This morning AURORA hosted a press conference to announce the results of the first season of the Messina Project. The mayor was on board as were representatives from the local partners including the Superintendence of the Sea. We announced the discovery of two ancient shipwrecks that we located off the Sicilian coast. One site consists of mixed amphorae whereas the secon is mainly made up of ballast stones, lead ingots and grinding stones (small flour mills). The latter site has all three anchors in situ just off one end of the wreck. The footage and photos of these remarkable finds were well received by all present and a couple of the images will be posted on this site. More images and video footage will soon be posted to our website.

What a day! Yesterday evening the team worked late to set up the rov to be ready for this morning. The plan was to visit three sonar targets that struck us as being very distinct. We were joined on board by Craig, our director and co-founder of AURORA.

After heading for site one the rov was deployed together with technical divers who filmed the entire operation. After the divers completed their task and ascended for a long decompression we set off to the other two sites. Unfortunately, we cannot say anything at this point as a press conference is planned for tomorrow morning. However, it will be worth watching this space…tune in tomorrow!

We worked relentlessly to try and complete as much of the side scan areas as possible. Outside of the Straits we are working off Capo Nauloco, a large headland made up mostly of sand. A large naval battle was fought in this area in 36BC – fought between 600 ships of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa and Sestus Pompeius. Although we have not set out to specifically search for remains related to this battle one can’t help but imagine some of the targts we are detecting point to the location of the event.

Over the past days we were joined by one of our local partners, Gianmichele, to film the ISIS in action!