The island of Ventotene is a hive of activity with hundreds of people enjoying the long weekend of the feast of St Peter & St Paul. Our weekend has been equally busy with the project culminating in the operations of today and tomorrow. We set off in the morning to prepare the equipment (needed for today’s operations) and ROV. Once on site, we launched the shot line with specialized equipment attached. Once on the seabed, we launched the ROV and proceeded to inspect whether the equipment landed as planned. The deepsea divers came on board the ISIS to view the situation on the seabed. Following some minor arrangements Roberto & Marco proceeded to kit up and execute their dive. On the seabed, ROV and divers combined to carry out a delicate and important operation. Months of planning were boiling down to these very intensive twenty minutes. Step by step the team, made up of three vessels, 2 trimix divers, four scuba divers and the ROV, carried out the plan to perfection.

Once seabed operations were completed we sent down two Carabinieri divers ensure that operations from 50 metres to the surface continued smoothly. The three vessels mobilized to conclude the day’s operations and the ISIS returned to port in the early afternoon.

Tomorrow we will carry out a similar operation on another site. This will bring a conclusion to this phase of our project. Following Tuesday’s press conference we will visit one other site to gather some last fragments of data and bring to an end the Ventotene 2009 chapter.