Even in his dive suit, Efrain Ocasio sensed the energy pulsating and excitement building through his body. Flashlight strapped on his right wrist and using his left to direct the blue water dredge to suction away shells and sand, Ocasio scraped under the reef rocks at the sea bottom. An outline began to emerge. He knew he was close.
The moment seemed familiar—Ocasio was once again a 5th-grader on the edge of his couch, eyes glued to the television as the robot, under the specter of spotlights, bumped its way into the chambers of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Back then, and again now in chilly Black Sea waters, Ocasio’s thrill was palpable: “We’re about to witness something that’s been lost in time and is about to be discovered again.”
Ocasio’s discovery pinpointed the where—about 300 feet off the shoreline of the ancient Bulgarian coastal city of Nessebar—of a fortress built in the Greco-Roman era. The Balkan Heritage Foundation, which coordinates the yearly student dive expedition, knew of the fortress’s existence, but not its exact location.
His eureka moment came toward the end of the three-week field expedition.
“We’re using our water tools to be able to move the sand, then you start to see pieces of wood and ‘oh my God, what is this?’” Ocasio recalled. “You dig more and find another piece, then another. ‘Oh wow, somebody made this, somebody built this with their hands thousands of years ago, and here it is in front of me’—absolutely amazing.”
Ocasio is in the second year of a master’s program with the University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Anthropology, where he focuses on shipwrecks in the Caribbean.
Archeology has been his passion since childhood—sparked in that moment sitting on the couch and watching the robot on TV rumble toward the opening at the Great Pyramid. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where one of his favorite visits was to the American Museum of Natural History. He later got an internship at his favorite museum.
“I loved going there. With my little employee badge, I got to walk in and bypass everybody in line,” Ocasio said. “I got to learn how museums are run, how conservation works, and it definitely gave me the skills to apply to my archeology career in the future.”
A call to duty
Ocasio imagined he’d step right into college, and then the 9/11 terrorist attacks rocked the country. Though most of his family are nurses, his father retired from IT, and none had ever served in the military, he felt called.
“I felt like I needed to do something, so I enlisted in the U.S. Army at 18 years old,” Ocasio said. “Three years became another three and then six and then 10, and then 15 years later I finally got to retire.”
He did multiple tours of duty as an infantryman, often in combat duty. “I’m a frontline kind of guy,” he quipped. “There were definitely fun times and bad times.”
Ocasio’s last tour of duty in the Army was in Hawaii. While there, he got scuba certified and, during a dive, explored his first shipwreck.
“The Sea Tiger, a Japanese 20th-century merchant ship, was about 100 feet down,” he recalled. “As you go deeper into the water, you get further into the unknown, then you start to see this shadow of something. You don’t know quite what it is, and once you see the outline of the ship that’s been hidden for so long, it’s amazing—ships are so cool.”
Retired from the Army, Ocasio was ready to return to his passionate interest. He earned a B.A. in anthropology with a minor in archeology from Montclair State University, and then got accepted at the University. Under the tutelage of his advisor Traci Ardren, Ocasio’s research focuses on shipwrecks related to the demise of the Spanish monarchy in the 16th and 18th centuries. In April he presented a paper at the Society of American Archeology conference in New Orleans on the history of a Spanish galleon shipwrecked off the Florida Keys.
Gem of an opportunity
With two semesters to go, Ocasio needed some underwater field work experience. Though his work focuses on the Caribbean, opportunities in that region were limited. He learned about the Balkan Heritage Field School in Bulgaria through the Institute for Field Research and reached out.
Good fortune seems to favor this intrepid adventurer. Someone had just cancelled as part of the summer diving cohort, and one spot was open, he was told.
“I couldn’t pass up that opportunity. The department allows $2,000 a year for students to travel to and attend conferences or do research, which is fabulous, and they paid for my flight,” Ocasio explained. He covered the other costs out of pocket.
He joined seven other students who hailed from all over the world for the three weeks in Bulgaria, mostly in Nessebar, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, where they viewed museums to learn maritime history and toured ancient cathedrals with ship graffiti carved into the walls—a form of prayer or blessing for the seafarers. Only with the help of Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), a technology that enhances visibility, could students make out the carvings of the ancient sailing ships.
Three-fourths of the time was spent aboard the Center for Underwater Archeology (CUA)’s research vessel. Under the guidance of Nayden Prahov, an underwater archeologist with 20 years of diving experience, Ocasio was learning to do surveys, excavation, and photogrammetry—taking pictures and making 3D models of what’s viewed underwater—on the dives.
“Dr. Prahov really knows his stuff, and his willingness to teach and demonstrate to help us understand what we’re doing—such as how to differentiate between a reef rock and a stone column or between coral and mortar or brick—was incredibly helpful,” Ocasio said. “We always had a task and purpose every time we got in the water, and our first task was to see if there was actually a wall that had been reported from divers in the area.”
The team moved its focus to the southeastern part of the island, where there was once a Byzantine wall, and there conducted surveys and began to dig. Ocasio was the first diver to uncover the wooden base that was the bedrock of a fortress wall that had once extended near the ocean. Rising sea levels and shifts over eons had submerged the wall. On his dive, in relatively shallow water—about 12 feet—and a football field from the shore, he discovered it.
The wood is believed to date to the 3rd century C.E. Samples have been taken for radiocarbon, or carbon-14 dating, to more precisely determine its age.
A blessing in disguise
“Now with my connections, if it’s possible, I might be able to return next year,” Ocasio said. “They’re doing more work in the fall for the wooden base, going on to a full-on Phase 3 with their professional team, and that’d be a real opportunity. But first, I have my semesters.”
His plans also include doctoral work, most likely at a university in Texas that has a well-established nautical program. The University was “definitely a good kickoff to my career,” he said, and the program a blessing in disguise in that it provided experience with both terrestrial archeology, which the department mainly does, and underwater archeology through his field work.
Now he’s doing the things that he envisioned doing when he was 18 and wanting to pursue the field of archeology—then had the call for duty.
“So, I’m able to incorporate all the skills the military gave me. And I feel like a kid again—all these feelings and emotions are coming back,” Ocasio said. “We did some pretty cool stuff there in Bulgaria, and it was really nice to represent the University of Miami.”
