Answer: The good news is that the Republic Project has proven to be a fantastic proving ground for the technology to be employed on the Sussex. While we had anticipated finding the entire cargo of coins in the stern section of the Republic, that was not to be. When we completed excavating the coins in the stern section and recovered less than 25% of the coins that research suggested should be on the shipwreck site, we decided to methodically excavate the entire shipwreck site to look for the balance of the specie. Additional research into the areas that the coins could have been led us to theorize that the Purser - who typically had a number of safes for storing valuables - could have held the majority of coins that fit into his safes, then the balance would have been placed in the stern compartment. Data on similar ships suggest that the Purser's office was typically nearer to the center of the ship or paddlewheels - where the purser could be easily accessed by passengers wishing to store their valuables. Even today on cruise ships, this is the case.

Unfortunately, to get to this area, we had to literally excavate the entire stern section of the ship, then begin at the bow of the ship and work our way back to the area that we believed that the Purser's office would have been located. Our commitment to an archaeologically-sound excavation meant that there really were no shortcuts. Trying to approach the center part of the ship directly would have caused damage to many of the most interesting and significant artifacts. (Ed. Note: An excavation site map is available here)

The good news is that even though it has taken a long time to excavate so much of the site, we have recovered approximately 10,000 artifacts in addition to the coins from the site. Many of these artifacts are fascinating from a historical perspective, providing great material for our planned visitor attractions. In addition, many of these pieces are duplicate bottles and other pieces that we believe hold great value and will be highly prized as collectibles. We believe that these pieces will eventually provide revenue that should offset the costs of the excavation of the balance of the shipwreck site.

In addition, we are learning a tremendous amount about the excavation of sites of this type that will provide valuable experience for other shipwreck projects.

While all this has been going on, we have spent a lot of time working with the British government and the Sussex Archaeological Executive fine-tuning our project plan, using our experience from the Republic to update and make changes to our excavation plan. We have made significant strides in applying new technologies and practices that will better data management and artifact recovery techniques as we go forward.

Based on our progress on the Republic earlier in the summer, we thought that we would be finished up with the entire site by the end of summer, which would have allowed us to head over to the Sussex in late August or September. The excavation of the bow has definitely taken longer than we had expected because it turns out that there was a separate deck of cargo, consisting of amazing artifacts ranging from porcelain to toothbrushes to inkwells to files and other tools. Interestingly, this suggests that the reports of survivors from the shipwreck that a lot of the cargo was thrown overboard during the storm must have applied to the cargo in the stern only, where we did not find this middle deck of cargo. We still believe that no coins would have been thrown overboard, however. In addition to the specific reports that the specie had gone down with the ship - as opposed to just having been loaded on the ship - it would make no sense to throw money overboard while leaving hundreds of crates of heavy iron and glass artifacts onboard.

Nevertheless, we are making great progress through the Republic site and hope to have it completed soon. We wish that we could tell you how long it is going to take to finish, but it is impossible to precisely gauge the amount of artifacts remaining to be recovered. In addition, if we find the balance of the coins we expect to be on the ship, we will, of course, pick them all up, one coin at a time, which could take months.

For these reasons, we have sought and received approval from the UK Government to begin operations on the Sussex with a second ROV system and ship in the event that we choose to continue work on the Republic into the fall, so we are making contingency arrangements which would allow us to start there even if we have not completed Republic operations.

We will keep you updated on data relating to the Sussex start date as it becomes available. As frustrating as it can be trying to predict the start of our operations, please keep in mind that we are doing things that have never been done before and that the Republic project was an unexpected - albeit pleasant - surprise that affected our start date on the Sussex.

(Answered by Greg Stemm)