THE 2008 EXPEDITION
Objectives
The 2008 Danaos season continued the sidescan and sub-bottom profiling survey begun in 2007 in an area approximately 20-25 nautical miles S-SW of Ierapetra, near Gaidhouronísí (Chrysi) island. The team chose this specific area due to its relatively flat topography and low sedimentation rates, as well as its location within the ancient sea routes between Crete and Egypt, in addition to its compatibility with HCMR's equipment.
As a continuation of the previous year's survey, the 2008 Danaos season focused on the northern end of the trade route in an attempt to locate and record shipwrecks and other ancient remains from the thousands of ships that plied this trade route in antiquity.
The survey area rises to a minimum depth of 450 m below sea level, bounded on the north by the 2000-metre deep Ptolemy Trench, and on the south by the Pliny Trench, at a depth greater than 3000 m.
Results
During the mid-June cruise the Danaos team mapped a series of parallel E-W swaths 300 m long using the HCMR-owned R/V Aegaeo. In total, the vessel surveyed over 300 km of sidescan sonar and sub-bottom profiler lines over an area of more than 85 km². From the hundreds of potential targets identified by the sidescan sonographs, the team's researchers selected 17 for further investigation using the submersible Thetis and the ROV MaxRover. Unfortunately none of these targets were shipwrecks.
In total, the 2008 Danaos project located 33 artifacts, primarily consisting of amphorae from the Classical to the Late Roman/Byzantine periods, during visual inspections of anomalies that turned out to be geological features. Many of these amphorae showed fresh breaks. Coupled with the traces of drawling visible on the seabed, this suggests that commercial trawling in the area is significantly disturbing the seafloor at depths of 400 - 800 m.
During one inspection the team encountered a series of Byzantine amphoras lying in a NW-SE line. These amphoras probably represent cargo jettisoned overboard by the crew of a distressed ship similar to that described in Acts 27:18, after St. Paul's ship was caught in a storm in the same waters south of Crete. The team traced this line and discovered additional amphoras, but no evidence of a shipwreck.
One target selected for further study proved to be the remains of a WWII aircraft, tentatively identified as a Focke-Wulf Fw-190 Würger, which entered service a month after the Battle of Crete in June of 1941.
Links
- The 2008 Expedition - Image Gallery
- The 2008 Expedition - Archaeological Artifacts and Map of Survey Area
- The 2008 Expedition - Photos and Video of the aircraft wreckage from the 2008 survey.
- The 2008 Expedition - Participants
