North Carolina used to have a floating light house. The Diamond Shoal bobbed in the water, warning ships about the dangerous sand shoals off the North Carolina coast. The boat was in service for 21 years before it was sunk by a German U-boat in World War I.
That historic shipwreck is the subject of a new partnership between the U.S. Coast Guard and NOAA. The two groups are jointly managing the site where the Diamond Shoal light boat went down after being attacked .
Lauren Heesemann works for NOAA. She says there are extensive plans for the wreck near Cape Hatteras:
“To record the site through photos, video, sonar imagery, deploy divers down onto the site so they can create a site plan of what that resource looks like now, so they can determine what's happening to it in the future," she says. Future plans include bringing the information to the public so that people on land "can be part of their submerged history as well.”