- My name is Mike Haigh,
and I'm the Project Director of a brand new operation
called Wreck Hunters,
aiming to teach the skills and techniques
of diving archeology on the small Island of Utila
in the Caribbean.
We are focused on the wreck of the Oliver,
which lies in 18 meters of crystal clear warm water,
a perfect place to teach diving archeology,
a sort of advanced underwater classroom.
(upbeat music)
As a buildup to this course,
what I'm gonna be doing is running a series of presentations
on the techniques diving archeologists use
to deal with the challenges they face
in the projects they operate on.
Now, before I come to the range of topics
that we will cover, just a note of caution.
A lot of these areas are quite complex.
Most will require a risk assessment
and should only be undertaken by trained divers.
So, what is it we are gonna cover?
Well, we're gonna aim to cover as much as we can,
in terms of the whole process,
from the process of searching for a wreck,
to final excavation and the recovery of artifacts from it.
So, looking first at searching.
Now, in the old days we used to put
what was called a sledge behind an inflatable,
and tow a diver behind it to scan an area
for anything that looks unusual.
We soon discovered that the James Bond films were wrong,
and that anything over two and a half knots
caused your mast to fly off.
These days, of course, we use power scooters instead.
But we still will teach swim line searches
and circular studies,
which are excellent ways of locating objects under water.
But of course, these days we have more powerful tools.
We can use ROVs,
we can use metal detectors to come up with metal objects,
perhaps the anchor of a wreck,
perhaps the cannons of a wreck.
All these are survey techniques, which we can teach.
Having found something, you then go into survey,
critical first stage,
and in that you lay a baseline.
You put down a temporary grid of some type,
you measure in what you can see by triangulation.
Again, the metal detectors can be great
for locating objects which will be of most interest
when we start to excavate the site.
You can use probes to get an idea of the depth
of sediment over the site.
This is the type of thing you can do in survey.
And of course, drawing, photography, photo mosaics
and video come into all this.
Then of course, onto excavation,
when we started set, reveal the wreck again.
And here we have a more permanent grid,
often of scaffolding poles of some type.
We're using powered tools, airlifts, water dredges,
such things as this.
We are recording everything we do.
We are making drawings of everything we do.
We are then using different pieces of equipment
to lift important objects,
lifting bags sometimes, but other things as well.
And of course,
all of this underpinned by safe diving practices,
things such as the underwater telephone booth,
underwater communications, and other safety features.
All these things we will cover.
So that is an idea of the whole range
of what we're going to be doing.
In my first video,
what I'm gonna do is to cover
the area of lifting large objects,
be they robust, or be they fragile.
But until then, I wish you all safe and enjoyable diving.
(upbeat music)