BISCAYNE BAY, Fla. — "I tell people it's underwater basket weaving, but it's a bit more complicated than that," shared Joshua Morano.
Morano is a maritime archaeologist for national parks in South Florida. His love for discovery started with a map of a shipwreck, and 12 years later, he was on a boat working on what would become just one of dozens of archaeological findings.
"The old cliche is that if you don't know history, you are doomed to repeat it," Morano said.
It's a saying Morano uses cautiously, but it has truth.
He is part of a small niche field called Submerged Landscape Archaeology. In Florida, that's comprised of roughly a dozen others.
Morano's coverage area is 172,000 acres, 95% of which is underwater in Biscayne Bay. Biscayne National Park is home to 170 archaeological sites.
It's a window into who our ancestors were and their challenges, one of the biggest ones being the rise of the sea level.
"People were cognizant of where the land and the water met," explained Morano. "It was very much a big part of their life, where that interaction occurred."
Much like today, our ancestors, dating back at least 10,000 years ago, tried to harden their resources.
"We have a Native American site in the park that actually utilized shell tools to build a rip raft," Morano said providing an example. "So, they actually fortified their own shoreline years ago, and because of that, it's pretty well intact."
However, the threat of water has made it harder to find these sites and their strategies.
"They are in peril, and a lot of the sites, because of the necessity to be close to water, they are right along the shoreline if not right underneath the water now," stated Morano. "And so we are kind of in a race against time, needing to prioritize our sites and learn what we can while we can and then decide what sites can we save, and maybe which ones are already lost."
It's a sad reality.
Even preserved landmarks like Boca Chita Key, which is barely above sea level, see what those thousands of years ago faced.
"When we talk about our septic systems, our water lines, how we actually get amenities out here, we've seen a lot of challenges," Morano shared while driving a boat. "And that's been exacerbated the last few years with some of these major storm events. Hurricane Irma in 2017, Hurricane Ian just a few years ago."
Construction is ongoing to repair these historic structures and make them more storm-resilient. However, the real task is learning to adapt.
"That's the interesting thing with history is that people have always been adapting to what is occurring in South Florida, whether it's extreme heat, diseases, mosquitoes, whether it's hurricanes. We have always learned how to adapt," stated Morano. "So what's interesting is how those people back then reacted to those threats and how we are doing similar work now."
For example, there is a boardwalk now home to dozens of seabirds. It is now partially submerged after Hurricane Andrew; therefore, no one can walk on it, let alone see it.
The new one that visitors can walk across is already seeing signs of erosion.
A few miles offshore, Morano took us to a site where they found a ship anchor from a steamboat ship called the St. Lucie. It wrecked and killed 26 people during a hurricane in 1906.
It's an example of artifacts that give insight into not only how we've adapted to climate change but also our state's history.
"The anchor provides that connection not only that particular event, that shipwreck, those 26 people, but that there were workers for Henry Flagler's railroad," Morano said. "So, there were people being transmitted down from the Keys to work on the railroad down there and basically building Miami and enabling Miami to be the city that it was."
A few weeks ago, Morano also found a graveyard of a Yellow Fever hospital near the Dry Tortugas. They found roughly 60 graves on a submerged island. It's a testament to the effects of climate change and a picture of a moment in history.
The water and the clues lying both above and below it are indicators of a pattern that's been happening for centuries.
Today, Florida has spent millions of dollars improving sea walls, coastlines and infrastructure.
For those in the field, they say there's no telling how much is still out there to explore. But the more they find, the more answers and possible solutions to help generations today continue to thrive.
"They won't protect what they don't care about, and they won't care about what they don't know about," Morano said. "And that's really my job here, and the job of the parks service in South Florida. From a cultural perspective, it's to convey these stories. It's not necessarily for us to interpret or modify, but it's to document history out here, and convey that to the public, and get people to care about their local history right here in South Florida."
