How did I locate the Fieldschool 2016?

Thursday 28.7.2016

I have been asked a few times that how on earth did I ever find out about this fieldschool. It was quite simple.  I have been diving the wreck Zenobia in Larnaca for many years in a row, with Jouni, Sami, Vesa, Late and Kirsi. We have always used the same dive shop, DiveIn Larnaca, and I follow them on Facebook. In February, Sheri posted there a link to an article in local English speaking newspaper CyprusMail. The article discusses the Mazotos wreck and the nautical archaeology already done on it. It also mentioned that they need volunteers from different countries to join them doing research on the wreck.

Photomosaic of Mazotos shows over 500 amphorae, which are disposable wine or olive oil jars. (Photo from the CyprusMail article)

Our usual Zenobia trip was becoming unlikely, as the usual gang seemed to have other plans. I googled Mazotos and very quickly found the invitation for the Mazotos Fieldschool 2016. It had still one month to sign up, and so I promptly did so. I mentioned the fieldschool to Jouni at the Wreck Diving seminar next week and he got also very interested in signing up.

The application needed referrals, preferably from technical diving instructors. On that we lucked out again. In addition to diving in Zenobia with DiveIn Larnaca, we had taken many technical diving courses there, and Chris wrote references for us. It would have been hard to find a better referee.

Just before acceptance decisions were made, we were told that the project got extra funding and we could continue working on the wreck for 2 weeks after the fieldschool. We immediately signalled our interest on that. I needed to discuss it with my department at U of Helsinki, because the extra two weeks overlapped the Autumn Semester. I was able to work it out. Jouni had used two extra vacation weeks already for the fieldschool and eventually he could not extend his stay any longer.