Our First View of a Real Cistern!

Today was our first day of gathering data from the cisterns. We took a ferry to the Gozo fields and were able to successfully obtain two cistern mappings. The euphoria and excitement levels were very high today, and we had an interesting day of rain, makeshift shelters, and even seeing a fish!

We began our journey at 7:30 AM this morning and we got back around 5 PM. We took a bus to the ferry, and then a bus again to the Gozo fields.

Ferry from Malta to Gozo

The view was beautiful, there were luscious green fields and flowers all around us. We were thrilled to get our first view of a real cistern!

Our First Experience in the Gozo Fields

Before we got settled in, we had to take a "rainbow" picture. 

ICEX Team (minus me, Jane, and Spencer) 

It was raining when we arrived so we had to brainstorm ways to protect the generator. Luckily, there was a shed with metal scraps and wood pieces so we made a makeshift shelter! We originally set up our control box inside a nearby shed, but when it stopped raining we relocated to be closer to the cistern.

Makeshift Shelter for Generator

While some were setting up the equipment, Jeff was helping Amanda and I set up the log books. We keep one log book for drawings of the sonar scans and the ROV heading.

Setting up Log Books

 Here is the outside of the first cistern we mapped. The cistern was circular and we took several scans at the different levels. The cistern appeared to taper as we moved up the cistern.

Gozo Fields Cistern #14

 Everyone was working hard to help the cistern mapping go smoothly, and it did! Our research partner, George Azzopardi, was very interested in determining if two of the cisterns were connected. We were able to find an interesting passageway in the direction of the projected cistern. The passageway was towards the upper part of the cistern and wasn't full of water, so we were unable to determine a full path to the adjacent cistern. It will be exciting to see how the sonar readings turn out!

Overview of the Group

Log Books all Set Up!

Setting Up

Deploying the ROV

And last but not least, we spotted a fish in the second cistern! The picture from the GoPro didn't come out that well but tomorrow we are going back to the Gozo fields and I am hopeful we will spot another fish. A fish was very unexpected to see in a cistern and I'm curious as to how it got there!

Super Cool Fish

Today was an amazing first day of mapping the cisterns and I am looking forward to going back out tomorrow! I'm currently working on adding more cisterns to the WebGL code and those should be up and running in the next few days!