Honolulu businessman Daniel McGivern began investigating the search for Noah's Ark in 1995, and eventually financed commercial satellite photos of Mount Ararat. According to his research, a 2003 heat wave melted enough ice and snow on the northwestern slope to reveal a dark patch, which he interpreted as resembling three beams and a crossbeam. In April 2004, McGivern and Turkish mountaineer Ahmet Ali Arslan announced plans for an expedition to the site in July. A "Guardian" article associated McGivern's site with the Ararat anomaly, a similar phenomenon observed in surveillance photos of Mount Ararat declassified by the US government in the 1990s.