Reading Human Contemporary History from the Submerged Landscape: Representative Seabed Images from the Gulf of Valona (Southern Albania, Mediterranean Sea)

Abstract

Conventional seafloor mapping techniques, such as multibeam echosounders, high-resolution reflection seismic and side-scan sonars, are commonly employed in sea research and exploration programmes to provide accurate and reliable geomorphological and sedimentary models of the seafloor and sub-seafloor environment. Envisioning the submerged landscape via remote acoustic imagery deeply sustains scientific research and economic exploitation of sea resources by industries, but also recently opened up the submerged landscape for new opportunity of investigation, or even exploitation, by a far more cultural perspective. Here we report, through a presentation of a case study, the significance of detecting, from analysis of seafloor acoustic data, the mark of human development, from the wartime to the present day, in the submerged landscape of the Gulf of Valona (eastern Mediterranean Sea).