Author: aswpadminis

ASI’s last Lunch & Learn Tour took us to dozens of clients nationally.  The positive feedback made the thousands of miles worthwhile. This year we are offering a new collection of short videos that will show you what we have been up to for the past year.  As always, we will buy pizza for your team.  During our last tour season we were not able to visit with all of the folks who requested one.  To try to better manage … Continue reading “The Lunch and Learn Season is upon us.”

It’s not every day that you get invited to be an on-camera participant at a media event. Aqua Survey’s president, Ken Hayes, was invited to talk about what his company is doing to help their client Hill International make Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Living Breakwaters on Staten Island (New York City) a reality.  Utilizing a 60 million dollar design budget, the goal of this project is to reduce wave action and coastal erosion along the island’s shoreline in the Tottenville section, … Continue reading “‘Living Breakwaters’ Storm Barrier Project Taking Shape”

There is a lot of discussion as to whether New York City should dredge in Gravesend Bay, just south of where Aqua Survey documented the presence of a huge pile of unexploded ordnance (UXO). The UXO is right under the Brooklyn side of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Dredging needs to be performed to provide access to a proposed waste transfer station in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. We used Side Scan Sonar to define the UXO piles near the Verrazano Bridge.  Most believe the … Continue reading “Bombs in New York Harbor”

The 2014 Sediment Symposium at the Liberty House Restaurant located in Jersey City goes down in the record books as one of the best events of the year! Nine highly qualified speakers engaged the audience with the following topics: • Alex Lechich, Author, A Storm in Port: Keeping the Port of New York and New Jersey Open speaking on the Historical Perspective of Sediment in the NY/NJ Harbor • Steve Panter, Sr. Consultant, Fleming-Lee Shue, speaking on Exploratory & Graphical … Continue reading “2014 Sediment Symposium”

What is that?  What are they looking for?  Are they looking for bombs?  During the month of December a jet helicopter towing a 30-foot wide glider was watched by thousands of Florida’s Treasure Coast beach-goers. The Army Corps of Engineers at Fort Pierce knew what our helicopter was doing as did several historic shipwreck enterprises.  Aqua Survey was using a new technology called a Potassium-Vapor Magnet Gradiometer to survey about 70 square miles of coastline and near-coastal waters for Horned … Continue reading “Horned Scullies, Bombs & Treasure”

On a recent layover in Thailand to continue our work with UXO (unexploded ordnance) in Laos, a few of us at ASI seized the opportunity to venture outside of Bangkok for a day.  What we found was the Damnoenssaduak floating market.  Consisting of an intricate network of canals, it’s a writhing medley of commerce where everything from exotic fruits to touristy kitsch are hawked daily. Named after a historical canal of the same name, the original Damnoenssaduak was constructed under … Continue reading “A Floating Market, a King and a Father of Science and Technology”

The meeting with Ravenscroft was taking an unexpected turn. Reaching into a box, she pulls out a skull with one hand and with the other slides a flimsy, dull looking metal plate onto its forehead.  She muses, “One, two thousand years ago she was buried with a fine silver plate. Now it’s more silver oxide than anything.” Her “office” has dozens of neatly organized piles of stones placed throughout the room on sturdy bench tables, and boxes everywhere… perhaps more … Continue reading “An Archeological Race Against Time”

“Antiquity is the aristocracy of history.” -Alexandre Dumas Père Dwarfed by a penny, its delicate filigree metal-work could easily be crushed between your fingers.  Yet, amazingly, this small gold bead has survived nearly four hundred years on the bottom of the sea. Most likely once part of a rosary, the bead experienced markedly better luck than the ship that carried it, the Santa Margarita.  The Margarita along with her sister ship the Nuestra Senora de Atocha were part of a … Continue reading “HANDLE WITH CARE: Surviving the Centuries”