CNMI leaders scuba on Santa Margarita shipwreck

Rota — In an effort to explain the importance of underwater archaeological excavation, Seattle-based IOTA Partners and CNMI officials led by Senate President Paul Manglona and Division of Environmental Quality Director Ignacio Cabrera scuba dove on the site of the shipwrecked Manila galleon Santa Margarita Friday.

The salvage project is a joint partnership between the CNMI government and IOTA, which has been conducting underwater archaeological excavation of the 16th century shipwreck off the coast of Rota since 1995.

“We are recovering some remarkable artifacts and wanted to give our elected leaders an opportunity to see for themselves that this is a good operation with great potential benefits to the CNMI,” said IOTA chief executive officer Jack Harbeston. “In Friday’s briefing, we put a high emphasis on the environmental side of the project as we want to assure everyone that our work is being done with only very minimal environmental impacts.”

John Gourley, a consultant to IOTA, explained to the legislators that there are three major components to the project’s environmental protection efforts. The first is to physically relocate any live branching coral that might be directly impacted within the excavation areas to other portions of the reef.

“We have had good success with this and in fact, we’re pleased to see that we’ve actually slightly increased the area of live reef by transplanting corals,” said Mr. Harbeston.  “There is clear evidence of new coral growth on dead coral boulders that had been dug out of the seabed less than a year ago.”

The company has set up monitoring stations to observe the health of the coral in the vicinity of the project. Under IOTA’s environmental permits, they were required to put in place two monitoring stations, but the company is voluntarily utilizing four stations both upstream and downstream from the project, according to Mr. Gourley.

The third effort being taken to protect the environment are daily water turbidity tests, which measures water clarity. On days while excavations are being done, readings are taken and faxed to DEQ for analysis as a condition of IOTA’s Section 401 Water Quality permit.

Mr. Gourley explained that the coral in the area appears to be very resilient and has a natural ability to clean itself. The reef in the area regularly experiences varied weather changes which can create extreme differences in water clarity each day. However, if there are any problems caused by the project, then IOTA’s monitoring efforts will detect it right away.

It was the first time for the senate president to scuba dive. He was accompanied by an experienced IOTA dive instructor who took him on the discovery dive. “It was hard to get used to breathing underwater at first, but I’m really glad I had the opportunity to do this.  One has to be here to appreciate what’s going on and all the work the project entails, all the care and protection that has to be put in place to minimize damage to the reef,” said Mr. Manglona. He noted that IOTA has spent so much time and money to hire experienced people as proof of their commitment to the project.

“It’s great the way they are handling the turbidity,” said Mr. Cabrera, who agreed that this has so far been best year of fieldwork on the project in terms of environmental protection measures.

Mr. Cabrera was joined by several members of the CNMI Interagency Marine Monitoring Team, made up of three DEQ staffers and one representative from the Coastal Resources Management Office who also dove on the site. Over the weekend, they monitored a total of five reef sites in Rota, two of which were about 100 yards of the Santa Margarita project.

Bound for Acapulco dangerously overloaded with gold, spices, porcelain, textiles and Asian manufactured items, the ill-fated ship sailed from Manila in July 1600. Of the 300 people on board, only 50 survived as the ship strayed more than 1,000 miles off course and wrecked near Rota some eight months later. There the once magnificent galleon wrecked and her cargo has since been buried by hundreds of years of wave action and tropical storms.

In April 1993, IOTA Partners entered into a contract with the Commonwealth government to search for several Manila galleons that were shipwrecked in the Marianas between 1575 and 1815. This contract allows the CNMI to obtain the benefits of galleons salvaged, but without financial risk to the CNMI. IOTA is responsible for all costs and management of the project.

The proceeds of any sale of recovered artifacts will be shared by the CNMI (25%) and the firm (75%), with the CNMI having first choice of the artifacts. This compares favorably with other states with similar contracts such as Florida, where the norm is only a 20% share for the government. IOTA has spent approximately $3 million on the Santa Margarita project to date, which has in large part helped the economy of Rota in the three years of operations.

Joining them for the land-based portion of IOTA’s briefing on their operations was Rep. William A. Torres who believes that monitoring agencies should cooperate on this type of project.