1991 Photos

[Ric Gillespie]

By request from a Forum member who has been listening to Season Two of The Erhart Expedition podcast and here are photos from that trip.
The first shows the 7,000 lb. winch being lowered onto the top deck of the expeditions ship R/V Acania, which resulted in some interesting rolling and swaying in heavy seas.
The next photo shows the team for the 1991 expedition, including the TIGHAR team, the Acania crew, the Oceaneering sonar team, the NBC cameraman, and the life photographer.
The third photo shows Acania off Nikumaroro.
The fourth photo shows, left to right, the late Veryl Fenlason, Pat Thrasher, Your Obedient Servant, and LIFE magazine photographer Frank Fournay, whose French accent rivaled the French knights on the castle wall in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

[Ric Gillespie]

A few more:
An Oceaneering technician preparing to reply the sonar fish.
The excavation of the small grave.
The photo of me on the reef that is not at all what it appears to be.

If you're not listening to the podcast episodes you're missing a good story.  They're free and available from all major podcast distributors.

[Andrew M McKenna]

That is the sonar fish that was subsequently lost, yes?

You can see the section that Ballard found in 2019.

A McKenna

[Ric Gillespie]

That is the sonar fish that was subsequently lost, yes?

Yep, that's the one.  Pretty good testimonial to the thoroughness of Ballard's search.

[Don White]

Seeing what is visible of the Acania, I wondered if she were a retired USCG vessel. She was, but as her second career. She was built as a yacht in 1929, and became a Coast Guard ship in WWII. She seems to have had a very checkered career after that, including several changes of owners and names, both before and after TIGHAR's 1991 expedition. This is the most recent info I found: https://www.gdiving.com/project/rv_acania_salvage/

LTM,
Don

[Ric Gillespie]

All covered in the podcast.

[Don White]

I'm catching up on the podcasts now.