Blogs from Sarandë, South, Albania, Europe - page 3

Just south of Saranda is the small city of Ksamil (pronounced SA-meel). It is an adorable beach town with much less traffic and noise than Saranda. Just steps from the beach are 5 artificial reefs, aka shipwrecks. Each of these retired wreckswere cleaned out and then purposely sunk by the US Navy for the Albanian coastline. Certain parts of the coast are only covered with sand and seagrass which only allows for certain organisms to grow. Give the bottom a little structure and all sorts of different species and organisms can flourish. These shipwrecks allow for that structural development, plus they are really cool to dive on! We only dove on one of the wrecks, bit it was pretty spectacular. The entire wreck was only 18 meters in length, but the water clarity and ... read more

The Albanian Center for Marine Research's main objective is to train divers (consisting of students, grad students and phd students) in the art of scientific and archeological diving. This includes learning how to transect and map underwater fields. Making a list of acurate measurements is hard enough on land let alone underwater. The students did an amazing job with their diving even with the added stress of collecting data. Practice practice practice...that's really the only way you can master this technique. The students here have gotten spoiled with great diving conditions. Can you imagine trying to measure / map an area when you cannot see more that 2 feet in front of you? or if there is a 3 knot current pushing you off the bottom? It is difficult to simulate those conditions in Albania because ... read more

Two amazing days in the city of Saranda with our first couple of dives for the field school. Led by Derek Smith, one of the program coordinators and ecologists with the Marine Center, he led the students on a dive just off the coast. Max depth was approximately 75 feet and we had not only great visitbility but interesting sea life. Lots of sea grass and mussels. The mission of the dive was to find artifacts (or something that looked like it was one) and mark it with a lift bag and reel. After the dive, we mark the bag with GPS, record it, cut the line, then go to the next bag. It was an interesting learning process about how to collect data for submerged collection items. Our boat Captain, Howard and I chatted for ... read more

Now here’s five words I never expected to say – “We went to Albania today!” That’s right Enver Hoxha’s former ”stomping” grounds. A bus picked us up, brought us over the mountain to Corfu Town where we boarded and Ionian Ferry Line ship. An hour and a bit later we were on Albanian soil in the growing city of Saranda. We took a tour bus to the ancient ruins of Butrinti – by 400BC it was an established Greek settlement, and a couple hundred years later became refortified by the Romans – later Augustus would reframe it as a veterans colony – fast forward to the 900s and it was remodelled as part of the Byzantine empire. Lightly settled again by the Ottomans in 1600, then it was ceded to Napoleon by Venice and in 1799 ... read more

Balam sie troche wjazdu do Albanii. Na szczescie mielismy wszystkie odpowiednie kwity dotyczace samochodu, lacznie z notarialnie poswiadczonym w Polsce upowaznieniem do jego prowadzenia. Wtedy jeszcze nie wiedzialam, dlaczego greccy celnicy tak nas dokladnie ogladaja, ale szybko wyjasnilo sie, ze dziwnym trafem zageszczenie dobrych samochodow w Albanii nie do konca odpowiada zamoznosci jego mieszkancow. Z granicy skierowalismy sie prosto do Gjirokaster - miasta, gdzie urodzil sie w 1908 roku przyszly albanski przywodca Enver Hohxa, co spowodowalo, ze mialo ono nastepnie status miasta-muzeum, dzis na liscie UNESCO i w duzej mierze uniknelo komunistycznego zniszczenia. Tam tez planowalismy szukac jakiegos transportu dla naszej towarzyszki, ktora musiala ewakuowac sie z Albanii za 2 dni. Stare Gjiorokaster lezy na wzgorzu i sklada sie z ottomanskich domow, waskich stromych uliczek,... read more