Frederick "Fritz" Hanselmann
Frederick "Fritz" Hanselmann is Research Faculty and the Chief Underwater Archaeologist/Dive Training Officer with the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University. He is also the director of The Meadows Center's Underwater Archaeology and Exploration Initiative. Having worked on underwater sites from a wide variety of time periods, his research ranges from submerged prehistoric deposits in springs and caves to historic shipwrecks in Latin America and the Caribbean, including the wreck of the Quedagh Merchant, abandoned by Captain Kidd in 1699. Fritz led the first-ever archaeological survey of the Chagres River mouth in Panama as part of the Lost Ships of Henry Morgan Project, the search for the famous privateer's sunken ships. He is the Principal Investigator of the Monterrey Shipwreck Project in the Gulf of Mexico, which is the deepest shipwreck excavation ever conducted in North America. Fritz is also the co-director of the Sunken Ships of Colombia project, which focuses on finding, documenting, studying, and managing historic shipwrecks along the Caribbean coast of Colombia. Fritz focuses on capacity building and training for archaeologists and heritage managers in less developed countries, as well as the development of marine protected areas and underwater preserves.
