Expeditions
Follow the hunt
Most museums show you what was found. We can show you the finding. Through our partnership with Treasure Experience, exploration is happening on Florida's Treasure Coast right now, and our supporters follow it as it unfolds.
The Work
How a discovery happens
A shipwreck is not found in an afternoon. Every artifact in a museum case is the last step of a long chain of careful work.
Research
It starts on paper: archival documents, manifests, and survivor accounts narrow an ocean to a search area. This is the legacy of researchers like Jack Haskins, whose work our museum preserves in the Haskins Collection.
Survey
On the water, crews sweep the search area with sonar and magnetometers, instruments that sense what centuries of sand have hidden, and log every anomaly worth a closer look.
Dive & document
Divers and remote cameras investigate each target. A promising site is mapped and photographed before anything is moved: the position of every object is part of the story.
Recover & conserve
Artifacts leave the seabed only when they can be cared for. Conservation stabilizes each object, and cataloging gives it a permanent record before it reaches a museum case.
From Our Dives
The seafloor, as the divers see it
This is real footage from the dive operations of Treasure Experience, our recovery partner, the same footage that plays in the immersion theater of our 3D museum walkthrough.
The Vessel
Aboard the Judge Perez
Exploration starts on deck. The salvage vessel Judge Perez carries the crew, the survey gear, and the dive operations of our partners at Treasure Experience out along Florida's coast. Through 2025 that work amounted to more than thirty days on the water working shipwreck sites.
These are working days on a working boat: gearing up, running search lines, and putting divers on the bottom.
Watch It Live
Be there when it surfaces
Recovery moments are rare, and our donors do not hear about them afterward, they are invited to watch. Live streams of recoveries, as they happen, are a benefit of our donor program at the Supporter level and above, made possible by our partnership with Treasure Experience.
Between recoveries, The Dispatch keeps you close to the work: field updates, conservation progress, and news from the museum build.
The Dispatch
Field updates from the expeditions, the archive, and the museum build. No spam, no selling your data, unsubscribe anytime.
Support the Work
Exploration needs backers
Every survey day, every conservation bath, and every display case is funded by people who believe the past is worth bringing home.