Writings
All things BHR-related tend to slow down in the winter, as we
wait to see if there will be a 2013 expedition with either the French or US
Navy (or maybe both). This is a good time to work on things like publications. I
have recently co-authored a commentary piece for a marine technology journal
about the importance of the US-FR Navy partnership within the context of the
BHR search. I had the great honor of
sharing authorship with Admiral John Harvey, USN (Ret.) (Commander, Fleet
Forces Command), and Rear-Admiral Bruno Deméocq (Deputy Commander of the
Atlantic Surface Fleet, French Navy) who heads the French BHR efforts. Both gentlemen have been tremendously
supportive of the project for years now, and are in large part responsible for
its success and sustainability. I will post a link to our publication as soon
as it becomes available, hopefully in a couple of weeks.
The Mighty P3
I’m hearing that there is the possibility for another Orion P3
aircraft mission (see earlier post in this blog) to fly over our search area
and complete the survey that was started last spring. (The lady pilot who flew
the last mission is a U.S. Naval Academy graduate – yeah!) If they can do this and fill in gaps in the
data previously collected, we could create a magnetic anomaly map of the
area. The iron ballast mound of the BHR
might give off enough magnetic signature to show up as an anomaly, but we can’t
be sure since we’ve never used the P3 for this type of survey before. I wonder
if they’ll take me with them?
The Target
At the end of this year’s mission, I posted sonar images of
the two best targets we had found. After
the sonar data was processed and mosaicked (put all the snapshots together to
see the big picture), there seems to be more to one of the targets than we
originally thought. In this image, it
looks like there is a debris field that measures approximately 25 meters in
length and 10-15 meters across. 
