How field reports are produced, and the index of files currently in print.

The field-file index.

The journal currently maintains seven public files in active rotation, listed in the table below with the lead editor, the number of field reports filed since 2016 and the current bulletin-issue cadence.

File	Focus	Lead editor	Reports filed	Cadence
Heracleion-Thonis	Sunken Greco-Egyptian port city	Tarek Ramadan	148	Spring + autumn each year
Pharos lighthouse blocks	Eastern harbour granite + limestone field	Iman Hosny	92	Spring each year
Canopus & East Canopic	Festival temple complex + east arm	Mahmoud el-Sherbini	74	Autumn each year
Eastern harbour survey	Broader basin context	Iman Hosny	108	Year-round
Annual season summary	Year-end consolidated review	Tarek Ramadan	10 annual reports	One per year
Dive team & equipment	Operational document	Tarek Ramadan	Revised yearly	March revision cycle
Conservation protocols	Site-stewardship document	Iman Hosny	Revised yearly	September revision cycle

The seven-day report production cycle.

Day one — on the boat. Each dive is logged in a waterproof field notebook during the surface interval after the dive. The standard entry includes depth, time at depth, water temperature, visibility (measured by the dive team's standard test), the specific structures or finds documented, the photographs taken, and any concerns observed about site condition. Two divers cross-confirm each entry before surfacing for the next surface interval. The handwritten field logbook is the canonical primary source; everything else derives from it.

Day two — transcription. The field logbook is transcribed in the Mansoura office within seven days of the dive. The transcription is done by the lead diver of the relevant dive with the boat's GPS log, the dive-computer profile and the photographic record from the underwater camera rig open alongside. Transcription discrepancies (where the logbook entry and one of the supporting records do not agree) are flagged and held for the day-five fact-check.

Day three — photographic plate. The day's photographs are colour-calibrated against the reference card visible in each frame, cropped to the standard publication aspect ratios, and entered into the journal's photographic archive with the file naming convention that links each plate to its underlying logbook entry. Mahmoud el-Sherbini handles this stage; the calibrated colour profile has been the same standard since the journal's founding to preserve plate-to-plate consistency across the ten-year archive.

Days four and five — peer review. The transcribed field report is reviewed by a second editor with relevant site experience. The reviewer's role is to check the report for internal consistency, to flag any reading that seems implausible against the editor's own dive experience on the same site, and to suggest amendments to the publication-ready text. Disagreements at the peer-review stage are documented in writing and resolved before publication; eleven such disagreements have been documented in the journal's history, all eventually resolved through either a third-editor opinion or a return dive to verify the contested observation.

Day six — institutional fact-check. Where the field report references the published institutional record (an institutional expedition's prior find at the same coordinate, for instance), the relevant institutional dive coordinator is sent the draft report for fact-check. The institutional coordinator has seventy-two hours to flag any factual disagreement. Where the coordinator does not respond within seventy-two hours, the report proceeds to publication with the institutional context noted as "no institutional review received within review window".

Day seven — publication. The peer-reviewed and institutional-fact-checked report enters the next available bulletin slot. The journal's bulletin is published on the first Sunday of every month with the reports filed in the preceding four weeks.

The calibrated underwater photography standard.

Underwater photography distorts colour systematically with depth — red and orange wavelengths attenuate first, leaving the standard underwater photograph with a strong blue-green cast that obscures structural detail in the documented finds. The journal's photographic standard, developed by Mahmoud el-Sherbini during the first year of publication, addresses the colour-distortion problem through three steps. First, the underwater rig carries two synchronised strobes positioned to compensate for the ambient blue-green cast. Second, every photograph includes a colour-calibration reference card (a standard X-Rite ColorChecker Passport) visible in the frame at the same distance as the documented find. Third, in post-production, the photograph is colour-corrected against the visible reference card to recover the find's true colour at the moment of photography. The result is a photographic plate that documents the find as it would appear if illuminated by neutral surface light — a representation that supports cross-photograph comparison across dive seasons.

The alongside-dive protocol.

The journal logs alongside-dives with institutional expeditions on the Alexandria coast where the institutional team consents. The protocol is straightforward and is documented in writing in each case. The institutional dive coordinator gives written consent for the journal's diver to log alongside the institutional dive team for a specific dive or dive series, with the explicit limitation that the journal will not publish material the institutional team has not yet published. The journal's diver dives alongside under the institutional team's permit; the institutional permit covers all divers under its scope. The journal's field reports from alongside-dives are reviewed by the institutional team before publication and carry the institutional team's name in the published report. Approximately thirty percent of the journal's archive of four hundred and eighty-seven field reports are alongside-dives; the remaining seventy percent are the journal's own independent dives under our own dive-charter permit.

Annual external audit.

The journal's methodology and editorial practice have been subject to an independent annual external audit since 2020, conducted by a rotating panel of two external maritime-archaeology specialists from outside the journal's regular institutional contacts. The audit reviews the year's published field reports against the journal's own methodology document, checks the corrections log for completeness, examines the consent records for alongside-dives, and verifies the financial transparency note against the cooperative's accounting records. The audit panel publishes a brief external statement each March; the 2020 to 2025 statements are all available to subscribers and were unanimous in their positive findings. The audit is an extra cost — approximately three percent of the journal's annual expenditure — that the cooperative considers worth the credibility benefit.

The corrections log.

Corrections to published field reports are issued within thirty days of confirmation and recorded in the public corrections log. The log has been maintained continuously since the journal's first issue in 2016. The current log carries fifty-three entries. Each entry includes the affected report identifier, the original published reading, the corrected reading, the date of the correction, the source citation that prompted the correction, and the editor's brief note explaining the discrepancy. About sixty percent of corrections originate from receiving institutional teams noticing a discrepancy in our reading or in our attribution; about twenty percent from journalists or academic researchers; the remainder are caught by the journal's own editorial review cycle. The corrections log is searchable and is also distributed as a quarterly PDF supplement to all subscribers.

Photographic-plate licensing.

The journal's photographic plates published in the bulletin are released under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA, free for academic and educational use with citation. Commercial use of the plates requires a separate licence; we have granted commercial licences to three documentary-film productions and two book publishers since 2017, each on negotiated terms appropriate to the use. The licensing income is small (approximately two percent of annual revenue) but is documented in the transparency note. Where a plate is the result of an alongside-dive with an institutional expedition, the licensing is conditional on the institutional team's consent for the specific use; we never grant a commercial licence over a feature that the institutional team has not yet published openly.

Frequent questions on methodology.