| P-MAN XVI Update # 15 - Data analysis, murky water, and the Alien Finder 26 March 2014 Today was a water day for everyone except Dan O'Brien. He wanted a day back at the ready room to get caught up on photos, reports and all forms of stored digital files. And he ran some errands. And he secured another van for us for a few days. And maybe he caught a nap as well. We got to Neco Marine around 0940, grabbed our SCUBA gear, loaded the boat and then we picked up Eric and Shannon from the Scripps/UDel group at the Coral Reef Research Foundation dock. That's about 100 yards from where our boat was parked. Reviewing SSS data the previous night showed us we should look at some "interesting" targets.
I'll get to the point quickly. We saw a lot of dark brown coral outcroppings along a sandy/silty bottom. Very little manmade stuff found its way into the areas that we explored. So no clues to the next find.
Most of our dives were at about 70 feet. Except one that was down about
105 and the bottom was further down at 122. However, from the latitude/longitude
we were given, it too was supposed to be about 75 feet. Hmmmmm? We'll have
to revisit the correct spot later.
We called it a day about 4 p.m.. Back to Neco, cleaned up our gear and met the folks from Cleared Ground Demining. Steve and Cassandra run a NGO that cleans up former battlefields of munitions (UXO). They've become great friends of The BentProp Project and it's always great to get caught up with them. We did another night-time review session. We looked at the day's SSS results and have picked half a dozen targets in an area where we believe a Hellcat went in. On our next water day we'll prosecute these targets. We also reviewed some data that are being developed in hopes of creating a search plan for the last of the B-24s to be found. Our partnership with Scripps/UDel is rich in numerous ways. Speaking of partnership, I'd like to talk about this a bit more. I went back into our updates from a few years ago. We reported about meeting the Scripps/UDel folks for the first time in P-MAN XIV Update #06 - Corsair!
Then a funny thing happened. We stayed in touch, showed Scripps/UDel more of what we do and they showed us what they do. Working with BentProp actually furthers their mission goals. The U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR) is a major sponsor of the Scripps and UDel teams. ONR has made investments in developing new underwater and unmanned technologies for the Navy, and the Bent Prop mission serves as a real-world proving ground for testing and demonstrating these emerging capabilities. Dr. Terri Paluszkiewicz from ONR, who visited last year for part of the expedition, has been supporting Scripps/UDel for several years now. The partnership between ONR, Scripps/UDel and BentProp furthers the overall Naval mission by exposing the public to exciting science and engineering and provides inspiration to school kids like the group out of Stockbridge, Michigan. STEM, Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, is a big buzzword in education today. Looking down the road, it's one thing to just make use of an iPhone or any sort of technology for fun and profit. But it's quite another to have a firm understanding of how it works, how to design it, build it and how to think out of the box and make the next great discovery. BentProp helps Stockbridge further the education of their students by giving them the chance to design, build and deploy their underwater vehicles and then explore in the real world. This extends the partnership from ONR, directly through Scipps/UDel and BentProp to the Stockbridge High School students. And these young men and women are our future, whether in the military or whatever path they go through in life.
27 March I was going to have a separate update for today, but we did not go out on a boat, or go out into the jungle. After five days of diving, we needed a down day. So everyone took an admin day. That doesn't mean we did not accomplish stuff. Dan, Joe, Sean and Casey took a helicopter ride looking at some metal found on the top of one of the islands. I worked on a modification to my BC. Pat gave a presentation to a medical clinic in town.
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