study of the sunken remains offers insights into the cause of the sinking and can help write the final chapter of stories in which there were no survivors. The excitement of a discovery instills new interest into the history of the ship, the people associated with it and the times in which it sailed. MSRA began conducting annual 10-day shipwreck search expeditions in 1998 during the spring months when conditions on the lake are best for side-scan survey operations. From that time until 2018, the organization utilized the services of shipwreck hunter and side scan sonar operator David Trotter. Additionally, from 2004 until 2017, the MSRA partnered with author and explorer Clive Cussler of the nonprofit National Underwater Marine Agency and his side scan survey expert Ralph Wilbanks and his associate Steve Howard to conduct an additional expedition each year in search of the lost Northwest Airlines DC-4 Flight 2501. In 2018 the MSRA acquired its own sonar through donations from its members and supporters. Since 1998, the team has jointly covered over 800 square miles of bottomlands off West Michigan. During the winter of 2011-2012, MSRA took advantage of cyclically low Great Lakes water levels and surveyed the hulks of a half dozen shipwrecks in the Grand River near Harbor Island at Grand Haven. The group identified the L.L. Barth and the largest of them as the Aurora. In 2011, MSRA conducted an extensive archaeological survey of the wreck of the Thomas Hume located far off New Buffalo, Michigan, in Illinois waters. The work resulted in a book, museum exhibit, and public event. MSRA surveyed in 2015 the three freighters that sank in the Armistice Day Storm of 1940, the William B. Davock, Novadoc, and Anna C. Minch. MSRA surveyed a wreck that became exposed at the White Lake Channel mouth in Muskegon in December 2019, and identified it as the schooner Contest. Since 1998, MSRA has hosted an annual film festival called Mysteries and Histories Beneath the Inland Seas in the spring in Holland, Michigan. 2018 marked its 20th annual event. MSRA served as a curatorial partner to exhibit designers Lafferty van Heest and Associates to supply research and images to the Michigan Maritime Museum to develop exhibit “Mysteries Beneath the Waves: Wrecks of the Sunset Coast.” That exhibit has moved to the Port of Ludington Maritime Museum in 2017. MSRA served as a curatorial partner to exhibit