By SEAN F. DRISCOLL
sdriscoll@capecodonline.com
August 10, 2014
 |
Theotokis Theodoulou, an archaeologist in the
Greek Ministry of Culture, prepares for a dive in a hard metal dive suit known
as the exosuit during training at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in
Woods Hole. Theodoulou will join WHOI researcher Brendan Foley in an 30-day
archaeological expedition to the Antikythera, an ancient Greek ship in the
Agean Sea, in September.
Alex Deciccio |
WOODS HOLE – Yes, the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution is taking the first archaeological expedition in 40 years to
explore an ancient Greek shipwreck. Yes, it promises to be the most exhaustive
examination of the famous site ever done. And yes, the last person to
officially visit the site was Jacques Cousteau.
But all anyone wants to talk about is the exosuit.
But all anyone wants to talk about is the exosuit.
The exosuit is a hard metal dive suit that
allows divers to reach depths of 1,000 feet and see and manipulate objects
under water, and eliminates the need for a lengthy decompression routine that
is typically necessary after dives.
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ABOUT THE EXOSUIT
Weight: 500 to 600 pounds
Cost: with the construction of the suit and the
instrumentation, about $1 million
Endurance: can dive up to 50 hours at a time
Propulsion: four 1.6-horsepower thrusters
Equipment: includes a high-definition, shoulder-mounted
camera dubbed the “parrot cam” and a sonar system; a fiber-optic cable allows
the support ship to monitor the video and audio feeds and life support and
remotely pilot the suit if necessary
Source: Nuytco Research
But most people see an underwater Iron Man suit
making a guest appearance in an Indiana Jones movie. And in a place where
scientists drop mentions of their trips to Antarctica the way other people talk
about going to the mall, the exosuit has created quite a buzz around the Woods
Hole dock, said marine archaeologist Brendan Foley, the expedition's director.
“We can get pretty jaded. There's always cool
stuff around the dock,” Foley said. “But when we had the suit out and we were
doing training, we had a crowd of these grizzled WHOI science veterans with
their mouths agape. It's just cool.”
The exosuit wasn't created for science. It was
designed by Nuytco Research, a Canadian undersea technology firm, and before
being lent to WHOI it was being used by J.F. White Contracting Co., a civil
engineering firm based in Framingham. This will be its first test, and a
high-profile one, at that.
“The suit has never been deployed in combat, so
to speak,” Foley said. “It's a brand-new system, brand spanking new. This will
be one of its first operational deployments.”
A RARE DIVE
OK, so back to the science. Foley has been
invited by the Greek government to participate in a 30-day underwater
expedition to what's known as the Antikythera shipwreck. Named for the Aegean
Sea island off which the wreck was located, the Antikythera sank in about 60
B.C. It sat in nearly 400 feet of water for centuries until sponge divers
happened upon the wreck in 1900. The following year, divers on an expedition
found statues, glasswork and tools from the wreck.
Since then, the Greek government has approved
of only one expedition, in 1976 by Jacques Cousteau. His dives to the wreck
were chronicled in his television series “The Cousteau Odyssey” and resulted in
even more artifacts being returned to the surface.
To prepare for the first Antikythera expedition
in nearly 40 years, the members of Foley's team went to the site in 2012. They
explored the island waters and spotted hundreds of artifacts scattered over the
craggy seafloor, including pottery, the ship's anchor and some bronze objects
that, so far, have defied explanation.
On this trip, which begins Sept. 15, Foley will
locate and recover many of those items, and also will do detailed mapping using
an autonomous underwater vehicle and further explore the ship using special
scuba systems and, of course, the exosuit.
LEARNING TO DRIVE
Training on the use of the exosuit included a
week of practice off the WHOI docks with the institution's dive master, Ed
O'Brien, who was responsible for bringing the exosuit to the expedition. He had
heard about the technology at a conference and talked with both J.F. White and
Nuytco Research about using it for scientific means.
After his own round of training, O'Brien
started training the members of the expedition, which included Foley and
Theotokis Theodoulou, an archaeologist in the Greek Ministry of Culture and the
co-director of the expedition.
“Learning it is very intuitive,” O'Brien said
of the suit. “Within one week I can train a scientist to be capable of diving
down to 1,000 feet. Without the suit, getting them to dive to 130 or 150 feet
is a good half-a-year process. Anything beyond that is a good year of
dedication. The exosuit enables the scientist to access these depths without
the pure time consideration that a normal dive process would take.”
The suit is manipulated by thruster controls in
the hands, which turn the suit left and right, and gimbals in the feet that
control the suit's up-and-down movements and its roll. Also in the hands are
controls for the manipulator pods, which can be opened and shut to grab onto
objects or be locked into a particular position.
“That takes some getting used to,” Foley said
of the controls. “You're not just thinking about the positioning of your own
arms; you're thinking about the positioning of the suit.”
Foley has experience piloting submersibles, so
the learning curve wasn't steep. The real challenge, he said, will be learning
how to make the suit a useful tool for their dive.
“Doing actual work is going to take more hours
in the suit,” he said. “It's like watching your toddler learn how to walk. I
can do the functions, but I can't quite do it in the right order.”
J.F. White contractors will be part of the dive
team, Foley said, giving them some practice time as well. Their ultimate use of
the suit likely will be less glamorous than WHOI: the company's projects
include inspection and repair of wastewater lines.
The original sponge divers who found the
Antikythera wreck had only one dive suit and could spend only 10 minutes under
water, six of which were spent on the descent and ascent. In four-minute spurts
they explored the wreck, with another man diving in as soon as the previous had
finished his spurt of activity.
This expedition, albeit in a more high-tech
way, will mirror that routine, Foley said, thanks to one of the exosuit's main
technological advantages. It can maintain a cabin pressure that's identical to
the surface, eliminating the need for the diver to go through an extensive
decompression routine. That allows for the suit to rapidly return to the
surface, switch operators and return to the depths in short order.
“It makes working underwater very efficient,”
O'Brien said. “There's less downtime, and you can be more productive.”
MORE WORK AHEAD
When the expedition wraps up Oct. 15, the team
is expected to return with a broader range of artifacts and high-detail maps of
the world's richest shipwreck site. After the dive, DNA analyses will be run on
the artifacts, which the team hopes will include perfume and medicine bottles
and human remains; elemental analyses will be run on the recovered metals.
For all the science about to be unleashed on
the Antikythera wreck, no one really knows what the ship was up to. It could
have been carrying looted treasures bound for Julius Caesar. A more romantic
explanation that O'Brien posited was that it was full of the dowry of a young
woman set to be married.
The expedition may not unravel that mystery,
but even before it begins it has hit one benchmark, Foley said. The exosuit is
sparking the imagination and proving the value of manned exploration in an age
of robots.
“There's a value of the suit for science, but
the immediate return is that it's drawing a lot of attention to oceanography
again,” he said.
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