There is a lot of activity in our region of interest by the gas/oil companies.  Presently the large deposits of oil/gas in the region is creating a lot of political conflict between Cyprus and Turkey, and Israel, since there’s so much money to be made there.  For our own interest, the work done by the oil companies means a lot of useful data being collected.  Unfortunately, they won’t share it.  They’ve already collected seismic data exactly over our sunken peninsula (collected by Noble Energy), which would allow us to not only see the seabed better but also what’s underneath it.

Lately I’ve been talking with the geophysicists in the region and they now believe that the sedimentation rate is about a meter (3.3 feet) every thousand years.  That’s a lot of silt sitting on top of whatever used to be there.  Way too much for sonar to be able to see it.  I’m fairly convinced that the only proof that would put the matter to rest would be core samples collected from the region, if they drill deep enough (and it would have to go way down, maybe a hundred feet into the seabed).  It would show what was happening in the area many thousands of years ago, whether it was above water or below water, and when.

The fact that our target is sitting on top of oil can only mean good things.  As Peak Oil continues to drive humanity to search for oil everywhere and anywhere, it means that there is going to be a tremendous amount of data coming from our region in the near future — core samples, surface topography, seismic data, you name it.  Not much investment money can be expected to come for our own purposes during the current global depression, but it looks like the oil companies will be doing a lot of the work for us.

The question is: when will they share their precious data?

Robert

I’ll be giving a presentation on the Eden/Atlantis project in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Wednesday July 27th at 7 p.m.  It’s going to be at University of Utah, in the Post Theatre.  We’ll make an attempt to stream it live through this site, if at all possible.  If not it’ll be recorded for future broadcast.  Stay tuned for updates…

Robert

Atlantis proposal final

I’ll be doing a live interview with the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation (CYBC) on Thursday, June 9, at 7 p.m. local time.  You can listen live here:

http://www.cybc.com.cy/eng/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=55&Itemid=89 click on “International,” hopefully that’s where it will be but I’ll try and record it just in case…

KATAKLYSMOS IS DISTANT MEMORY OF ATLANTIS FLOOD

Robert Sarmast is Returning to Cyprus for Festival, Documentary, Third Expedition

LIMASSOL, JUNE 1 – “The Kataklysmos festival is really about the great flood that sunk Atlantis, so it’s not surprising to me that the celebrations are unique to Cyprus,” says Robert Sarmast, an author and explorer who organized the world’s most scientific expeditions to find the lost city of Atlantis near Cyprus.  After a four-year hiatus, Sarmast’s team is returning to Cyprus this week to film a documentary during the Kataklysmos festival, and to prepare for another extraordinary expedition.

“The Cyprus theory was spelled out in my book, Discovery of Atlantis: the Startling Case for the Island of Cyprus, but it’s time to reveal this exciting subject through an Atlantis documentary that focuses exclusively on this island, and to lay the groundwork for the third expedition,” says the author.

Sarmast’s company, First Source Enterprises, LLC, conducted two highly publicized expeditions to find the remains of Atlantis in 2004 and 2006, which made headlines around the globe and established Cyprus as one of the best candidates for the legendary mystery.  The expedition crews included several researchers who previously worked on the Titanic discovery and utilized state-of-the-art deep sea equipment to survey the seafloor between Cyprus and Syria.  Their attempt to prove that the legendary lost isle was more than a myth was funded in part by the History Channel, private investors, and the CTO.

According to the explorer, “there is really a mystery within a mystery associated with this project, regarding Atlantis and the Garden of Eden, and it’s time for Cypriots to know the full story.”

The previous documentaries, 3D images and photos of the expeditions can be viewed at: www.discoveryofatlantis.com.

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If you would like more information about this topic, or to schedule an interview, Robert Sarmast can be reached by email at Robert@discoveryofatlantis.com.  After Saturday morning he will be available locally through Axel Schoeller at +357 99 447013.

I will be traveling to Cyprus in early June to begin the process of making a documentary about this work.  There have been two major documentaries about it already, but they weren’t written or produced by me or my team.  It has never been explained properly before, except in book form, and not too many people read books these days.  It needs to be explained in multimedia format, through a documentary, and the time has come.

Hopefully the Cypriot government will help us produce something memorable; but either way, it will be produced.  I’ll have meetings with the Cyprus Tourism Organization (CTO) once again, just like in the early days when we were hoping against all odds to make an expedition happen.

It’s been four years since I was on the island, and it will be exciting and interesting to be there once again.  Cyprus will always be a part of my life.  An interesting side note: after getting the story of Atlantis from the Egyptians, Solon sailed straight to Cyprus and helped an ancient king there build a city like the one he had heard about in the story of Atlantis.  If he only knew…

This documentary will delve more fully into the great mystery that is unfolding in and through this project.  This is about much more than just Atlantis, it’s about the Garden of Eden, but not exactly the biblical version of that story.

We’ll send out a press release shortly before my departure.  Once again I’ll be landing on that little island with hopes of creating something unique through sheer force of will.  But there’s more going on than my personal efforts here.  The universe watches on, and the gods will have to decide what they want to deliver.

Will humanity understand what’s at stake here during my own lifetime?  Who knows.  But press on we will…

There are no words for me to really explain the second expedition. The whole thing was like something out of a movie, from start to finish.  I suppose I’ll have to wait until the afterlife to get answers about some of the things that happened, bizarre as they were.

It was a miracle that it happened at all after all the hurdles we went through.  From the very beginning everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong, but thankfully I had a team of experts as part of my personal team and each one of them eventually became a vital link to our eventual success.

First,  Captain Bates noticed, just an hour before setting off, that the A-frame which leads the cable into the water had been welded wrong.  A new hole was drilled facing the right direction and the job wasn’t finished until the last minute before we finally set off.  When you spend a year planning and fundraising for an expedition, and there’s only two or three days at sea, the majority of which are wasted getting to and from your target area (ten hours each way in our case), every single minute counts.

While the A-frame was being welded, the first potential expedition killer arrived on the scene.  I was informed that the computer network for the sonar unit could not be brought online, because the software we had received for it was not the proper kind. It was a brand new gadget, straight out of the factory, and it was incompatible with the older software.  The sonar team from England could not make it work at all and everything stopped.  Of course, we had bought the ship’s time and they’re not responsible for mistakes or failures by an outside company which in this case was the sonar team from Scotland.  So if the computer or sonar failed, our limited time with the ship kept right on ticking away.

It was an absolute nightmare.  But Patrick Lowry, the same geophysicist that created our maps and models of the eastern Mediterranean went to work and had the problem fixed like the wiz that he is.  He got the system working within minutes of our launch time and there’s no doubt that if he had not come from the US to be on the ship the expedition would have never set off at all.  We all took a collective deep breath but the anxiety levels had reached a fever pitch before we even sailed off.  I knew we were in for a rough ride and the memories of the generator failure during the first expedition was still fresh in my mind, not to mention what the engineers had told me about this kind of work: “electricity and water just don’t mix.”

The documentary team from the History Channel filmed it all. Just before setting off I raised Michael’s flag, one of the proudest moments of my life. While I was raising it the host of the show asked me how it felt to be raising our flag after all the work and I said: “You don’t even know the half of it.” And it was true; he really didn’t know anything about the true significance of what we were about to do.  All those years of brutal work, all those eyes looking at what we were doing and the taunts by the critics, all the emotions connected with the historical significance… It was worth it all in the end.  God’s promise had been kept.

Next problem: just after setting off we lost the cameraman in a dingy with a bad motor, and it took an hour or two for us to get him back on the ship.  They had sent him out to film the ship from a distance despite my direct orders against it, knowing full well that every minute we had counted, and we wound up losing precious time rescuing the little boat which was for all intents and purposes lost at sea.  I was fuming and made it very clear to the captain of the ship that nothing outside of my directives should ever be attempted again.  The clock was ticking, and years of preparation and work were at stake.

Then, the equipment that checked the sonar’s position in relation to the ship failed. We would not know where the sonar “fish” was in relation to the ship, as it followed us three miles behind tied to the coaxial cable.

We were not making a beeline to the target area. As we approached, it was time to lower the sonar into the water.  This is where the expertise of the sonar team comes into play, and I had tried to get the best team available from Scotland, to no avail.  Their best teams were probably reserved for the oil companies that hired them with deep pockets.

The winch operator lowered the cable too fast into the water.  It’s critical that the sonar unit is lowered slowly so that as the ship tugs at it and pulls it along, the cable remains taut.  Otherwise, the cable sinks faster than the sonar fish itself and gets tangled up. We didn’t know about what was going on of course until it was too late.   All of a sudden all the computers stopped receiving sonar data, just like that.  They went blank and it was a hair-raising moment.

The ship was about to go over the target and the sonar was some three miles behind us, so if we missed this first line a critical chance was going to be lost.  We only had enough time for a few lines of gathering data since it takes so long to turn the ship around with the sonar behind it.  Each turn took three to four hours because of the long, slow turns the ship has to make.  If it turns too fast the cable will snap and break on the turn around and hundreds of thousands of dollars are lost, not to mention the failure of the expedition itself.

We slowed down so that they could retrieve the sonar unit.  Everyone gathered on deck to see what had happened, and the greatest fear was that the fish had been lost altogether.  There was no way to know until the winch slowly turned and brought up three miles of cable.  Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, we saw that the cable had been all tied up, with at least five or six big knots in it!  It was astounding. No one had seen anything like it; it was yet another potential “expedition killer.”

We couldn’t even get the fish out of the water because the knotted cable couldn’t go through the A-frame.  The sonar was stuck in the water, about ten feet down, and there was no way to retrieve it.   Luckily I had Axel Schoeller with me because he dove in using the Fireman’s emergency supplies and wrapped a rope around the sonar so we could bypass the hole in the A-frame and just yank the device onboard. It worked, but five more precious hours were wasted in cutting the knotted part of the cable out, and then getting all the wires inside the coaxial cable spliced and reconnected.  Meanwhile, our first line of data gathering was a failure.

While the sonar guys worked on reconnecting the cable, we had the ship go out again and prepare for another run over the target area.  We had to go out far enough so that the sonar could be lowered into the water again and three miles of cable released, in time to be moving about three knots on a straight and steady line.  This time, of course, the winch let the cable loose much slower.  On we went towards our target, the Acropolis Hill itself.

We only had enough time for about three lines now. I decided to cut perpendicular across the “wall” and get the reading right away with the sub-bottom profiler, so we could at last see what’s under it. Would it be stone? It was too thick to be a stone wall but what the heck could it be?  A covered canal? Did the two rivers from the summit bring water down and through the covered canal just as Plato had described it?  We had debated these topics for months and there was simply no way to know until and unless we checked it with the profiler.  It was anyone’s guess really.

Since we were going right over the wall I wanted to keep going straight so that we could also profile the summit itself, about 1.5 miles further down.  But there was an uphill climb that required some fancy flying of the sonar fish, using the winch to bring it up slowly as the seafloor elevated at an angle. The sonar guys weren’t thrilled with that idea since the fish could be lost if it hit anything on the seafloor.

After the first line, I wanted the captain to turn the ship around (another four hours), cover the summit once again, and slowly send the sonar back down the hill and cover another section of the “wall” at the base of the mountain.  That would still leave us enough time to turn around once more and get one more line in.

The first line was a failure, but we were about to go over the target again. We were going to lowered the fish just enough to be over the wall by about fifty feet, and then raise it according to the angle of the hillside so that by the time the fish reached the summit it would be just above that as well. This would give us a good view of what’s under the summit and also what’s under the L-shaped wall.

The stress in the control room, filled with computers and gadgets, cameras and crewmen, was astounding. You could have cut the air in that room with a knife. I went back and forth between the bridge and the sonar control room, making sure everyone was on the same page and all was proceeding as planned.  The two captains were on edge as well.  We edged towards the summit and dropped the sonar down to take readings.

Everything went well until just about five seconds before the fish crossed the wall and sent up the data.  I can’t express the feelings we felt next.  After losing the first line due to the coaxial cable getting knotted up, losing over five hours of research time and having to turn around and do things all over again, just second before we got our first glimpse of what was below the mud sitting on top of the “wall,” the computer screens just went blank!  The computer system had shut down exactly at the time the fish was going over the wall. Both Lowry and I were stunned with disbelief.   He turned around in awe and said “somebody up there must have something against you” or something to that effect. And  I was beginning to wonder, standing there with my jaw open. Were there forces trying to stop us? Why did it happen just then, just second before all those years of work were about to pay off?  It was all just too much.

We had lost another line now, and had only enough time for one final chance.  We had to turn around again, and soothe our frazzled nerves over a few hours while everyone prepared once more.  The system had been brought back online in the meantime, and everybody was exhausted from the ordeal.  To this day I have no idea what happened there.

Here we went again.  This time, thank God, all went well and we got our data. Time slowed down as the fish went over the wall and sent up data, which was converted to a graph and printed out, showing the structure of the seafloor up to a hundred feet or so below the seafloor.  It was a huge shock.   Lowry confirmed that the “wall” is a natural formation, and not man-made.  We could see the seafloor and a hundred feet below it. The lines clearly showed a natural formation.  It was a mind-numbing disappointment, but at least now we knew that the discovery process would not be so simple.

These natural anomalies, strange as they were even to geophysicists, proved to be at least a hundred thousand years old, meaning that they would have been around when human beings began to inhabit the region.  Back in those days, natural formation were nearly always used for defense of cities — rivers, mountains, or whatever could keep one safe from the constant attacks.  It’s how they always did it, like in Babylon where the Euphrates and Tigris rivers were used for defensive measures, one on each side of the city.

If they did put canals alongside that natural formation we would never know it. The data from sub-bottom profilers only provide a rough idea of what’s under a particular point, and no more.  If they made modifications to those natural formations, we are simply not able to tell, as the technology does not exist.

Here is where things are at as of 2011. We just don’t have the technology to be able to look under the mud. We cannot “x-ray” the seafloor in order to discover geometric, man-made ships below the mud. That would take tremendous energy and technologies that are not yet available.   You have to keep in mind that our understanding of anything relating to deep-sea research in the eastern Mediterranean is extremely limited.  When I began to organize the first expedition, I often asked the scientists and geophysicists about the level of sedimentation in the area.  How many feet of mud would accumulate every thousand years, I asked?  Our target was miles away from the shoreline, where very little sedimentation takes place.  But no one knew the answer.  The world’s top “experts” gave very different answers — one said it was an inch ever thousand years, another said a foot every thousand years.   An inch per thousand years mean we would expect only two or three feet of mud – not enough to hide large structures.  A foot every thousand years, however, would put everything out of sight.  But there was really no way to know unless we went and checked for ourselves, and in the end that’s exactly what we did.

What we had was a shot in the dark, and that’s about it.  One shot.  That rectangular valley under a mile of water today holds the world’s most incredible discovery, yet to manifest.  All we’ve done so far is inspect less than one-tenth of one percent of that valley, and even that was with inadequate technology.  But technological progress in underwater research is surging ahead, and who knows what will be available to us a year or a decade from now?  What new tools will we have at our disposal?  Will I one day be able to see what’s under the mud in that area, and look for geometrical shapes?  Will something completely unexpected come up during an unrelated dig in the area?

The only thing remaining now is to bring up a core sample from the deep sea.  Every inch of these geological samples, pushed into pipes that are drilled into the seabed, reveal the history of the area for thousands or even millions of years.  A proper sample, analyzed later in labs, could tell us the last time the area was above water.  Will it be five million years, or something much more recent?  I already know, but science will need to confirm it.

The next step will be to produce a documentary that will present this story to the world from our own perspective.  I’ll be traveling to Cyprus in June of 2011 to get things rolling.   It’s there, waiting to be found.  The story is far from over – it’s just the beginning.

As the technology develops, giving us greater abilities, I’ll be there…

Click on link to meet the Atlantis team

The question now was, is there a future for this project? We had successfully completed an amazing expedition, the first high-tech, scientific deep-sea search for Atlantis in history but where would it go from here?

After spending months pouring over the data and the images of the seafloor collected by the side-scan sonar, I had discovered that not only was the “wall” at the base of the mountain there (not an error caused by faulty data as some scientists had suggested), but there was a perfect 90 degree turn at its corner, where it met the river path coming down from the summit. I showed it to scientists and specialists in interpreting sonar data and they were all dumbfounded. Nobody could explain it away as a natural formation and they’d never seen anything like it before, and these were people that interpreted seafloor images all day long.

It was obvious that the next step would be to check out the “wall.” We could use what’s called a sub-bottom profiler to see what’s under the mud. Was there an actual stone wall under the formation? Was there a canal? Was there anything remaining after all these thousands of years? Would it be detected with the relatively primitive technology in the deep-sea research world?

One thing was clear: we wouldn’t know unless we tried, and this meant a second expedition. But where would the money come from and was I willing to go through that unbelievable process, or rather ordeal, again?

Spring was about to arrive and I knew I would be faced with the same challenge again. Would we be able to pull it off before the “weather window” closed in November when the sea became too rough for exploration? I had a few months, no funding, and a dream. But the first expedition had generated so much news and grabbed so much attention that I believed it may be possible.

Right around that time I was contacted by NBC News and was told that they were planning to produce a two-hour documentary about Atlantis. I told them where things were at with our project and after much conversation, it was decided that they would send Natalie Morales to Cyprus if I agreed to go back, and make the Cyprus theory a major component of their documentary. It was too good to pass up and I picked up once again and went back to Cyprus.

The following series of events which led to the second expedition are almost beyond belief in terms of the synchronicity that led from one step to the next in perfect precision.

The publicity generated by the NBC documentary gave me the impetus needed to ask for more funding from investors and the Cyprus government. Over half of Cyprus’ budget comes from tourism and they realized how the Atlantis connection would benefit the island. I told their reports on more than one occasion that their island would eventually become the center of the world’s attention due to the incredible nature of the discovery and I still believe it to be so.

After the fuss over the NBC documentary subsided, I was left in the island wondering where things would go next. A big part of the expense of forming expeditions is the “transit” costs. That’s the amount of money needed to bring over the scientists/vessel/equipment from wherever they are, and then send them back. In other words, it may take a week to get everything shipped to the area of research, then do actual research for a day or two, and then send the whole package back to where they came from, which may take another week. So even though the actual research is only two days, you have to pay for two weeks and two days, because for all intents and purposes you’re using that package for that amount of time regardless of actual research time.

Many times, researchers “piggy-back” on someone else’s project if they happen to be in the area. For instance, a ship may be doing some unrelated work in the area of interest, and the researcher will try to hop aboard and do his own work. So instead of having to pay for the transit costs, which are often much higher than the actual research costs, they just piggyback and thus only pay a fraction of what it would cost otherwise. So the way it works is you network with all the deep-sea research groups and try to find out who happens to be in the area. Deep sea research is a very limited arena and everyone knows everyone else since the numbers are few, the equipment is rare, and any scientist knows that piggybacking is often his only chance to get his work done.

Unfortunately, not much deep-sea research goes on in the vicinity of Cyprus so it made it that much more difficult. However, I learned from EDT and Phoenix Int. that an American company (treasure hunters) had a ship with an ROV and sonar equipment off the coast of Lebanon. They were looking for an airplane off the coast of Lebanon which, before going down decades earlier, was carrying a ton of gold. I contacted them and found out that their go-to guy was stationed in Beirut. I was on the plane within a few days and went to meet him.

The meeting was successful and I generated a lot of interest, and was told that they would get back to me. After a couple of months of work and networking we agreed that we would utilize their vessel and their equipment for a day or two while they were in the vicinity of our target area, with the condition that the documentary company they often used would get the film rights, which was fine by us.

After a whole lot of work and coordination/organization, we set a date and the investors and the Cypriots got all excited again for the second expedition. But, believe it or not, the Israeli/Lebanese war erupted just a week or two before we were supposed to sail and the Israeli navy ordered the vessel to leave the coast of Lebanon. And just like that it was all over — kaput.

Obviously this was a huge blow and for all intents and purposes, our hopes for a second expedition were dashed to pieces. I couldn’t believe it. I went up and down with this project like a never-stopping yo-yo.

In the meantime, while I had been speaking with the documentary production company, they had become interested in the project. So they weren’t ready to quit so easily, and obviously, neither was I. I told them that if they were still interested, I could arrange for the ship, the equipment and the personnel. This production company worked with the History Channel and they went to work convincing them that this would be a great documentary for their upcoming two-hour “Stargate Atlantis” season premier.

After much discussion the History Channel agreed but the budget was small for what I needed. And so I began to wheel and deal once again with all the vendors, getting them to lower their prices considerably in exchange for the publicity their companies and equipment would get through the HC documentary. Eventually the price was brought down to a level that would meet our budget.

The experience I had working with Captain Bates for the first expedition became essential to what would become a two-month organizational effort for the second expedition. The mistakes I had made in terms of the equipment needs during the first expedition had taught me well, and this time, I knew exactly what toys I wanted and where to get them. I had a brand new sonar unit from the US shipped to England where the winch and cable and operators were stationed. This sidescan sonar was state of the art and it was equipped with a sub-bottom profiler so I could view the seafloor and what’s under it at the same time. The winch was high-powered and there was plenty of cable. The EDT ship(Argonaut) was bigger and adequate for the task. This time, I brought over Cap’n Bates and Patrick Lowry, the geophysicist that helped us to create the maps and 3D models of the eastern Mediterranean seafloor. There was also a professional documentary company aboard. By the time it was over we had a full-blown scientific expedition with everything one could want or need.

Before long, all the work paid off.

There was going to be a second expedition.