TECH: Truk Lagoon

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Project Baseline Truk Lagoon

One of the interesting topside excursions is a lighthouse, which the Japanese built during their occupation. You will need a local guide to reach this abandoned artifact, rising several stories above the jungle, but the gorgeous views of the coastline will be worth the climb.

Marcus Blatchford continues his epic adventure on a mission to capture several of the iconic Truk Lagoon fleet via photogrammetry

Photographs by Marcus Blatchford and Pete Mesley www.petemesley.com

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Three weeks later I had processed eight complete shipwrecks, three aircraft wrecks, one engine room and numerous smaller chunks of wreckage. So what’s next? Truk isn’t the only place to have wrecks falling to pieces, this is happening all over the world

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With the trip now in full swing and the trip doctor onsite – worldfamous dive physician Dr Simon Mitchell - we were able to start Diver on the Nippo Maru

hitting the deeper wrecks. First on the hit list with its huge iconic bow, mini tank and trucks on fore deck and artillery field guns on the aft deck was the mighty Nippo Maru. At this point, Pete still hadn’t managed to fire up his scooter so we carried on with the idea of me doing the ‘broad brush stroke’ and Pete aiming for the finer details.

The deeper water anchorage usually has better visibility than the more-sheltered shallow anchorages we had dived thus far and on this dive was no exception. With the far better visibility I was able to be further away from the wreck while scanning which means more area is captured in each image. With the limited bottom time I was able to make full use of the scooter’s faster speeds instead of pottering along at cruising speed as before. The visibility and faster scooter speeds meant that when I reached the line to ascend, I was pretty confident that I had scanned the entire wreck in a single dive, only a lot of processing time would tell.

The next morning I woke and looked at my laptop with both excitement and anxiety. Had the process completed? Had the process worked? Not being able to hear the laptop cooling fans suggested that either the process was complete or there had been an error and processing has stopped. As I turned up the screen brightness, I was confronted with a beautiful point cloud of a complete shipwreck - it had worked! We had managed to scan the 140-metre-long, 6,000-ton monster in a single dive with just over an hour’s bottom time! With the hiccups with scooter endurance and lower than expected vis so far on the trip, to see this point cloud was the first complete success and a huge sigh of relief and moral boost. Once first blood had been drawn, the wreck models were coming in thick and fast.

Three weeks later I had processed eight complete shipwrecks, three aircraft wrecks, one engine room and numerous smaller chunks of wreckage

As the trip went on, Becky’s group had seen me lugging my camera/scooter combo onto and off boats each day, the questions were coming think and fast and I was invited to present a talk one evening in return for beer - in the interest of education, I gladly agreed to sample different beers and talk about the principles of photogrammetry and my journey through photogrammetry. Before long, time caught up with me and I had to return home where the real work would commence. Once home I was back with my powerful desktop computer and the processing began.

The Nippo Maru

Computers • O2 Cells • Gas Analysers Cables & Connectors • Rebreather Parts PathFinder Strobes • Sensors Tools • Solenoids

The San Francisco Maru

The Rio De Janiero Maru

Three weeks later I had processed eight complete shipwrecks, three aircraft wrecks, one engine room and numerous smaller chunks of wreckage.

So what’s next? Truk isn’t the only place to have wrecks falling to pieces, this is happening all over the world. At TekDiveUSA, Pete spoke of the Truk Project and suggested the start of a world wreck baseline project, much of which could be carried out as ‘citizen science’. People all over the world scanning their own favourite wrecks and sharing to a database that will not only have the capacity to show changes in future scans, but also to keep our wrecks ‘mummified’ in the digital age for people to view, reference and enjoy long after the wrecks are gone.

The project is also assisting other projects such as an Australian group interested in the oil contained in Pacific wrecks, the Major Projects Foundation, who track wreck degradation to hopefully prevent the huge amounts of oil contained within the wrecks from escaping. Such a release of the oil would have a huge impact on not only the local marine life but also the people whose life depend on the sea and its contents. n

The San Francisco Maru