. >> reporter: if lonnie bunch was to find his slave ship, he would need steve lubkemun, co-founder ofe washington university who believes that slavery is the greatest story in maritime archaeology. >> think about the way in which computers nowadays affect all of our lives. it's not just -- it doesn't affect just the computing industry. everything is interlinked and depends on this. and the slave trade in its time was truly the equivalent. it reached into and influenced and created the modern world. >> reporter: even so it's not likely much has survived centuries under the sea. >> we're not talking about a hull you're going to find down there and masks and all of that that you would imagine in your mind's eye. >> we don't find intact ships. we find parts of ships. you have to go underneath the water, add some difficulty to this, find the pieces, try to put them back together, and put together the story that you can. >> reporter: the story lubkemun was searching for wasn't discovered underneath the water. his ship was lost in the dry official records of capetown, south africa which reac

. >> reporter: if lonnie bunch was to find his slave ship, he would need steve lubkemun, co-founder of the slave wrecks project. he's an anthropologist from george washington university who believes that slavery is the greatest story in maritime archaeology. >> think about the way in which our lives. it's not just -- it doesn't affect just the computing industry. everything is interlinked and depends on this. and the slave trade in its time was truly the equivalent. it reached into and influenced and created the modern world. >> reporter: even so it's not likely much has survived centuries under the sea. >> we're not talking about a hull you're going to find down that you would imagine in your mind's eye. >> we don't find intact ships. we find parts of ships. you have to go underneath the water, add some difficulty to this, find the pieces, try to put them back together, and put together the story that you can. >> reporter: the story lubkemun was searching for wasn't discovered underneath the water. his ship was lost in the dry official records of capetown, south africa which reached b