Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1505544
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 13 AUGUST 2023 8 INTERVIEW Raphael Vassallo rvassallo@mediatoday.com.mt Digging in the deep A large stretch of seabed off Xlendi has just been inaugu- rated as a deepwater archaeo- logical park: billed as 'the first of its kind', anywhere in the world. But while that certainly sounds intriguing... the park itself is situated at a depth of between 105 and 115 metres. Now: my understanding – as someone who has never gone scuba-diving, even once - is that '105 metres' represents a rather daunting depth, even for a highly experienced diver. How, then, can this site actual- ly be appreciated, by those of us who cannot possibly ever visit it, in person? Interestingly enough: for us, that very question was the start- ing point for the entire project. When we say that this park is a 'world first', it's precisely be- cause it is at a depth of 105-115 meters... and also, because of the unique way the ancient depos- its have been distributed, over an area of around 65,000 square metres. But we are also aware that, for the same reasons, the site is com- pletely inaccessible, to all but a very few divers from around the world. Because, yes: 105 metres IS very deep, in scuba-diving terms. In fact, if you took the whole world's population, and – for argument's sake - fed it into a 'filtration system', to remove all the people who cannot physical- ly access this site: straight away, you'd have to filter out all the millions of people who either can't, or won't, or never had the opportunity, to dive at all... and already, that's the vast majority of the world's population, wiped off the list. What remains are the people who CAN dive... but then, can they dive to 105 metres? If we are talking about recreational divers, the answer is almost certainly going to be 'no'. Depending on the agency providing the train- ing – what we call 'open circuit training', in this case - some will train beginners down to 35 me- tres; others to 45. But there is this kind of 'unspoken limit', that – using only a normal cylinder of compressed air – the maximum depth a diver can reach, in rela- tive safety, is around 50 metres. So to come back to our 'filtra- tion system': of the small per- centage that had remained, we now have to weed out the vast majority who can only dive to a very maximum of, say, between 35 and 45 metres. This leaves us only with a minuscule percent- age of divers, around the world, who ARE capable of reaching much greater depths. These people do exist; they're referred to as 'technical divers', and – just to give you an idea of what it entails - they dive with a mixture of gases (not just com- pressed air); and they would have to do a number of lengthy decompression stops, on the way back to the surface. To spend just 12-14 minutes on the sea- bed, it would take them around three hours coming back up. All in all, it's pretty challenging. But this brings us back to your original question. Did we go through all the effort of opening up a deepwater archaeological park, just to cater for this very tiny number of people? My answer is 'No'; it's the exact opposite, in fact. Not in the sense that the site itself will be off-lim- its, to any technical diver who IS capable of conducting such a dive. Like I said: these people ex- ist, so... why not cater for them? But from the very beginning, the challenge we faced was an- other. We had this unique site – 65,000 square metres of ar- chaeological deposits: and also a rich, unique underwater bio-di- versity – but no way of ever bringing people to actually visit it. And our philosophy, all along, was: just as you can buy a ticket to go and visit, say, Fort St Elmo, or Mnajdra Temples... shouldn't people have the opportunity to appreciate all other aspects of our country's cultural heritage: including the ones that lie on the seabed? So the question became: in- stead of 'taking people to the site', like we usually do... how do we 'take the site to the people'? And, well, the easiest way for me to answer it, right now, is to just show you directly. [Here I am handed a headpiece; and upon wearing it, I sudden- ly find myself transported to a point around 65 metres beneath the sea, approximately 1.5km off the coast of Marsaskala. For the next five minutes, I am treated to a 360-degree, 3D virtual tour of the wartime wreck of HMS Southwold: and also, of the as- tonishingly abundant marine life around it. Back to interview]. Wow. That was... 'immersive', to say the least. And it brings up a question that I hadn't actually thought to ask. Effec- tively, that was my first-ever glimpse of what it feels like, to actually 'dive'. And while I always had this notion, that 'Malta has a rich underwater heritage'... I had no idea that it could be every bit as impres- sive, up close, as Malta's meg- alithic temples, or Baroque churches. Given that your own experience, as an underwater archaeologist, is the very op- posite of mine: do you perhaps feel that the marine aspects of our cultural heritage are 'un- dervalued', compared to their terrestrial counterparts? Let me put it this way: Malta claims – and rightly so – to be very proud of its cultural her- itage. We have slogans such as 'Malta: home to 8,000 years of history'; posters showing 'silhou- ettes of Valletta'; or a tradition- al 'Luzzu', etc; and we always boast of having such a massive concentration of archaeological sites... on land. And it's all perfectly true: giv- en our country's size, and the sheer wealth of its history, those are claims that Malta can easily back up. When it comes to un- derwater heritage, however... I won't say it's 'just as rich', as the rest of our heritage; but it's very, VERY rich; and – even more im- portantly – it is VERY represent- ative, of all the diverse periods of Maltese history. Bear in mind that Malta has always depended on maritime traffic, throughout all the thou- sands of years it has been inhab- ited. And what remains, of all the shipping that must have sunk in Malta's waters, in all that time – the cargo of trading vessels, from Phoenician, Roman, or Medie- val periods; the remains of ships If people cannot appreciate Malta's underwater heritage, for themselves: TIMMY GAMBIN – Associate Professor of Maritime Archaeology at the University of Malta, and head of Heritage Malta's Underwater Cultural Heritage Unit – argues that underwater heritage must be 'taken to the people'