Notes from AHOY March 2025
Thank you to Patrick Morrison and Aurora Philpin for a fascinating guest lecture about identifying deep sea wrecks in the Rottnest Ships’ Graveyard and on the newest discovery of the K XI Dutch submarine! If you missed it, we did record this presentation and we will work to make that available to watch.
This work relies on the amazing skills of Wrecksloration who are diving these deep shipwrecks and producing extremely detailed 3D photogrammetry models for the Western Australian Museum to assess. Check out Wrecksploration's website and some of the incredible models they have produced!
AIMA Updates
Most of the last month has been spent planning the many events ahead in the AIMA calender. Keep an eye out for updates as further details are released in the next few weeks.
- AIMA is now a proud sponsor of the World Archaeological Congress in Darwin, 22-28 June 2025. We are also hosting a session called " Exploring the Depths: Maritime Archaeology Across the Globe" and the call for paper abstracts is open until 31 March! Submit your abstract here.
- Natali Pearson, on behalf of AIMA, will be holding a seminar during National Archaeology Week in May titled "Eighty Years On: World War II Maritime Heritage in Australasia". Keep an eye out for details to be released soon!
- We can now confirm the conference dates for the joint AAA and AIMA Conference to be held in Fremantle. The conference will commence with a reception event on Tuesday 2nd December, with sessions the following three days from Wed 3rd-Fri 5th December. Other events will be announced around these conference dates with many more details to be released soon.
- Save the date for AIMA's AGM on Saturday 4th October in Hobart. We are planning a full day hybrid event including guest lectures open to the public. More information will be released soon.
- Reminder to submit your papers to the Australasian Journal for Maritime Archaeology for the 2025 edition. Contact the Editor Jeremy Green on publications@aima-underwater.org.au if you are planning to submit. Papers can be submitted in anytime before 30 September, with papers submitted after put on hold for the 2026 edition.
- AIMA held it's second quarterly Strategic Plan meeting on Monday 24th February. Notes and a few thoughts were distributed to members after, including the following. If anyone has any thoughts or ideas about these, please reach out.
- Regarding the Journal, Jeremy shared his concern that there are simply not enough papers coming in. The last AIMA Conference should have produced at least 4 or 5 papers. AIMA will have to consider if it is viable to continue AJMA if we do not get more papers. The last couple of volumes have been light and, so far, there is only one paper submitted for the 2025 volume.
- Regarding the goals for a grey literature library, this is a difficult goal with no progress yet. Hosting vast amounts of material poses many technical challenges. However, a more-achievable alternative may be to have a list of contacts to organisations/people that have grey literature. It could be a directory and include bibliographies for reports or publications that can be sought. This could include past SUHR publications, MAAWA or MAAV publications etc.
- Regarding special publications, a suggestion was made for a short book instead aimed at high school students to introduce maritime archaeology as a topic for future study. This could be a comic style with illustrations. It could be a soft cover A5 featuring some of the major UCH sites around Australasia.
The next AHOY meeting will be on Monday 14th of April, just before Easter, with a guest presentation by Dr Rachel Nanson from Geoscience Australia on "A two-part seabed geomorphology mapping scheme for multidisciplinary and multiscalar applications".
See you there!