Meet the Experts
Terry Kerby
Terry Kerby is operations director and chief pilot for the Hawaii Undersea Research Lab (HURL). He started his seafaring in 1970 when he joined the U.S. Coast Guard and served on ships in Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. In 1973 he took part in a nighttime rescue off the coast of Puerto Rico of two persons trapped under an overturned cabin cruiser and was awarded the U.S. Coast Guard Commendation medal for his successful actions. In 1981, when NOAA formed the National Undersea Research Lab program and HURL through the University of Hawaii, Kerby became submersible operations director. In 1992, Kerby focused HURL’s three preseason test dives off South Oahu to search and survey Maritime Heritage artifacts, which led to the discovery of several historical wreck sites.
Hans Van Tilburg
Hans Van Tilburg is maritime heritage coordinator for NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries in the Pacific Islands region. He was introduced to the ocean at the age of 8 on board his father's sloop Brunhilde. He has worked as a sport diving instructor and a science diver in California, North Carolina and Wisconsin. He holds a master’s degree in maritime history and nautical archaeology and a doctorate in maritime history, with a focus on the maritime history of Asia and the Pacific. For several years, Van Tilburg headed the graduate certificate program in maritime archaeology and history at the University of Hawaii. He has taught courses in maritime history, world history and European expansion.
Dik Daso
Dik Daso is a curator of modern military aircraft at the Smithsonian Institution, National Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C. His most recent exhibition, Modern Military Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, opened to the public in April 2008. He is also a co-curator for The Price of Freedom: Americans at War, a permanent exhibition at the National Museum of American History that reopened in November 2008. A retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, Daso has served as an RF-4C Phantom instructor pilot, F-15 Eagle pilot, twice as a T-38 Talon instructor pilot, instructor of history at the U.S; Air Force Academy and chief of Air Force Doctrine at Headquarters Air Force, Pentagon.
