I am currently swamped with work, and seeing as there are only so many hours in the day, I wanted to quickly share some news with you guys before I rush off. Remember me geeking out about researchers who were going to use an exosuit to search the wreck of the 2000 year old shipwreck which yielded the Antikythera mechanism? Well, it hasn't happened yet, but it's still news worthy.




That is a video of the exosuit and its diver, Dr. Brendan Foley. He is the head of the American section of the international underwater expedition which boasts members of a variety of different ethnicities and disciplines which has spent the last two years preparing for the challenges ahead. The biggest of these, he says, is whether they will be able to get below the wreck and dig underneath, adding to previous searches of the surface of the shipwreck conducted by the sponge divers who discovered it in 1900 and Jacques-Yves Cousteau in 1976.

"The ship was used for commercial purposes and we can speculate that there are more items to be found from its valuable cargo, which will most likely be very well preserved. We are also certain of the existence of a second wreck near the one where sculpture, amphorae and the mechanism were discovered. It is 250 meters away and was carrying similar ceramic objects. We discovered it about two years ago. It was obviously following the same route and may have been traveling with the ship carrying the [Antikythera] mechanism."

The exhibition in Athens on the finds of the wreck that went down in the second quarter of the 1st century BC--'The Shipwreck of Antikythera: The Ship – the Treasures – the Mechanism'--has recently ended, and is now on its way to Switzerland, where it will go on display in 2015. The dive for more treasure is scheduled to take place in September 2014, and will last a month.