Adventures of a Sea Hunter: In Search of Famous Shipwrecks

Rating:
Summary: Facinating!
Review: Personally, I found this book fascinating and intriguing look into underwater archaeology. Having been on archaeological sites myself this type of book is like candy for the mind. It's like a real life Indiana Jones. Besides, a lot of archaeology is getting excited about something as mundane as a peanut. It allows us to see how people ate, farmed, etc in the past and to draw parallels into how we live now. Also, to rebut the previous commentary about the book sounding like it was written by a bureaucrat spending tax payers dollars let me enlighten you about how this works. 1) It can be very hard to get tax dollars to do archaeology. 2) A lot of work researching in books and archives goes into a site before it is even excavated/dived on. 3) Depending on the type of site determines how much excavation is done. 4) Private funding went into some of the sites mentioned in the book.
Clive Cussler, who wrote the foreword, pays for, and does, a lot of research without ever tapping into the governments piggy bank. Same with how the Vrow Maria was discovered, etc. So, a word to the wise, before you trash something down and harshly critique it understand just what you're talking about. Uninformed commentary just sounds ignorant. Shipwrecks are sacred gravesites, and accident sites in some cases, but they do need to be treated with respect and care. Would one have so callous an opinion about the pyramids in Egypt? Or perhaps an American Civil War battlefield? You tell me.

Rating:
Summary: Adventures of a Sea Hunter? Hardly
Review: This book wouldn't be so disappointing if the title wasn't so midleading. The author simply writes about previously discovered wreck sites and offers mundane accounts of his visits. His enthusiasm and historical perspective are commendable but reeks of a bureacrat trying to justify flying around at taxpayer expense.

The book merely offers the author's assessments of these wreck sites. No major new discoveries. He actually found a 150-year old peanut on one wreck and tries to get the reader excited about it. The title should be " The Follow-Up Visits of a Sea Janitor".

It gets old reading the ongoing proclamation by the author and his bureacratic archaeology brethren that these shipwrecks are sacred gravesites and should only be accessible to his kind. These sites are accident scenes and none of the victims were properly laid to rest.

If you are looking for true adventure try "Shadow Divers" or any Robert Marx book.