Growing up in a small town in Iowa, Travis Mason dreamed of seeing as much of the world as he could. Far from the cornfields of his home, he is now one of Promare’s consultants in the field of dive sciences.
He studied Ancient Civilizations during his undergraduate career at the University of Iowa, when he excavated at the 2nd century AD site of Ulpia Noviomagus in Nijmegen, Netherlands. He then pursued his graduate studies at the Nautical Archaeology Program at Texas A&M University where he worked on projects like the Institute of Nautical Archaeology’s Tektaş Burnu 5th century BC shipwreck excavation (as an excavator and divemaster) and the RPM Nautical Foundation survey of the Henrietta Marie 17th century slave ship site (as a search diver and divemaster).
He has over the years accumulated numerous upper-level professional diver and dive instructor qualifications, with which he aids Promare’s personnel in dive training and in establishing dive procedures for various archaeological projects. One of his newest passions is developing an expanded idea of what is considered “excavatable” depth for shipwrecks through the use of mixed gas diving. Travis also has a facility for languages, having learned Latin, ancient and modern Greek, French and German during his archaeological research. His particular interest in archaeology is the late Roman Republic and the Roman military (especially their navy).
