Meet Hanumant Singh, the latest Indian American newsmaker. His creation — SeaBED, a robotic underwater vehicle — has just brought home stunning images of the remnants of a 4th century BC shipwreck in the Aegean Sea, off Chios, Greece.
What it has revealed is a cache of 400 ceramic jars that went down with the wooden merchant ship 2,300 years ago. The discovery has excited Greek marine archaeologists, who believe the jars probably contained wine and olive oil.
The robotic vehicle deployed by Singh’s team has taken 7,650 images revealing the sunken ship’s ceramic cargo and marine life in a space of just two days — something that would have taken researchers years with conventional SCUBA divers.
Singh, from Chandigarh, is a graduate of the MIT. He received his PhD from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts where he is currently works as an associate scientist.
“Hanumant Singh and team at the WHOI Deep Submergence Laboratory designed and built SeaBED. The technology is the only way to reach deep shipwrecks like the one at Chios,” said a WHOI statement.