News Article - stuff.co.nz, 3 April 2008
Kiwis hunt Noah's ark
By Hayden Donnell - North Shore Times
BIBLICAL TASK: Rod McCourt with a satellite image
of what some believe is the remains of Noah's Ark. Photo: Ben
Watson/North Shore Times
Rod McCourt and Dave Ashton’s to-do lists are starting to read like a Hollywood script.
The Mairangi Bay pair just added finding Noah’s Ark to their tasks for 2008.
They shouldn’t be too overawed with the job, after last year getting involved in a hunt for notorious missing murder suspect Lord Lucan.
"It sounds glamorous but I’m not surprised because it’s just the work that we’re doing," says Mr Ashton.
"We’re the only people doing it in Australasia."
Mr Ashton and Mr McCourt got involved in the high-profile assignments through their business Global Intelligence Solutions.
It analyses satellite and aerial images and CCTV footage for law enforcement agencies and the military.
The pair took on the Lord Lucan case last August after a neighbourhood dispute in which 62-year-old Roger Woodgate was accused of being the missing murder suspect.
They employed facial mapping to prove the allegations false.
The job of tracking down Noah’s Ark was offered to Mr McCourt in January by American professor Porcher Taylor.
He is using satellite images to look at a 300-metre by 52-metre ice shelf about 4000 metres up Mt Ararat in Turkey.
Some believe the remains of the ark are inside the symmetrical shelf, because its dimensions fit those given to Noah in the Bible book of Genesis.
Aerial images taken in the 1950s were inconclusive, but Mr Ashton hopes modern technology will shed light on the anomaly.
Later this year they will receive new satellite images of it for analysis.
"Generally in nature things aren’t symmetrical, so it’s unusual," he says.
"In 50 years of study no one has turned around and said it’s definitely not the ark.
"So that’s why it’s interesting. We’re now at the stage of trying to prove it is the ark."
Despite the glamorous assignments, Mr Ashton says he and Mr McCourt are not about to start solving international mysteries full time.
For now they will stick to crimes around New Zealand and Australia.
"There’s no time to be high-tech Indiana Joneses," he says.
"We’re doing this because it’s interesting.
"But there’s a lot of satisfaction in helping track down a criminal."