James Delgado, Ph.D. is among the world’s leading experts in maritime archaeology and cultural heritage. Dr. Delgado joined SEARCH in 2017 and serves as Senior Vice President. He is responsible for ensuring operational and research excellence, implementing strategic initiatives, and expanding the firm’s international footprint. Dr. Delgado also serves as a public speaker, international delegate, documentary host, and major project spokesperson. Prior to joining SEARCH, Dr. Delgado served as the Director of Maritime Heritage in the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries for NOAA for seven years, where he implemented heritage programs and active research in the nation’s waters, as well as promoted outreach and education on America’s underwater and marine heritage.

Previously, he served a four-year term as President and CEO of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, the world’s leading scientific and educational organization dedicated to the understanding of humanity’s seafaring history through the excavation and scientific study of shipwrecks. Dr. Delgado was the Executive Director of the Vancouver Maritime Museum in British Columbia, Canada for 15 years, and he served as Maritime Historian and Head of the US government’s Maritime Heritage Program for the US National Park Service for four years in Washington, DC. Dr. Delgado also served as the first historian for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in the San Francisco Bay Area where he participated in the restoration and interpretation of Alcatraz.

Dr. Delgado is the author, co-author, or editor of more than 37 books, including his latest book, The Great Museum of the Sea: A Human History of Shipwrecks,  The Curse of the Somers: The Secret History behind the U.S. Navy’s Most Infamous Mutiny, and his award-winning War at Sea: A Shipwrecked History from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century, all three of them published by Oxford University Press.

He has also written three books for children, and documented his work as an archaeologist in a wide number of titles, including the recent Clotilda: The History and Archaeology of the Last Slave Ship, as well as Misadventures of a Civil War Submarine: Iron, Guns and Pearls (Texas A&M University Press), The Lost Submarines of Pearl Harbor: The Rediscovery and Archaeology of Japan’s Top-Secret Midget Submarines of World War II (Texas A&M University Press), as well as more encyclopedia overviews, including Across the Top of the World: The Quest for the Northwest Passage (Douglas & McIntyre), The Maritime Landscape of the Isthmus of Panamá (University Press of Florida), Gold Rush port: The Maritime Archaeology of San Francisco’s Waterfront (University of California Press, and the Encyclopedia of Underwater and Maritime Archaeology (Yale University Press).

He has served as keynote speaker and presented to more than a hundred conferences, and his work has reached hundreds of millions of viewers as host on six seasons of a National Geographic series, The Sea Hunters, as well as scientific programs on Discovery, The History Channel, A&E, and Nat Geo. On social media, his live expedition broadcasts at Pearl Harbor and at the wreck of the USS Independence were each telecast to over one million viewers. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, and The Explorers’ Club, and an Officer of the Order of Civil Merit conferred by His Majesty King Juan Carlos of Spain.