A moray eel and Goliath grouper swam amid a team of volunteer divers charting shipwreck remains Tuesday near the Elbow reef off Key Largo.<BR><BR>"On a regular dive trip, that would be the highlight," Paul Washington, a master scuba instructor, said. "We were going, 'Get out of the way so we can get back to work!'"</p><p>The crew of four divers from the National Association of Black Scuba Divers joined two National Marine Sanctuaries staffers to spend three days underwater this week documenting shipwreck remains best known locally as Mike's Wreck.</p><p>"Our mission is to get the story," diver Jay Haigler said. "It's like putting pieces of a puzzle together. The more pieces you get, the clearer the picture becomes."</p><p>The four divers, all from the Washington, D.C., area, earned their spots on the survey team. Each has hundreds of logged dives and advanced certifications, including the arduous NOAA Scientific Diver course and underwater archaeology training.</p><p>"This is a lot more than looking around and having a good time," said Brenda Altmeier, maritime heritage coordinator for the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.</p><p>Windy weather made conditions less than ideal as divers each used three to four tanks a day. Since the wreck lies in 25 feet of water, said lead investigator Matthew Lawrence, Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary maritime archaeologist, a single tank could last two hours.</p><p>"For the sanctuary, this is a fantastic deal," Lawrence said.</p><p>In return for rooms at host Amy Slate's Amoray Dive Resort, meals and boat trips, the program receives "multiple days of diving with people who know how to measure and draw what they see, then make a detailed scale drawing of the site."</p><p>Kamau Sadiki, a hydropower engineering expert most days, said, "There are about 2,000 shipwrecks in the sanctuary here. There's no way for [staff] to do what they need."</p><p>"We bring the skills," Sadiki said. "They have the wrecks and the boats."</p><p>"As a retired elementary school teacher, these are great experiences for me," said Ernie Franklin, who uses scuba expeditions with NABSD's Diving with Purpose program to make history and science come alive for students.</p><p>Those programs have included the search for the <I>Guerro</I>, a slave ship that grounded off Key Largo, and "If Reefs Could Talk," where scientists aboard the Keys' Aquarius underwater habitat conversed with students over the Internet.</p><p>During the current expedition, the dive team focused on a key 50-foot section of the steel-hulled wreck, which likely once was a double-engine steamship about 300 feet long with a 42-foot beam, Lawrence said.</p><p>Extensive records research and earlier mapping projects strongly point to Mike's Wreck being the <I>Hannah M. Bell</I>, a British vessel that struck the treacherous reef at The Elbow while carrying a load of coal from Virginia in April 1911. No lives were lost.</p><p>"This ship is too large for its loss not to be noticed someplace," Altmeier said. "We saw what could be coal on the site," Washington said.</p><p>The project seeks more evidence to confirm the identity of the shipwreck, located at mooring buoy E-7 inside the Elbow Sanctuary Preservation Area, six miles off Key Largo.</p><p>"At this point, we can say that nothing seems to contradict" the tentative identification, Lawrence said.</p><p>Divers have established that the ship was double-engined, although salvors apparently removed the two engines and other valuable items not long after the sinking.</p><p>"The engines might be missing but the fittings and everything else is still there," Sadiki said. That includes possible artifacts from a wooden sailing ship that grounded atop the steel shipwreck, Altmeier said.</p><p>The Elbow, named for its jutting profile into the shipping lanes, has claimed at least 10 known wrecks, including the nearby <I>City of Washington</I> and the <I>USS Alabama</I>.</p><p>Lawrence and Haigler will discuss preliminary findings from this week's effort to name one more Elbow victim at the Florida Keys Maritime Heritage Symposium, taking place from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. today at the Westin Key West Resort.</p><p>The National Association of Black Scuba Divers holds its 2012 annual summit at the Hilton Key Largo Resort from Oct. 29 to Nov. 4.