Qualifications
Founder Director of SDA Marine, Sarah Heaver, (formerly Sarah Draper-Ali) has over 26 years of practical marine archaeological experience. Qualifying at the University of Exeter, and later at the Scottish Institute for Maritime Studies, St Andrews University, Scotland. Sarah is also a fully qualified HSE Part IV Commercial Diver. Sarah has a comprehensive range of practical experience having worked on marine archaeological projects all around the world.
During two years as Assistant Curator of Marine Archaeology at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich and five years Field Officer for the Hampshire and Wight Trust based at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton University, she gained diverse international project experience.
Sarah founded SDA Marine in Hong Kong in 1998. It quickly became established as the key expert marine archaeological consultancy in Hong Kong and 85 projects were completed in 4 years. She took a 4 year sabbatical from pure archaeology in 2002 when invited to be the Estuary Manager for the Medway and Swale Estuary Partnership in Kent, UK. Sarah ran a 1 million Euro budget and managed 33 environmental and marine projects around the Kent coast.
Returning to full time marine archaeological consultancy in 2007, Sarah now lives in Hong Kong while working on projects worldwide.
All projects will be managed by Sarah and we will build a unique team for each project as required. All divers have Commercial Diving Qualifications and the core team have been working with Sarah since 1998 and fully appreciate the complexities of archaeological diving. In addition to divers we have world class conservators and historians as regular members of our project teams.
