Wayne Lusardi is Michigan’s state maritime archaeologist and
artifact conservator with the Department of Natural Resources. For
over 20 years, he has participated in the documentation of hundreds of
shipwrecks located in state waters. Lusardi also investigates historic
aircraft wreck sites, both on land and underwater. He has led
expeditions to Army and Air Force crash sites, including a Bell P-39
Airacobra flown by Tuskegee Airman Lt. Frank H. Moody. Lusardi
previously worked as an archaeological conservator for the Mariners’
Museum in Newport News, Virginia, where he recovered two missing
sailors from the USS Monitor’s turret after it was raised in 2002.
He also spent four years on the Blackbeard shipwreck project in North
Carolina and two years recovering and conserving artifacts from the
slave ship Henrietta Marie, lost near Key West in 1700. Lusardi
received his master’s degree in maritime history and nautical
archaeology from East Carolina University in 1998 and a bachelor’s
in anthropology and archaeology, with a geology minor, from Illinois
State University.
