-based recommendations to parks and partners in line with the preservation mandate of the United States National Park Service.
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The mission of the Submerged Resources Center is to provide direct project support to superintendents and partners responsible for the stewardship of submerged resources, and to enhance and facilitate public appreciation, access, understanding, and preservation of these resources.