Description of Services
BOB Hydrographics, LLC (BOB) is a small business specializing in geophysical surveys for marine / underwater and terrestrial archaeology applications, using magnetometers, ground penetrating radar, sonar, acoustic sub-bottom profilers and echo sounders. Robert Gearhart, owner of BOB, has over 3 decades of archaeological experience and is qualified to serve as Principal Investigator on marine archaeology projects of any size. Mr. Gearhart has managed and directed multiple archaeological contracts with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the Texas Department of Transportation, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, and numerous private entities. His experience with the Army Corps of Engineers includes 70 task orders, culminating with the discovery and archaeological data recovery of the Civil War gunboat, USS Westfield, in Galveston Bay. He has held 90 Texas Antiquities Permits as the principal investigator (including 35 as owner of BOB), has been the primary or sole author of 61 reports completed under Antiquities Permits, and has coauthored 60 other permitted project reports in Texas. He has also served as principal investigator on nautical archaeology projects in Louisiana, Arkansas, New York, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, California and the Gulf of Mexico. In 2011 he contributed a chapter to The Oxford Handbook of Maritime Archaeology, titled Archaeological Interpretation of Marine Magnetic Data.
