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Tuesday, August 7
Team 4: Sam Erdman, James Waterbury and Alek
Zywot
Mark Melancon and James Davenport of Team 1 work on mapping features in
their area of the Tonawanda site.
For better or worse, today was
fairly uneventful while still having progress. We had another early
morning and were at the docks for an 8:10 a.m. departure time for the
Tonawanda. Using the smaller boats allowed for better efficiency and
the four teams worked like clockwork recording data around the
designated data points and getting out of the water in between dives.
John Gifford, who gave us an amazing lecture the previous night,
accompanied us to the site and using his underwater camera recorded
great video of the wreck and the teams working together. We were also
visited by a very curious four foot barracuda who got a little too close
for comfort with those razor sharp teeth, and a large nurse shark that
seems to visit the site on a regular basis.
Team 3 (Doug Faunt, Kate Harding and
Keith Young) plot positions on the Tonawanda site map.
The crew was back in time for a one o’clock lunch and after a short
break, everyone jumped head first into transcribing their data from
their Mylar sheets into their journals. The rest of the afternoon was
spent inching towards the completion of the site map and with many
people using the tables as a jungle-gym, a mild form of comical chaos
was created. This chaos had a purpose and soon each team put their site
mapping skills to the test, mapping out their artifacts in relation to
the datum points. The crew worked intently until our dinner guest, John
Halas, arrived. After dinner we received a presentation given by Mr.
Halas. It consisted of a slide show about Mr. Halas’ experience
salvaging many wrecks within the state of Florida. After the
presentation the teams finished up some loose ends with their journals,
concluding another awesome day.
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John Halas, Director of the
Upper Region of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary,
discusses his experiences with students. |
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