Threats to Our Ocean Heritage: Potentially Polluting Wrecks

Foreword (Mark J. Spalding).- 1. Potentially Polluting Wrecks: An Introduction (Michael L. Brennan).- 2. Potentially Polluting Wrecks and the Legal Duty to Protect Our Ocean Heritage (Mariano J. Aznar, Ole Varmer).- 3. Environmental Impact and Modeling of Petroleum Spills (Matt Horn, Deborah French-McCay, Dagmar Schmidt Etkin).- 4. Corrosion Processes of Steel-Hulled Potentially Polluting Wrecks (Robert Glover).- 5. From Desktop to Dive: Assessing the Pollution Potential of SS Fernstream, USNS Mission San Miguel and SS Coast Trader (James P. Delgado).- 6. Managing Potentially Polluting Wrecks in the United Kingdom (Polly Georgiana Hill, Matthew Skelhorn, Freya Goodsir).- 7. Polluting Wrecks in the Baltic Sea (Benedykt Hac).- 8. Potentially Polluting Wrecks in the Blue Pacific (Matthew Carter, Ashley Meredith, Augustine C. Kohler, Bradford Mori, Ranger Walter).- 9. Satellite Detection and the Discovery of Bloody Marsh (Michael L. Brennan, Geoffrey Thiemann, William Jeffery).- 10. Searching for a Lost PPW: SS William Rockefeller (John Detlie).- 11. Assessment Methodologies for Potentially Polluting Wrecks: The Need for a Common Approach (Mark Lawrence, Stuart Leather, Simon Burnay).- 12. Concluding Statement (Joao Sousa, Benjamin Ferrari, Michael L. Brennan, Ole Varmer).

Dr. Michael L. Brennan received his bachelor's degree in Anthropology and Geology from Bowdoin College in 2004 and his master's and PhD in Maritime History and Geological Oceanography in 2008 and 2012, respectively, from the University of Rhode Island.  He has conducted both deep-water and shallow coastal remote sensing, autonomous vehicle and ROV-based survey and operations and is familiar with a wide array of survey technology and capabilities. He has worked around the world in locations including the Black Sea, Bikini Atoll, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean. Dr. Brennan's research interests include World War II naval history, geoarchaeology, environmental monitoring of shipwrecks, and bottom trawl fishing damage to shipwreck sites. He worked as an expedition leader for Dr. Robert Ballard's Nautilus exploration program for eight years and has significant experience coordinating telepresence-enabled expeditions, especially with archaeological focus. Since joining SEARCH in 2017, Dr. Brennan has authored and coauthored numerous maritime cultural resources survey reports, which has included data processing and target selection, as well as National Register of Historic Places nomination documents. Recently, Dr. Brennan was a co-principal investigator for the data recovery and structural assessment of the Clotilda wreck in the Mobile River, Alabama and led the environmental assessment of the river and shipwreck.