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

“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

“(the) gun was just pulled from the canal behind America’s most famous haunted house. It could change everything we thought we knew about the grisly murders that took place there 38 years ago.” Read the entire article here.

Aqua Survey was contracted by LA-based documentary-maker Ryan Katzenbach who had been researching the infamous 1974 DeFeo family mass murder in Amityville, New York. Police at the time recovered one weapon, a .35 caliber Marlin 336 hunting rifle. Based on his research, Katzenbach suspected a second weapon, a snub-nosed .38, was also in the killer’s possession the night of the murders. He called in Aqua Survey to perform an EM survey of a section of canal near the scene of

It’s official! NASA astronaut Dr. Rick Linnehan will be giving a special presentation to the attendees of the 2012 Mid-Atlantic Contaminated Sediment Symposium.  A veteran of four space flights, Dr. Linnehan has logged over 58 days in space, including 6 EVAs (spacewalks) totaling 42 hours and 11 minutes. In August 2009 Linnehan returned to the Astronaut Office after completing a Master’s degree in Public Administration at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in Boston, MA.  Dr. Linnehan is currently assigned

Archeological diver and Aqua Survey employee Eric Wartenweiler Smith recently returned from an expedition in Egypt diving on Cleopatra’s sunken palace as part of renowned underwater archeologist Franck Goddio’s dive team.  Read on to find out his thoughts on: -Life in post-revolution Egypt -Tantalizing news on what still waits to be found in the murky depths of Aboukir Bay -The future of underwater survey technology Aqua Survey would like to welcome Aqua Survey employee and archeological diver Eric Wartenweiler Smith

Due to the renovation of the Panama Canal, the Bayonne Bridge is about to receive a similarly impressive upgrade. Read on to find out more about the construction of this fascinating bridge and its currently proposed upgrade. Plus: What services is Aqua Survey providing to support harbor expansion? Last week Peter Zantal, a general manager at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced that the raising of the Bayonne Bridge by 60 feet would be completed by

Traveling everywhere from gold mines in Laos to military testing grounds near Puerto Rico, and having used just about every conceivable form of transportation from airplane to elephant to do it, it’s been a busy month for Aqua Survey founder Ken Hayes.  Read on to find out more. Did you ever live through a month that no amount of imagination could have ever envisioned? I am in that month right now.  I have traveled to dozens of countries for business

Notes from the Field: Ancient Oysters “Recently we were collecting sediment cores in New York in support of a harbor deepening project. The goal was simple, penetrate deeply until the glacial till is reached. This was a reasonable goal for one of our heavy-duty vibracoring systems. When the sample was retrieved and split open we discovered a strata of oyster shells from an ancient bed that most likely dates back to the Pleistocene era (1.8 million to 10,000 years ago).”

This past week, Flemington-based Aqua Survey participated in a forensic investigation that is looking for new evidence in a murder case that dates back to the mid-1970’s. On November 13th 1974, six members of the DeFeo family were found shot to death in their Amityville, Long Island, New York home.  The eldest son Butch DeFeo was tried and convicted for the murders.  The aftermath of the shootings served as the inspiration for the 1979 film, The Amityville Horror. Aqua Survey

Earlier this week Aqua Survey unveiled their latest innovation at the Western Dredging Association’s 31st conference in Nashville, Tennessee.  Beach replenishment projects face costly setbacks when munitions are dredged ashore.  Providing a simple solution to an expensive problem, the Dredger’s Smart Pipe will alert its operator when metallic objects are traveling through their dredge’s discharge pipeline.  The system will detect munitions, bomb fuses and other metallic objects. Aqua Survey will provide technician training.  Orders for the Dredger’s Smart Pipe are

Environmental Risks of UXO/MEC Contaminants in Sediment Addressed by Laboratory Toxicity Testing Jon Doi, Ph.D., Aqua Survey, Inc. The primary focus of the detection and removal of underwater munitions has been for the acute effects on humans, i.e., bombs exploding.  However, the greater concern may be on the environmental effects of bomb constituents (propellants and explosives) leaking from bombs for considerable lengths of time. This talk will cover a number of topics on the surveying, sampling and laboratory toxicity testing

Aqua Survey’s Dr. Jon Doi will be a platform speaker on Friday April 15th at the THIRD INTERNATIONAL DIALOGUE ON UNDERWATER MUNITIONS held in Sopot, Poland.  The title of Jon’s presentation is Environmental Risks of UXO/MEC Contaminants in Sediment Addressed by Laboratory Toxicity Testing.  As excited as we are to see Dr. Doi and the other speakers present, being in country with as rich a cultural history as Poland also has a charm to it.  Take for instance, the castle

Specialized Sampling and Surveying in Challenging Environments Aqua Survey has just acquired its first landing craft-style jet-boat. This shallow-draft vessel will be able to work at sea and also be able to land personnel and heavy equipment, such as all-terrain vehicles and vibracoring equipment, right on a beach. We have named the 30-foot research vessel The R/V Tesla to honor the inventor Nicola Tesla who gave the world electric motors, electromagnetic coils, fluorescent lighting and radio-controlled electric boats. Tesla was