South/Central California Margin

The team of E/V Nautilus explores the USS Macon, a US Navy dirigible aircraft carrier that sank off the central California coast in 1935. The team finds parts of the ship as well as the Sparrowhawk biplanes it carried.

The 2015 USS Macon survey is a joint-organizational project led by co-principal investigators from three of the stakeholder institutions in this project: NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, the U.S. Naval History & Heritage Command and Ocean Exploration Trust in collaboration with OceanGate Foundation with funding provided by the Edward E. and Marie L. Matthews Foundation. The USS Macon site was first discovered by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in 1990.