Wednesday, November 3, 2004 Dave Conlin studied anthropology and archeology as an undergraduate at Reed College in Portland Oregon and continued his graduate studies in archeology at Oxford University in England and at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.  He was the field director for the recovery of the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley in 2000, the Ellis Island Ferry in 2002 and the Lake Mead B-29 in 2002 and 2003.

Research Partnerships

Dr Johnson with the HURL submersible Pisces IV.

In the world of underwater archeology there’s always a little give and take between the folks in the field.  Usually this is a good thing, but occasionally it makes for more complicated logistics.  This morning we started the day with Terry Kerby and the team from HURL– the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory.  Terry is the operations manager for the University of Hawaii/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration submersibles Pisces IV and Pisces V.  We’ve worked with Terry before and will again, not on Arizona, but on the Japanese midget submarine that USS Ward sank just minutes before the Japanese commenced the aerial attack on Pearl Harbor.  Ward’s shots were the first fired in anger by the Americans in the Pacific War.  HURL, NOAA and NPS are working together to extend some of the research techniques we’ve been using on Arizona to the submarine that’s laying in 1200 ft. of water outside the harbor mouth.

A hull surface that has been prepared (shining area) for ultrasonic thickness measurements. The shiny gray patch is Arizona's steel hull structure; around it is the heavy, hard encrustation that has formed over the ship since 1941. Photo by Brett Seymour.

Terry had one of our electrical grounds for testing and modification in advance of possible deployment from the one of HURL’s submersibles.  An electrical ground is nothing more than a modified C-clamp with some insulated wire attached to it that we use to study corrosion on shipwrecks.  We stopped by the boatyard at 7:30 to pick up the ground on our way to the Memorial, which was a little out of our way. The upside was that we all got a good close look at some very sophisticated research submarines and had a chance to talk to Terry about some of the amazing things, geological, cultural and oceanographic, that he’s been able to discover in the deep waters surrounding the Hawaiian Islands.

Matt Russell, Randy Jones and Don Johnson work from a small salvage key to take the ultrasonic thickness measurements as Arizona Memorial visitors look on. Photo by Jenni Burbank.

In the park we spent the day collecting more concretion samples, measuring corrosion potential and collecting ultrasonic thickness data from areas of the ship that are important to Dr. Tim Foecke for his Finite Element Model.  Matt Russell, Dr. Don Johnson, Jay Schraan and Randy Jones operated the data collection topside while Dave Conlin, Brett Seymour and Jenni Burbank of the USS Arizona Memorial dive team were in the water collecting data.  We’re still having some problems with getting consistent thickness measurements on the heavily encrusted, corroded and dimpled metal surfaces but we are moving in a direction that looks promising for future analysis of the ship.