| P-MAN XIV Update #06 - Corsair! 22 March 2012 It was a jam-packed day today. Yes, I know - you want to see some pictures of the Corsair. Patience. Our first appointment was with Leon. His mother says she witnessed during World War Two a plane going down in a channel on the north end of Babelthuap. Leon says his mother is still pretty sharp and would like to chat with us. We've set an appointment for Saturday up at her village which is pretty far north. Leon will also be there which is great. Whenever we have someone who comes forth with any info, if they're willing to go with us, it's more likely something will pan out. Even if we are talking about his mother.
In anticipation of diving the Corsair, we went to Neco Marine to fill out our required paperwork. We stopped in at the Coral Reef Research Foundation (which is next-door to Neco) and found the REMUS teams. They are here, at least for the rest of the day, doing oceanographic work with their autonomous ROVs. These guys have some really cool toys. They also like what we do and sent their AROV over some of our side-scan sonar (SSS) hits. I think our ROV team is going to be really happy as all these areas are a target rich environment. They are GOING to image more than the swimming-pool drains that have comprised most of their testing so far. Most of the REMUS folks are leaving tonight, but a few are staying behind for a few more days to finish up and pack out. The Stockbridge ROV team will have a chance to visit with them on Saturday before they pack up their toys and go home. We then went up to Camp Katuu, the SeaBee compound. We met the Officer In Charge (OIC) and discussed some mutual projects and I got to drink Navy coffee again. The Corsair, you ask? Not so fast. First, some art:
Then we went to the Palau Pacific Resort (PPR) for lunch. We were guests of the Japanese Embassy. Our host was the Ambassador's Deputy Mr. Anzawa and the Embassy's Economic Researcher, Naoka Hayashi. They wanted to hear about BentProp and discuss some mutual projects as the Japanese government is having a NGO start working in Palau removing unexploded ordnance (UXO). It was a wonderful lunch and we enjoyed hearing about the plans to help rid Palau of UXO. We also talked about the possibilities of recovering Japanese remains from the war. Recently, the Palauan government has relaxed their restrictions on the repatriation of Japanese remains. There are still many thousands of Japanese MIAs from Palau alone and their families have the same questions as our American MIA families. Now we can get to the Corsair. The owner of Neco Marine led us out there in his boat and we had ours. Once we were on site, he returned to shore and we had the Corsair to ourselves. Now, in no particular order, here is the newest find in Palau. This was my first day using my little GoPro camera. Please be kind.
That's is what a brand new find looks like. We hope it stays that way once this becomes a public dive site.
We went back to shore and Shallum met us at the dock. What a great find. We chatted with him for quite some time, then joined the REMUS teams for dinner. A lively time had by all. We said goodbye to those leaving tonight (That damn 0215 flight to Guam) and made plans to meet up with the rest on Saturday for Stockbridge's get-acquainted meeting. It's going to be a great time. Tomorrow is a data-dump day. We'll review all the info we've collected over the past few days and clean up our calendar to make sure we make good use of our time here. - Flip Colmer |
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