'
•
The report by a young sponge diver of "a metal biscuit with ears" led to INA's most significant discovery so far, the Bronze Age wreck at Ulu Burun. and estimated its date as the 14th or 13th century BC. This ship brought Bass full circle, back to the Bronze Age after more than two decades excavating ships from other periods. The site lies in 160to200feetof
another member of his team is waiting to ciples behind this technology are not take over his equipment. new, but the hardware has come a long The divers do not use scuba tanks. way in thirty years. In 1963, a Turkish Their equipment consists of flippers , sponge dragger, Mehmet Im bat, netted a mask and a breathing regulator that's statue of an African youth outside the connected to the boat's low-pressure Bay of Yalikavak , two hours from compressor by a long hose. A Bodrum. Two years later, Bass spent the sponge boat usually has only one summer searching the same area with an regulator. Deep, long dives with underwater video camera towed behind little decompression dramatically a small fishing boat. Finding nothing, he increase the possibility of the returned with a team of specialists from bends, the painful and often crip- the Scripps Institute of Technology, who pling sickness which strikes divers brought with them a side-scanning sowho go too deep or stay too long nar. The sonar "fish" transmitted highwithout slowly decompressing in frequency sound pulses across the seashallow water before resurfacing. bed and then listened for the echoes No one fully understands the from any protruding object. In only two bends, which can strike one diver days, they located an acoustic target in who rigidly follows the US Navy 288 feet of water that might be a mound decompression tables and "for- of amphoras. In 1991, we returned to give" another who routinely ex- investigate the target with a submarine. ceeds them ... until one day when Although it is clearly a massive amINA ' s 20-meter research vessel Virazon--originally he too is hit. phora mound, no statues are visible and a US Army T-boat. Before the water at Ulu Burun, near the town of sponge blight struck, A stone ship's anchor begins to rise to the swface at Ulu Burun. Kas, on Turkey's south coast. With a there were at least cargo of over 300 copper ingots , raw twenty boats working glass, ivory, exotic woods and resins, the Turkish coast. Of and the chance find of a gold scarab the hundred-odd divers, bearing the name of Queen Nefertiti , the at least one was usually Ulu Burun wreck has become one of the paralyzed or killed each most important archaeological finds of year. How many more this century. Yet after nine seasons of suffered only painful excavation, now under the direction of warning symptoms, we Bass's student, Cemal Pulak, the nation- do not know. Most of ality of the ship remains a mystery. the serious cases would In recent years, the large fleets of come to our research sponge boats operating off the Turkish vessel, Virazon , for coast have dwindled, and divers ' reports treatment, or take an 11are thinning out, in part due to the blight hour taxi ride to the which attacked the sponges a few years Turkish Navy decomago. Sponge fishing is rough and haz- pression chamber in ardous work, and tourism is luring the Istanbul. But the others captains to more lucrative and less dan- often attempted their gerous day charters. own cure by going back When they do go out, usually five or underwater to a shalsix divers will live together for up to four lower depth , then months on one 25-foot sponge boat, slowly resurfacing over sleeping on deck at night among fuel a period of many hours. tanks and the fishy-smelling catch, and Sometimes they were diving three or four times each day to cured, sometimes they depths and exposures which the rest of made their symptoms the diving world would never consider. worse. Commercial divers, for instance, are not The sponge divers permitted to dive deeper than 165 feet who remain may be the without a diving bell. But the shallower last of their breed. Forsponge beds have been picked nearly tunate! y, remote-sensclean, and the Turkish diver must go ing technology is ofdeeper, often to 200 and even 230 feet, fering an increasingly to find enough sponges to make his work attractive alternative in worthwhile. Before resurfacing, he takes the search for producalmost no time for decompression, since tive sites. The prinSEA HISTORY 68, WINTER 1993-1994