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Author Topic: Quick Summary of Fiji Princess trip to Nikumaroro  (Read 78687 times)

Ric Gillespie

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Re: Quick Summary of Fiji Princess trip to Nikumaroro
« Reply #15 on: July 05, 2015, 05:29:22 PM »

Great summary and video Mark!  I'll admit that I had my doubts about how your group would fare on Niku but you guys did a great job and made some potentially important discoveries.  My hat is off to you all. 
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Ted G Campbell

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Re: Quick Summary of Fiji Princess trip to Nikumaroro
« Reply #16 on: July 05, 2015, 05:40:22 PM »

Ric,
Great comment!  Now what about the $1000's the rest of us spent what do we get?
Ted Campbell
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richie conroy

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Re: Quick Summary of Fiji Princess trip to Nikumaroro
« Reply #17 on: July 05, 2015, 06:09:50 PM »

Welcome back Ric and Co

Boy you're in for some flak haha  ;)
We are an echo of the past


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Bill Lloyd

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Re: Quick Summary of Fiji Princess trip to Nikumaroro
« Reply #18 on: July 05, 2015, 06:39:36 PM »

I would not lose any sleep over the "armchair hindsight critiques from people who are not encumbered with information". Fedex owed you more than a weeks notice that they were not going to sponsor the shipping. I have used Fedex for years and the service is great, but their rates have almost doubled in the past year or so.
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Mark Gillespie

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Re: Quick Summary of Fiji Princess trip to Nikumaroro
« Reply #19 on: July 06, 2015, 06:29:11 AM »

Oh, the unbearable silence  :)
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Ric Gillespie

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Re: Quick Summary of Fiji Princess trip to Nikumaroro
« Reply #20 on: July 06, 2015, 06:31:16 AM »

Ric,
Great comment!  Now what about the $1000's the rest of us spent what do we get?
Ted Campbell

Don't worry Ted.  We have hundreds of photos and hours of video from this expedition that we'll be sharing with everyone.  For starters, Mark Smith is putting together a video sampler of drone footage.  It will knock your socks off. 
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Ric Gillespie

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Re: Quick Summary of Fiji Princess trip to Nikumaroro
« Reply #21 on: July 06, 2015, 06:42:30 AM »

Welcome back Ric and Co

Boy you're in for some flak haha  ;)

I'm no stranger to flak.
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Monty Fowler

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Re: Quick Summary of Fiji Princess trip to Nikumaroro
« Reply #22 on: July 06, 2015, 08:09:54 AM »

I have the aerial tour of Niku DVD, so I already have a good idea of what the island looks like from that angle.

I'm interested in one thing - The Photo.

LTM,
Monty Fowler, TIGHAR No. 2189 EC
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Ric Gillespie

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Re: Quick Summary of Fiji Princess trip to Nikumaroro
« Reply #23 on: July 06, 2015, 08:29:23 AM »

I'm interested in one thing - The Photo.

And what Photo would that be?
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JNev

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Re: Quick Summary of Fiji Princess trip to Nikumaroro
« Reply #24 on: July 06, 2015, 11:39:50 AM »

The one you're holding us all in suspense over, the capture from the submerged 'spider eye' (from many cameras) with the interesting stuff / lack of geo-anomaly to explain the anomaly, of course!

You guys pulled out all the stops to overcome that ROV glitch so hopes run high, of course!

I'm like Monty, done seen the pretty island, just show me the wreck and I'll be in Oxford on the next bus to kiss your favorite horse right on the... Well, I'll bring donuts, how about that?

...now you're being coy, bad boy, you're sitting on something cool, aren't you???   MUST is!
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« Last Edit: July 06, 2015, 11:42:13 AM by Jeffrey Neville »
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Ric Gillespie

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Re: Quick Summary of Fiji Princess trip to Nikumaroro
« Reply #25 on: July 06, 2015, 12:28:20 PM »

...now you're being coy, bad boy, you're sitting on something cool, aren't you???

I'm not sitting on anything cool.  On the contrary.  I'm sitting on a hot seat of criticism from Facebook trolls - including you.  I really didn't expect that.

There was no "spider eye."  In a last ditch attempt to get some imagery of the anomaly area the ROV team (Ron Bernier, John Clauss and Walt Holm) rigged the HD camera from the ROV on a line with the laser-scaler and a dive-light flash attached. For the hell of it, they also attached a GoPro camera rated to 70 meters.  Predictably it flooded and failed but they were willing to take the chance - any thing to get more pictures. They set the HD camera to take still shots every 5 seconds.  (They wanted 2 seconds but it took the flash 5 seconds to recharge.)  The plan was to go to the supposed anomaly coordinates in the skiff, set the contraption running, and lower it down.  The problem was figuring out when to stop lowering. If they waited until the line went slack, the lens of the camera would be resting on the bottom.  The solution was to add a 1.5 meter length of line below the camera with a dive weight on the end.  That way, when the line went slack the camera should be 1.5 meters off the bottom and in a good position to take photos.  They would then take in the line enough to get the dive weight off the bottom, move the skiff a bit, and drop it down again.

It was crude but ingenious and it mostly worked. They captured 170 high definition images of the bottom in the vicinity of the anomaly.   The high-definition photos are of excellent quality as you can see from the attached example. Many also overlap so we may be able to create a partial mosaic of the bottom. In the attached sample photo you can see the two red dots generated by the laser scaler mounted on the camera.  The dots are a set distance apart - 2.5 inches (64.2mm) - no matter how far away the subject is, so the size of observed features can be measured.  By matching the time in the metadata of each image with the time of GPS coordinates taken on the surface we should be able to trace the approximate trail of the camera and see how close we came to the calculated position of the anomaly. We already know that no airplane wreckage is immediately apparent in the acquired images but neither do we see any obvious geological explanation for the object in the sonar data.  Whether any conclusions can be drawn from the imagery remains to be seen.

Once we have the GPS coordinates plotted so we have some idea of where the photos were taken in relation to the supposed anomaly coordinates I'll make all of the images available for everyone to look at.  We can all play Find The Banjo.
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Bob Harmon

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Re: Quick Summary of Fiji Princess trip to Nikumaroro
« Reply #26 on: July 06, 2015, 12:54:06 PM »

In the attached sample photo you can see the two red dots generated by the laser scaler mounted on the camera.
I wonder if that fish went crazy when the laser dots moved. ;D
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Ric Gillespie

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Re: Quick Summary of Fiji Princess trip to Nikumaroro
« Reply #27 on: July 06, 2015, 12:58:26 PM »

I wonder if that fish went crazy when the laser dots moved. ;D

He appears in several of the images.  He apparently thought the rig was interesting.
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Bob Smith

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Re: Quick Summary of Fiji Princess trip to Nikumaroro
« Reply #28 on: July 06, 2015, 01:21:52 PM »

Wow! That's a pretty fancy fish. But he has no resemblance to a wheel or wing. Neither do the 2 red dots. You could have at least put a hook on the end of the sinker so we could have him for lunch. Or was fishing prohibited on this trip?
Bob S.
 
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Ric Gillespie

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Re: Quick Summary of Fiji Princess trip to Nikumaroro
« Reply #29 on: July 06, 2015, 01:34:02 PM »

Or was fishing prohibited on this trip?

The Fijian crew did lots of fishing with the permission of the Kiribati representative. 
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