Previous Expeditions to the Persian Gulf
The first of these had been in 1962 to Kharg Island, in Iranian waters, and was intended to conduct a geological and anthropological survey of Kharg Island and its coastal waters, in conjunction with Jalik Kaulback, whose father Bill Kaulback had been closely involved in the construction of a marine oil terminal there several years previously.
It was extensively heralded and reported in the Trinity College Dublin (TCD) newspaper Trinity News.
| Date | Page | Heading |
| 3 Mar 1960 | 1 | Tracking the Manta Ray: Students' Expedition to Persian Gulf |
| 7 Jun 1962 | 1 | Geology Expedition to take part in World Research |
| 1 Nov 1962 | 6 | Geological Discoveries |
and other reports had also circulated
| Date | Publication | Heading |
| 8 May 1962 | Dublin Evening Press | TCD Team off to the Persian Gulf |
| 9 May 1962 | Daily Mail | Who wants a holiday when you can study coral |
The second expedition had been in the autumn of 1962, to Abu Dhabi, as a direct follow-on from the Kharg expedition, as by then Kendall and Skipwith had begun postgraduate courses at Imperial College London (IC). Very little has hitherto been known about this trip, but Prof Kendall has now provided an entertaining retrospective account of it.
(To fully understand what was happening, we need to realise that quite by chance the TCD expedition to Kharg Island dovetailed neatly with the second IC expedition to Abu Dhabi, conducted by Graham Evans, an IC geology academic of whom we shall hear more later, and who had conducted the previous IC expedition in 1961.)