In April 2017, Jim left Federal service after serving for seven years as Director of NOAA’s Maritime Heritage Program in the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, and joined SEARCH, the largest cultural resources firm in the United States as Senior Vice President. SEARCH’s national and international work, large staff and exceptional team of hundreds drew Jim to join, and his time with SEARCH has included work with architectural historians, land and underwater archaeologists, museum curators and technicians, and historians.

Among Jim’s major projects include one that spanned several years, the detailed surveys and subsequent excavations that conclusively identified the wreck of the schooner Clotilda, the last vessel known to have arrived in the United States with captives from Africa as part of the transatlantic slave trade. Other projects include deep sea exploration and discoveries, including the veteran battleship USS Nevada, and the former USS Stewart, wooden wrecks in the Gulf, including the possible remains of Industry, an early 19th century whaler, and recent work at the Battle of Midway site in the Pacific, with dives on the carriers USS Yorktown, Kaga and Akagi.  Jim also led surveys that documented a vast ship’s graveyard outside of Mobile, Alabama, a 19th century wooden warship’s wreck in the harbor of Callao, Peru, the excavation and recovery of a 19th century fishing craft buried under landfill in St. Augustine, Florida, and the rescue of timbers from the 17th century Spanish galleon Santo Cristo de Burgos on the Oregon coast – a wreck whose lore and legend inspired the movie “The Goonies.”

Jim also worked closely with Dr. Michael Brennan of SEARCH on a variety of studies that document the cultural heritage of deep sea areas off the coasts of South America, the Aleutians, and the southeastern seaboard of the United States, as well as a comprehensive assessment of significance and guidelines for nominating shipwrecks to the National Register of Historic Places for sites in the Gulf of Mexico.  He also participated and co-led projects to conduct detailed LIDAR and photogrammetric documentation of major ports and other transportation infrastructure, and the sad duty of evaluating and preparing the paperwork to remove the rotted, near-sinking hulk of the four-masted ship Falls of Clyde from the National Register and its withdrawal as a National Historic landmark, a ship he loved and had done the initial study for its NHL designation in 1989; he then co-led the rescue of historic artifacts from the wreck for preservation ashore in museum collections..