Underwater archaeologists from the International Centre for Underwater Archaeology in Zadar (ICUAZ) once again spent two weeks this year researching the remains of an ancient shipwreck in Sukošan, in Barbir Bay. Alongside them, the research team included experts from the Polish University of Toruń (Mateusz Popek and students Marta Piotrowska and Mikolaj Tanski), Roman Scholz from the Max Planck Institute in Germany, PhD candidate Kato Nees from Aix-Marseille University in France, wood analysis specialist Alba Dominguez Ferreira from the French company Ipso Facto, and Anton Divić from the company NavArchos.

The research, funded by the Ministry of Culture and Media of Croatia, focused on documenting and recording the remains of wooden ship elements dated to the 1st–2nd century. The very well-preserved ship structure, about 12.5 meters long, also contains many elements of the ship’s upper works, which represents a rather rare find in ship architecture when researching ancient shipwrecks. The ship structure was completely cleaned and thoroughly documented for the creation of photogrammetric models.

Numerous wooden elements uncovered during the research, combined with modern reconstruction technologies, will allow scientists in the coming years to build a model of the ship, showing what it originally looked like. Based on this data, more can be learned about some of its characteristics, such as the ship’s cargo capacity and its navigational capabilities in the ancient period.

In recent years, research on the remains of the ancient ship in Sukošan has attracted great international attention, with documentary programs filmed by National Geographic for the series Lost Treasures of Rome and by American PBS in the series Changing Seas, both broadcast during 2024.