Caleb Pitt-Cook is drifting just above the ocean floor, running his fingers through the soft sand.

The 24-year-old Ngarluma man is searching for the stone tools his ancestors used thousands of years ago.

"If you told me I'd be doing this work two years ago, I would have laughed in your face," he says.

"It's one of the coolest parts of our job. I'd say it's my favourite part right now."

Ngarluma man Caleb Pitt-Cook is a ranger with the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation. (Supplied: John McCarthy)

Mr Pitt-Cook is contributing to research that has already made history.

"There's only ever been two submerged Aboriginal archaeological sites mapped in Australia," Flinders University maritime archaeologist John McCarthy says.

"Those were found by our team here."

Hunt for submerged history 

When humans first populated the Australian continent about 65,000 years ago, it was a lot bigger.

People living in the Northern Territory would have been able to walk all the way to New Guinea.

"There's a huge area of archaeological landscape that's been lost to sea level change," Dr McCarthy says.

Sea level modelling shows millennia of change along the Pilbara coast. (Supplied: John McCarthy)

Since 2019, researchers at the Deep History of Sea Country project have been trying to find artefacts from that time, submerged off the coast of the Burrup Peninsula in Western Australia.

The region's traditional custodians call the peninsula Murujuga.

"The initial discoveries made in Murujuga were stone tools. They're very common — the sort of knives and forks of their day," Dr McCarthy says.

"They survive very well through sea-level change because they're made of igneous rock, which is very hard and durable."

John McCarthy's project has uncovered two of Australia's submerged Aboriginal archaeological sites. (ABC News: Charlie Mclean)

Maritime archaeology of this kind is still in its infancy in Australia.

Dr McCarthy says it is almost certain there are significant sites all across the continent's perimeter, and mapping where they are is the first step to protecting them.

Rangers find purpose

This year's round of underwater surveys is the first time in Australia that Indigenous rangers have accompanied maritime archaeologists.

It is the culmination of more than a year of training for a handful of Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation rangers.

Rangers like Malik Churnside have joined researchers under water for the first time. (ABC News: Alistair Bates)

"First, you start off with pool dives and it's a big jump up to actually get out on the water," Ngarluma ranger Malik Churnside says.

"Once you're out there in the water and there's actually animals … sharks swimming around, [it] can be quite a scary sight, at first."

One of the submerged sites Mr Churnside surveyed was an area that thousands of years ago would have been a freshwater spring.

The spring is referenced in a Ngarluma cultural song his elders still sing today.

"It's just like evidence and a connection to something they've talked about and sung about for such a long time," he said.

"It's purpose and meaning; you get a sense of belonging to this whole landscape and the people that were here before."

Indigenous divers are connecting to submerged sites that appear in songlines and stories. (Supplied: John McCarthy)

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