Lost and found: memory, mystery, and meaning in ocean heritage
- info819852
- Sep 30
- 7 min read
Updated: Oct 1
Written by Jessica Irwin, maritime archaeologist and employee of the Henry M. Jackson Foundation who is doing work under contract for the Defense POW MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), an agency within the US Department of Defense seeking to account for missing personal listed as missing in action or prisoners of war around the world.
I am a Maritime Archaeologist. I have worked in many different places and with many different historical time periods. There is something about ocean heritage that has always bothered me. What bothers me is that we can look out at the ever-changing and dynamic sea and think of it as singular. It is odd to me that we can look at the ocean and think that the history of the ocean as a place is stagnant. It bothers me that people assume that everything worth investigating, exploring or discovering has already been done. The relationship that people have with the ocean over time changes and evolves, the same can be said for what we consider heritage, and the environment itself. We may be among the last to experience the sea as a mystery, but we will not be the last to have the ocean be the connecting factor of our global heritage.
Any place I go, the ocean is a part of the story, even for people who have never seen it.
The ocean is our heritage as a species; it affects everything from the food that we eat to the weather. But our relationship with both the ocean and our idea of heritage is constantly changing. That heritage is under threat now more than it ever has been before. From deep-sea mining, massive commercial fishing, plastic pollution, and global climate change, among other threats, the ocean will never be the same. When we think about the ocean as our heritage and the experience that people had with the ocean in the past, we must understand that it was never a constant. The ocean has always been a place of uncertainty and mystery, but people in every cultural across the globe pushed past that and the ocean became the road explorers traveled. The people of the Pacific knew New Zealand was there long before they ever arrived because they knew that the seabirds coming from the south had to come from somewhere [1], the people of South and Central America set out into the unknown and discovered the islands of the Caribbean [2], Europeans crossed the Atlantic in search of the edge of the world and instead found a place they had not previously known to exist.
As someone who finds the call to explore our cultural heritage underwater irresistible, I know the thing that is exciting about underwater archaeology, is the same draw that explorers felt, the unknown. There is so much that we have yet to explore, learn, and uncover. Whether it is the shipwrecks from the age of exploration or the aircraft of the Second World War. Underwater cultural heritage stands out from that on land, as what survives tends to reflect broader historical trends. A shipwreck off Australia may reflect the nation’s history as a penal colony, a shipwreck from the same year in the Caribbean could reflect the forcible migration of Africans to the Americas as enslaved people, and a shipwreck off the coast of Russia could have been lost during a naval battle [3]. Much of underwater cultural heritage like this can be traced directly to specific people and major global events.
It is my experience that when engaging with underwater cultural heritage, I encounter many more emotions and feelings.
Nearly every archaeological site underwater is associated with loss. Be it a ship that took its passengers with it as it sank, a city that was suddenly plunged into the sea by shifting tectonic forces, or individuals lost during battle. Underwater cultural heritage often represents not just a moment in time but also an event that dramatically changed lives by pulling a part of civilization into the unknown. Much of what we know about underwater cultural heritage started with the drive to find what was missing and answer questions with unknown answers.
Some of the most compelling stories in history start with a loss at sea. The island of Bermuda was first colonized because of the shipwreck Sea Venture [4], and the subsequent thousands of shipwrecks around the island each have their own stories. The mystery of what happened to the Sea Venture was only solved in the mid 1980’s. The only trace of the largest Navy that ever existed, that of the Ming Dynasty in China [5], only exists at the bottom of the ocean. Much of the remnants of this great navy have yet to be discovered. The mystery of what happened to so many sailors, aviators, and soldiers during WW2, lies within the ocean, and we are still searching for nearly 40,000 of them. I have yet to meet someone who doesn't know a story about someone or something getting lost at sea. It may be that they read a book, watched a movie, or had a personal experience. Even Shakespeare wrote about it in The Tempest.
The heritage that I focus on each and every day in my own work encompasses both the individual experiences of many people and the collective experiences of global conflict. I work as an underwater archaeologist looking for those who are still missing from the Second World War. Like the sea, I find that nearly everyone has a story or experience that directly ties them to WW2. There is no place on earth that this conflict didn’t touch. Some might think it's frivolous for a country, the US, to spend time and money looking for people who have been missing for 80 years. To me, the spouse of a naval aviator, someone who had to make concrete plans as to what I would do if my spouse did not return from war, this heritage, exploration and work is just as important as any other. These are mysteries that deserve as much investigation as ancient ones.
The US is not unique in its pursuit of looking for those who are still considered Missing in Action (MIA). The US is definitely the largest pursuer of this information and effort. The abbreviation MIA has entered the common language as a term because of how many people were missing. The effort, as it exists today, is carried out by the Defense POW MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), but a version of this agency has been in existence since the end of World War II. Step by step, person by person, the goal is to account for every single person who is missing, and if possible, bring them home. This is not a small or easy task. DPAA has historians, archivists, biological and forensic anthropologists among many many others who are all working toward the goal of finding and recovery these men and women. I am a small wheel in a big machine. But my work here as an underwater archaeologist has shown me that there are different perspectives of heritage.
As a nation, the US has a complicated relationship with the word heritage. We are a country of people who are often searching for it. Whether it's because our forebears were immigrants and shed their heritage to assimilate and survive, our ancestors came here by force because of enslavement, or our people were driven off the land they lived on for thousands of years, we are trying to find our way back. For many, that means their heritage has to be traced or explored; it's not something we live with. Looking for closure and understanding about an ancestor who disappeared only 80 years ago does not feel unreasonable. The draw to know what happened can penetrate generations. In a place where some people's heritage is valued over others, the Second World War is something that is a part of not just every American's history, but everyone on earth. For many the ocean is both the beginning and the conclusion of these stories
Cultural heritage is valued differently depending on one's location on the earth, and often, viewing the remnants of the past as heritage is a privilege.
In pursuing the location and recovery of individuals lost during the Second World War, our team is sent around the globe, interacting with people who are still engaged with the remnants of these wars in ways that we can't often imagine. In the islands of the Pacific, the remnants of war are looked at as our heritage, not theirs. The heritage of the conflict that these nations did not create but were still affected by, and which completely changed how global society functions, from colonialism to capitalism, is illustrated everywhere.
Detaching the heritage from the object is the clearest instance of the different values of cultural heritage depending on who is looking at it. Shipwrecks have been ripped from the seafloor so that the metal can be scrapped for profit. Ancient sites like fish weirs have been destroyed for development of ports. Ocean heritage experiences the same phenomena. One group’s priority disregard what others consider heritage. I work with war graves, but the exploration of recent history does not make that of ancient history less valuable or important. In all cases we have to push past the obstacles and misunderstandings, attempt to explore the differences and similarities that we have to one another and see the ocean as the connecting factor of our global heritage that it is.
The romance of heritage is spilling away. The effort to map the sea floor, while amazing and vital, removes some of the great mysteries surrounding it. Yet nature is not something that we can conquer. New mysteries and heritage will be created, and new things will need to be studied. Our heritage will transition from ships and planes to plastic and fabric. We will answer some questions and create many more. If we must look at the ever changing and dynamic sea as one thing, it should be that the ocean is our shared heritage.
Jessica Irwin is not a Federal, DOD, or DPAA employee. Jessica Irwin is an employee of the Henry M. Jackson Foundation who is doing work under contract for DPAA. The views expressed by Jessica Irwin are her own personal views and not necessarily those of DPAA, the Department of Defense or its components.
References
[1] Evans, M. (2020, March 6). Māori Management Techniques Might Help Struggling Birds. Hakai Magazine. Retrieved July 23, 2025, from https://hakaimagazine.com/news/maori-management-techniques-might-help-struggling-birds/
[2] Ross, K. A., Pateman, M., & Young, C. (2020). Faces Divulge the Origins of Caribbean Prehistoric Inhabitants. Sci Rep., 10(10), 147. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-56929-3
[4] Lawler, A. (n.d.). The Hidden History of Bermuda Is Reshaping the Way We Think About Colonial America. Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved July 23, 2025, from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/hidden-history-bermuda-reshaping-way-think-colonial-america-180985439/
[5] Edwards, J. (2017, March 5). 500 years ago, China destroyed its world-dominating navy because its political elite was afraid of free trade. The Independent. Retrieved July 23, 2025, from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/500-years-ago-china-destroyed-its-worlddominating-navy-because-its-political-elite-was-afraid-of-free-trade-a7612276.html
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