In our pursuit of Panama's pirate history, we have put together a shipload of media buccaneers and brigands to bring the colorful tale alive on the Internet. Our captain on this ship is Barry Clifford, an underwater archaeologist whose discoveries have made headlines around the world for the past 20 years. His most famous find is the wreck of the Whydah, a pirate ship lost off the coast of Cape Cod in 1717 and located by Clifford in 1984. Today Clifford runs the Whydah Museum in Provincetown, Mass., where many of the artifacts from the shipwreck are on display.

Clifford's explorations continued in 1998 as he tracked down a pirate fleet lost on the reefs of Las Aves off the coast of Venezuela in 1678, and in 2000 when he found Captain Kidd's flagship the Adventure Galley, which sunk off Madagascar in 1698. Presently, he's triangulating the final resting place of Columbus' flagship, the Santa Maria, among other undersea ventures. For more, read About Barry Clifford.

Of course, our correspondent is Richard Bangs, one of today's leading adventurers, an international river explorer, Web pioneer and award-winning author (for more, read About Richard Bangs). He's joined in the field by producer and photographer Didrik Johnck, a renaissance man of Internet media, who has taken photos at the summit of Everest, shot video from the slopes of Annapurna, and dived with the Moken sea gypsies, among other adventures. John Canning, our audio reporter and photographer, is again on hand to file our "photo features" and focus on the action with his digital cameras and recorders. New to the team is Scott Finley, an accomplished videographer of the "one man band" school. A former comic book writer, Finley has been making marketing videos for high tech companies (Dow, Eastman, Marconi, Microsoft) for the last 20 years. Influenced heavily by ninjas, his working method uses minimal equipment and maximum stealth, which is tricky for a man who weighs nearly 250 pounds.

Back on the home front, Julia Romano is our coordinator and audio editor, drawing upon her two-plus years at National Public Radio. And Christian Kallen is our creative director, a collaborator with, and colleague of, Richard Bangs for 23 years and a producer of live Internet programs for a decade.