In his first big assignment since retiring as director of Knight Science Journalism at MIT, veteran science journalist Phil Hilts recently accompanied teams from the Greek Government and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to one of the world’s most famous marine archaeological sites: the wreck of the Roman treasure ship Antikythera.
The site has been visited before, notably by sponge divers in 1900 and by Jaques Cousteau’s team in 1976. It has yielded amazing treasures like a life-size bronze of Herakles (or perhaps Paris) and the intriguing Antikythera Mechanism, an analog computer designed to predict solar eclipses and other astronomical events. But because of the wreck’s depth – 135 to 185 feet – divers have never been able to spend much time on the bottom. It’s estimated that as much as 80 percent of the ship remains unexplored, Hilts says.
With a suite of new technologies in hand, including robotic 3D mapping gear, computerized rebreathing devices, and a pressured “Exosuit” for human divers, WHOI and the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports arrived at the wreck site off the remote island of…