A scales weight Credit: Joël Mouret

On dry land, the team focused on the highest point of the island, which is very relative since the island is only at 5 or 6 metres above sea level. We knew that when the French were present, the Malagasies occupied the west side of the island, near the wreck. Then they settled in the northern island, maybe to see better the arrival of potential ships or protect from the floods which might have occurred following a hurricane.

Several visitors described their abandoned habitat in 1776, and we also had two poor quality photographs taken in 1954, when the weather station was being built. The walls of this habitat were still more than 1 metre high.

Furow Credit: Cyril d'Andrea

The problem was that a station and a lighthouse had been built precisely near this highest point and then they were almost completely destroyed by a hurricane in 1956. The building of the new station and the various facilities prevented us from recognising the site of this habitat, nor the gravestones seen in 1851 by the Commander Parker of the Royal Navy.

So we chose one of the places which didn’t seem to have changed a lot, and we dug a trench to find the base of a wall. But we didn’t find anything similar in this basement full of debris… The only interesting clues were a brick fragment from the oven found in the “modern” layer, and a discharge zone for turtles’ debris (at least two) 60 cm deep.

Diver performing mesures Credit: Cyril d'Andrea

At sea, we made a plan of the area where the remains of the Utile were scattered, then we triangulated the position of each object and drew up a precise map of the seabed. From the seashore, the water dug three furrows in the coral, perpendicularly to the coastline, and receded after each wave breaking on the coral plateau. These furrows were approximately one hundred metres long, and came to an end at a depth of 5 to 6 metres. Further down, the free rocks dug troughs with abrupt walls, measuring about 20 metres of diameter. We hoped these troughs had retained the heaviest objects.

The divers were gradually getting used to their environment, and the remains of the wreck were becoming more familiar to them.

We had a new meeting with the students from Cuers school. They asked us questions which we answered on our forum. We also received encouraging messages from the readers of the on-line diary, we would like to thank them very much.