QAR DiveLive

QAR DiveLive was a week-long event in the fall of 2000, and 2001- with underwater videocast from the actual wreck site of Blackbeard's flagship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, and from the QAR Project's conservation laboratory, where the artifacts from the ship are being preserved.

View Video - Fall 2000

Apple Computer, through their Apple Learning Interchange (ALI), generously agreed to host the 2001 QAR DIVELIVE event. Visit Apple's Exhibit site to view broadcast segments from DIVELIVE 2001: http://newali.apple.com/ali_sites/ali/events/qar/

How Did They Do That?

Sponsors and Participants in QARLive:
(in alphabetical order)

Center for Marine Science-University of North Carolina at Wilmington
Duke Marine Lab
East Carolina University Center for Science and Technology
Intersal, Inc.
Marine Grafics
Maritime Research Institute
Nautilus Productions
NC Department of Public Instruction
NC Division of Marine Fisheries
NC Learn
NC Maritime Museum
NC Museum of History
Rachel Carson component of the NC National Estuarine Research Reserve
UNC Metalab
and the
Underwater Archaeology Unit
Office of State Archaeology
Division of Archives and History
North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources

Here's how it worked! A sophisticated television "studio" was placed aboard one of the research vessels used by archaeologists who are working to study and recover the shipwreck thought to be Blackbeard's flagship, the Queen Anne's Revenge. Three surface video cameras, plus an underwater camera, will follow the archaeologists and divers as they work on the wreck site. Sensitive microphones pick up what the scientists are saying. A "television director" on board the ship will pick the best camera views to show what's going on.

A special microwave transmitter, the same equipment used to transmit live pictures from stock cars during NASCAR races, will be used to send the television picture and sound back to land. The signal will be picked up by large antennas located on the roof of the Duke Unversity Marine Science Center in Beaufort and fed to computers located on shore. From our computer on shore, the video signal was "digitized" and transmitted over the internet to special video "servers" located in Raleigh, NC and elsewhere (thanks to our "server" sponsors, like Apple Computer).

From there, the digitized video signal travels (in the same way your EMAIL travels) over the Internet to desktop and classroom computers all over the world. Even if you logged on from Broad Creek Middle School just a few miles from the wreck site in Beaufort,the live video will travel many miles before it reaches your computer!

The signal traveled over telephone lines, fiber optics, microwaves, and copper wires. All this "travel" may slow the video down and the image that reaches your computer may look "funny" or "jumpy" or perhaps it may even stop for a few seconds

Depending on how your computer is connected to the internet, and how "fast" or "slow" the net is that day, you may receive a good quality video signal with good sound or you may receive a fuzzy image that stops and starts. But even if you receive "slow" video, you will see exactly what scientists and divers on the Queen Anne's Revenge are seeing and you'll be able to ask the scientists questions!

Courtesy of Marine Grafics