Shipwreck explorer Joe Mazraani dies on deep-sea dive to find lost Atlantic steamer

Joe Mazraani died in pursuit of the ‘Big Engine Steamer,’ a wreck lying 200 feet beneath the Atlantic on the eastern edge of Georges Bank

Joe Mazraani died during a deep-sea expedition off the coast off Cape Cod (D/V Tenacious)

A respected scuba diver and shipwreck explorer died after a “medical emergency” during a deep-sea expedition off the coast of Cape Cod.

Joe Mazraani, a 48-year-old criminal defense attorney from New Jersey, was exploring a wreck 200 miles off the Massachusetts coast aboard his vessel, the D/V Tenacious, when disaster struck last Tuesday on the eastern edge of Georges Bank.

The dive team was able to pull Mazraani back on board the boat before administering CPR, but were unable to revive him, his wife Jennifer Sellitti said in a statement on behalf of their company Atlantic Wreck Salvage.

Mazraani’s cause of death was not immediately clear. Sellitti, a top New Jersey public defender, said that a full investigation is underway and there is currently “no reason to suspect diver error or equipment failure.”

Mazraani and his wife Jennifer Sellitti pictured in a tribute posted by the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender (New Jersey Office of the Public Defender)

Mazraani had set out to identify a lost Atlantic steam ship submerged in 200ft of water called the “Big Engine Steamer.”

The wreck had been discovered previously during a search for Le Lyonnais, a French steam ship that sank in 1856, whose story was documented by Sellitti’s recently published book The Adriatic Affair.

Sellitti was reportedly on the boat when her husband died.

“He was kind, compassionate, and generous. A mentor and a student, a friend, brother, son, and partner,” she wrote. “Whether motoring aboard D/V Tenacious, diving into deep and dangerous water, or defending his clients in court, Joe demanded the best of everyone around him.”

“I loved Joe fiercely, and he loved me back just the same. We were partners in everything—especially this,” Sellitti concluded.

The New Jersey State Office of the Public Defender paid tribute on Instagram, mourning the loss of the “cherished member of the legal and diving communities” alongside a photograph of Mazraani and Sellitti.

After becoming a certified diver in the mid-90s, the Lebanese native had led dives to some of the hardest-to-reach wrecks on the Atlantic seaboard.

The explorer used the DV Tenacious to locate several lost vessels in the North Atlantic, including the German submarine U-550, which was sunk off the coast of Nantucket in 1944 by U.S. Navy battleships.

Mazraani also led expeditions to the SS Andrea Doria, RMS Lusitania, and HMHS Britannic, the sister-ship to the Titanic.

Both Mazraania and Sellitti are U.S. Coast Guard licensed captains, according to their company’s website.

In his legal career, Mazraani co-founded the law firm Mazraani & Liguori LLP in 2006 after graduating from Seton Hall Law School in Newark.

Mazraani helped free Timothy Puskas in 2024, who had served 10 years of a 40-year sentence when he was exonerated after being wrongly convicted for the 2014 murder of former Rutgers University student William McCaw.