Research is the key. You can never do enough research. This is so vital I'll repeat it. You can never do enough research. Without a ballpark to provide reasonable boundaries to look, you'll be wasting time and money on an effort with the same probability of success as finding the Pied Piper of Hmnelin and the town's kids on Mars. Sure you can get lucky, but don't bet your bank account on it. The odds can be a hundred to one, and yet there is still that slim possibility of victory. A thousand to one? Not worth the effort.

Research can either lower the odds or tell you it's hopeless.

Many's the wreck project I filed away without making the slightest attempt to explore because the data showed that it was a lost cause. A ship that disappeared in the Gulf of Mexico, a ship that vanished on a voyage from Bermuda to Norfolk, a ship that sailed unobserved into oblivion somewhere between San Francisco and Los Angeles, forget them.

Without a clue, you're looking at a search grid that could extend over a thousand square miles.

If and when they decide to be found, it will be purely by accident.

Threading the needle through investigation and study is my true love.

I've often said that if my wife threw me out of the house, I'd take a cot and sleeping bag and move into the basement of a library.

Nothing can match the intrigue and rapture of knowing you have pinpointed the location of a lost artifact and thus found the answer to a mystery thought unsolvable through the dust of centuries.

Many people think looking for a lost ship is exciting and adventurous. I can't speak for the big boys, the old pros like Bob Ballard and his Wood's Hole Institute team, but for the little guy it's no bed of orchids. The truth is, the actual search is the living embodiment of tedium. You're thrown hither and yon in a small boat by waves from dawn to dusk, sweating your pores out in a humid climate while fighting to keep from becoming seasick as you stare at little lines squiggling across graph paper. Still, when an image appears on the sonar recording or the marker sweeps across the aluminized paper of the magnetometer and you know you've got an anomaly or a target that matches the signature you're after, the anticipation becomes overwhelming. Then, when the divers surface and report that they've identified the object of your search, the blood, sweat, tears, and expense are forgotten. You're swept by a wave of triumph that beats sex any day of the month. Well, almost.

I receive ten to twenty letters a week from people volunteering their time and energies to NUMA. I deeply regret turning away their kind offers. Many think we're a big conglomeration with a ten-story building perched on pilings over the ocean. The truth is, we have no office, no employees, not even our own boat. We tried operating NUMA out of an office for a couple of years under the able management of Craig Dirgo, but there was little or no business to conduct and we closed it down. Expeditions only occur when I'm in the mood, which is seldom more than once a year.