Malta 2009 Season

The Project
The main aims of the project were the following: 1. to document the various sites that had been surveyed over the past three seasons and 2. to start exploring a new stretch of coastline off the coast of Malta.

Project Operations
In order to achieve objective 1 Aurora deployed its Seaeye Falcon ROV in the late summer. A number of successful dives were executed on the sites and both still photographs and video footage were captured. For objective 2 AURORA deployed its Klein 3900 side scan sonar system. The total survey area measured approximately 7 square kilometres.

Finds
The area with numerous cultural artefacts was systematically filmed and photographed with hundreds of still photographs being shot. This season enabled us to visually confirm the diverse nature of this archaeological site. It is clear that cultural artefacts spread over a wide area of the seabed date from different chronological periods with Punic material lying side by side with objects from a later Roman period. An in-depth systematic study is ongoing and will eventually lead to a better understanding of this complex site.

The ROV was once again deployed on the ancient shipwreck that was originally filmed in 2008. We used the ROV so as to obtain a series of photographs that could eventually be stitched together to form a photomosaic. Other photographs were taken so as to better understand the origin of this vessel and its cargo.

The new survey area also proved to be very successful. Following five days of surveying at medium resolution we then met to select some of the more interesting targets which we then proceeded to record using the high frequency sonar on the Klein 3900. We successfully identified a number of relatively recent targets including a number of undiscovered shipwrecks that look relatively recent (last three centuries) and plane from world war II which seems to be in pristine condition. Furthermore, we obtained a superb sonar image of the HMS Stubborn, a wartime submarine that was scuttled off Malta to be used in submarine hunting operations. It’s location is known to local divers but the sonar image will play an important role in long-term management and conservation of this site.

Future Work
Aurora plan to return to Malta in 2010 in order to continue the photographic and video recording of the unique ancient site as well as to visually explore the targets discovered in the new survey area.