Most of the team, including our 2011 Turkish commissioner Emre Savas of the Bodrum Museum, leaves Yalıkavak aboard Virazon at 0630 in choppy seas, and are accompanied by dolphins along the voyage.  The Virazon overnights in Kuşadası, while a truck loaded in Bodrum with various other equipment including the oxygen bottles we will need for decompression, departs for Zeytineli, a small fishing harbor that is the nearest point of departure for anyone trying to reach Kizilburun by road.

Preparations for the final excavation season at Kizilburun are now underway at INA headquarters in Bodrum, with the first team meeting held in the Mary & Lamar Tooze Library. 2011 team members present at the meeting included Debbie Carlson (archaeological director), Zafer Gul (captain of the Virazon), Orkan Koyasioglu (archaeologist and chamber operator), John Littlefield (Dive Safety Officer), Sheila Matthews (archaeologist and computer mapper), and Murat Tilev (chamber operator and technician).

Other team members will be arriving in Bodrum and Izmir in the coming days but for now we have much to do to pack the dive gear and scuba tanks, cameras, food, and drum lifting equipment that will accompany us aboard the Virazon to Kizilburun.  Other Kizilburun researchers visiting INA HQ this weekend include conservation student Sorna Khakzhad (Leuven University in Belgium) and Chris Cleere, a heritage management expert who is advising us on the most effective and efficient ways to clean and conserve the two column drums and capital that were raised in 2009.