Blake Plateau: Cultural Connections and the National Significance of an Offshore Maritime Cultural Landscape

The Blake Plateau and the adjacent waters and sea beds of the U.S. continental shelf and Blake Ridge are a long-standing water highway, a place of significant events and common marine activities from centuries past to the present. It has scientific significance as well as cultural meaning, especially within the context of the Gullah/Geechee people of the region whose ancestors were brought against their will in the Middle Passage voyages of the transatlantic slave trade. The known location of some deep water shipwrecks, it is the likely site of many others, as well as possessing significant cultural values that make it worthy of consideration as a marine protected area.