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.This article benefitted from research done by authors Delgado and Brennan for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management that assessed the maritime history and archaeology of the Gulf of Mexico in the nineteenth century. We note that we drew upon this research, as well as our previously published articles in the Journal of Maritime Archaeology, specifically the special issue, An "American Mediterranean:" The Maritime Archaeology of the Gulf of Mexico Region in the Nineteenth Century," (JMA Volume 18, No. 3, September 2023), and utilized some of our text, after editing and rewording, that appeared in the study, as well as in the published articles in the issue as the research was pertinent to the focus of this article. We note this here rather than to cite our own work, which is included in the sources for this article. This article also discusses four shipwrecks which were the subject of commercial sale of artifacts. They were cited as they are the majority of the physically verified wrecks that rest within the vicinity of the Blake Plateau and Blake Ridge. Our inclusion of these sites and the citation of the published sources does not endorse, nor does it condone the sale of shipwreck artifacts.
