Thinking optimistically for a moment, does this mean that sufficient funds are in the coffer to set things up for a 2016 return, to have a proper look at the anomaly?
I wish that were the case but we had to go significantly into debt just to make the expedition happen. Fortunately the board member who loaned us the money is not in a huge hurry to get it back. Right now my main concern is that we are able to preserve the organization as we re-group, re-assess, and re-invent.
As for the anomaly...I gather the GPS data is still pending?
Yes.
What size storm would be required to affect movement on a 30+ foot object 600 feet underwater?
Good question. I don't know and I'm not sure than anyone can give us a reliable answer. I do know that the island got clobbered some time between the last Google Earth image in November 2014 and our arrival on June 13, 2015. Severe Tropical Cyclone Pam in March is the probable culprit and the just-budding re-growth of beachfront vegetation looks about right.
Along these lines....were there any plans...or are there any plans...to re-validate (via sonar?) that the anomaly still sits where it did in 2012?
A sector-scan sonar mounted on an ROV would do the job. We had one on the ROV this trip.
The problem is, any on-site investigation means chartering a ship and appropriate ships are hard to find, hard to schedule and invariably expensive.