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Jeremy Weirich: The 2004 Titanic Expedition
For the 2004 Titanic Expedition I was the chief archeologist under the guidance of Dr. Robert Ballard. Dr. Ballard went back to Titanic last year to do a comparative analysis to see how Titanic has changed since he first discovered it in 1986. As chief archeologist it was my responsibility to make sure this was a look – don’t touch mission. We didn’t take any artifacts and we didn’t ‘t land on the site using the ROV’s. We just used the high definition video images to do comparative analysis. Plus we also acquired some oceanographic sensory data to tell us about the water quality. It’s that type of instrumentation that can tell us more about how Titanic is degrading. That information will help us better manage information about other shipwrecks throughout the world.
To prepare for the 2004 Titanic Mission I had to look back at some of the prior work that had been done on the Titanic, including Dr. Ballard’s work as well as the work the Russians and French have done over the years. There have been several visitors that have gone to the Titanic and throughout the years a large amount of scientific data has been acquired. The idea of going out there was to make sure that we didn’t necessarily repeat science that has been done there but add to it; to continue on from the baseline and add things to it.
During the 2004 Titanic Expedition we learned a great deal that can be applied to other shipwrecks throughout the world. In the scope of marine archaeology Titanic was a great test bed to see how shipwrecks degrade biologically, chemically, and physically. Some say Titanic has been loved to death. A lot of people have gone down and visited: tourists, explorers, and salvagers. By looking at this mission we are able to determine what are those affects and if it happens to Titanic what will happen to other shipwrecks. That type of data will be very useful to us. The most exciting this about Titanic this year was the video images that came back. It was the first time we were actually able to take a ROV and conduct specific scientific missions using high definition images. This allowed us to zoom in on very small artifacts that were ten meters away and to stay there on hours upon end. If we were using a submersible we would have to come back to the surface many times. Some of our dives lasted as long as three days and to be able to take our time and systematically do our job was just amazing.
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