We've had a lot of eyeballs on these photos - expert and amateur - and it is apparent that there's nothing there that explains the anomaly even though we had pretty good coverage in the area where the anomaly is supposed to be. The lat/long coordinates provided to us by Ocean Imaging Consultants (OIC) were based on AUV position data provided by Phoenix International, the contractor who ran the sonar-equipped AUV. An exhaustive review of Phoenix navigational procedures and performance over the last few weeks lead to the inescapable conclusion that the AUV position data are unreliable and can be off by dozens of meters. The most logical and likely explanation for the absence of useful information in the photos is that the Hail Mary operation was looking in the wrong place.
Ric,
Your post quoted above says your conclusion that the Hail Mary imaging attempt missed the side-scan sonar "anomaly" is based on your review of the procedures used by and the navigational performance achieved by Phoenix during Niku VII in 2012.
You have also stated in earlier posts that nothing observed in the Hail Mary images appears to indicate you were imaging portions of the sonar anomaly.
Several questions:
(1) Can you give specifics on the details of your analysis of the 2012 navigation data and prodecures -- what exactly you looked at, what errors you saw, what flaws you concluded existed in the procedures used by Phoenix?
(2) Can you give specifics on what observations you looking for in the Hail Mary images that would have led you to conclude you did actually image the sonar anomaly? (Or, conversely, what did you not see in the images which supported your conclusion that you did not image the anomaly?)
Thanks,
Jeff P.
Modified to fix misplacement of [/quote]