Dating a speleothem?

Numerous contacts are actually being made for active participation during our next field trips to the Soqotran Archipelago.
The first U/Th dates from speleothems are seeping in and oxygen and carbon stable isotope analyses are processed. We invest a lot of time and effort in constructing suitable dataloggers to monitor the actual climate above and in some particular cave systems for my Ph.D. study.

SKP provides drinking water for Soqotri!

We just heard that the people from two villages near the NE coast are thrilled! They were able to bring some water from an underground waterfall we discovered in January directly to their villages through piping. This and the protection of Hoq cave are our first practical achievements.
A poster session: "Explorative karstological research on the island Soqotra (Yemen)" was held at the International Karst Record III: Climate Changes Symposium at the CNRS in Montpellier, France. Firm international contacts were made for future cooperation.
All team members come together to collect all digital photographs, review the topographical cave maps and start preparing SKP4 and 5!

SKP invited by the SAS?

An invited lecture “The underground Mysteries of Soqotra revealed“ was held at the joined meeting of the Society for Arabian Studies, the British-Yemeni Society and the Centre for Near and Middle Eastern Studies at the School for Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, England. Many thanks to the organizers and all people who attended the meeting.
Even Sir Douglas Botting, author of "Island of the Dragon's Blood" from 1958, found some time to come over, a real honour!
A general article is published in the Dutch magazine “Op Pad”, n°3 April 2003, pag.44-49, see the link page for more info.

Congratulations to our 10.000th website visitor!

The first pictures are burned on CD-rom and the first surveys are drawn in pencil... time to come together. You will find some secured pictures on our web-site, but the surveys will not be published on-line anymore to prevent abuse.
The website of John is updated, you can find the link at our link page!
We just welcomed our 10.000th visitor, congratulations! Most people search through Google and visitors come from Europe (Belgium 53%, UK 7%, The Netherlands 6,5%, Italy 3,2%, France 2,7%,...), North America (12%), Asia (United Arabian Emirates 1,1%, Hong Kong, Pakistan and Yemen each 0,4%), Australia (0,7%), Africa (South Africa 0,3%) and 2,1% remains of an unknown origin!

Live updates by sattelite phone.

Our Web-master Kris Rotsaert will publish our reports online, send to him by satellite-phone. So, enjoy our Site and follow our team on the Island (almost) in real time!
Rik and Kris will prepare a brief presentation of the first two weeks of the SKP3 expedition to present our work at the "Day of caving explo" (Journée de l'explo, Bruxelles).
The archaeological discoveries, found in Hoq Cave (01/01) are now published in a French archaeological magazine: “Archéologia” (N°396, Janvier 2003, blz. 48-57, ISSN 0570-6270), info press@tondeur.be.

SKP3 and the scientific approach!

We are ready with the preparations and have finally all permits to start SKP3!
This time we will explore the island for 5 weeks with an interdisciplinary team. I also obtained a Ph.D.-scholarship entitled:
"Late Quaternary palaeoclimate reconstruction with the use of stable isotope geochemistry of Soqotran speleothems (Yemen)." Also the cave fauna will get more attention!

SKP and some documentary films...

The documentary films about our expedition results: "Soqotra, pearl in the Arabian Sea" from Rik Martens and "Socotra, l'île du Phoenix" from Axell Communication were shown at the EXPLORIMAGES festival (Mandelieu- la- Napoule, France) together with an update of our activities.