PASSION... DARING... ADVENTURE...

Today was another awesome day out on the water although this time we stayed dry. Instead we got to play with some very cool and expensive toys, namely a sidescan sonar - the Klein system 3000... oh yeah baby!!!

It's an impressive piece of machinery and produced amazing images of the wrecks. The boilers of the steamship we've been working on over the past few days stuck out like a sore thumb, you could even see the stack! We also did a pass over the Industry, which has a number of cannons on it - they came up like a dream.

We mowed the lawn in a more or less straight line... perhaps a little less then more when Karson and I took over the driving. Keeping the boat in a completely straight line is a lot harder then anticipated, but we did manage to get some good results.

The boat was laden with enough gear to send a man to the moon... it probably took about as long to set it all up. But you can't have the milk without the cow, so the equipment had to come. Seeing it in action was part of the fun, the software i.e. Hypack kept us on track and most importantly of all we could see the results in real time. Few things in life are more exciting then watching the wreck pop up out of nowhere on the computer screen... it definitely got the heart pumping.

So a great day out on the water, even though there was no dive gear in sight. Thanks heaps to Southeastern Archaeological Research Inc (SEARCH) Michael and Jason - you guys were great! SEARCH is one of the leading cultural resource management firms focusing on maritime archaeology, and they generously offered to give two days from their busy schedule to bring their equipment to the field school for a training exercise.

By: Agnes Milowka, Australia in First Coast Maritime Archaeological Project, Flinders University / LAMP Maritime Archaeological Field School.

Posted on July 9, 2007 6:01 PM | LAMP Blog | LAMP Project