ASBC Victoria Meeting, April 17/2012: Underwater Archaeology in BC

Parks Canada Archaeologist near Huxley Island

So, it’s been a while without a post here so apologies to compulsive page-refreshers and lonely groupies.  I see lots of interesting comments – I’ll try to get caught up soon. For now, here is the announcement about the Victoria ASBC meeting coming up this Tuesday.  It’s great to see that there is going to be some dialogue between the ASBC and the UASBC – two solitudes far too much of the time.

Jacques Marc

Underwater Archaeological Society of BC

Exploring the Underwater Heritage of British Columbia

TUESDAY April 17, 2012, 7:30 pm
Pacific Forestry Centre,
506 West Burnside Road. (map)

Free and Open to the Public

Abstract:
The waters of British Columbia abound with sunken archeological sites. Thousands of ships have sunk off our coast and in our inland lakes and rivers and thousands of years of First Nations history lies in the water off old village sites.
Formed in 1975 the UASBC is dedicated to researching, exploring, mapping and protecting the submerged cultural resources of British Columbia. A volunteer organization the UASBC, conducts expeditions to search for sites, provides Nautical Archaeology Training to prepare divers for U/W work, publishes a newsletter to share our experiences and holds monthly meetings to inform members and guests about our upcoming activities.

Jacques will walk you thought the activities of the UASBC and will share some of their experiences and discoveries with us. Along the way he will introduce you to some of the technology used to search for wrecks and introduce you to some of the unique submerged cultural resources of BC.

To learn more about the UASBC please explore our web site www.uasbc.com

Bio:
Jacques Marc is the Explorations Director for the Underwater Archaeological Society of British Columbia. He was certified as an open water SCUBA diver in 1975. He is an avocational U/W archaeologist who has spent 27 years diving on and documenting historic shipwrecks around the province of British Columbia. In his capacity as Explorations Director he co-ordinates many of the societies expeditions to search for and document submerged cultural sites in the province. He is also responsible to ensure that provincial documenting shipwreck forms are completed and submitted to the provincial Archaeology Branch. Jacques has participated on survey expeditions with James Delgado to the Arctic to survey Roald Amundsen’s exploration vessel Maude and to the Columbia River to survey the HBC Isabella lost in 1830. Jacques has written and presented papers at the Society for Historical Archaeology Conferences and has published 6 booklets on shipwrecks under the UASBC banner. Recently he authored a hard cover book entitled “Pacific Coast Ship China” which was published by the Royal BC Museum. In addition to his explorations role Jacques served as the UASBC president from 2002-2008.

Danny Robertson positions the Parks Canada Vessel Gwaii Haanas II above an elevation modell of the sea floor (visible on his screen - click to enlarge) to enable bucket sampling of the drowned Pleistocene land surface with goal of recovering archaeologica lstuff.