David Mearns

Who is David Mearns?

David Louis Mearns, born circa 1958, is an American-born marine scientist and deep water search and recovery expert, long resident in Britain. He is famous for locating the wrecks of several ships lost during World War II. Mearns and his company, Blue Water Recoveries Limited, are in the Guinness World Records for the deepest shipwreck ever found, the German blockade runner Rio Grande, which was located at a depth of 5,762 metres.

In 2008, Mearns led a search team to find the Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney and the German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran, which both sank following a mutually destructive engagement off Western Australia in 1941. Prior to finding HMAS Sydney, Mearns said that it was, in some ways, "bigger than the Titanic" because of what it meant to Australia. "Nothing comes close to the Sydney."

At the end of 2010, he successfully led the search for another missing Australian shipwreck, the Hospital Ship Centaur, which was torpedoed off Queensland by a Japanese submarine in 1943.

On 1 November 2010, Mearns was awarded an honorary Medal of the Order of Australia in recognition of his discovery of Sydney and Centaur.