Wayne Lusardi

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.