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Photo Jan Wanggard

From CBC News

Preparations are underway for a complex operation to salvage the Maud shipwreck near Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, in the summer of 2013.

Jan Wanggard is the head of the group Maud Returns Home, which was awarded an export permit in March to repatriate the historic shipwreck.

The ship has been sitting partially submerged in shallow waters off Cambridge Bay since it sank in 1930.

"It will be a submersible barge so we can actually sink it under the water and lift it again," said Wanggard.

Wanggard said they will bring a barge from Norway to the site. They plan to attach air balloons to the barge to lift it out.

Wanggard said that will allow them to put the ship on the barge and then tow it back to Norway.

They expect the transfer to take a couple of weeks.

Once they start, the group will only have 90 days to move the ship out of the country or their permit will expire.

Many people are concerned the Maud will break during the extraction or transport, but Wanggard said things should go smoothly.

Full story...

From The Local

An 800-year-old shipwreck has been found by divers off the south coast of Sweden, prompting archaeologists to ponder the potential treasures inside.

Lars Einarsson, underwater archaeologist at the Kalmar County museum, was amazed at the results of the exploration of the ship found off the coast of Sturkö, near Karlskrona.

“This is an extraordinary medieval wreck. We’ve found that the wood was cut down between 1250 and 1300,” he told The Local.

The long and narrow ship, measuring 14 by two metres, would have been sleek and fast, and most likely used for attacking and looting.

The ship is 1.8 metres underwater, and is still almost completely buried under the seafloor, which makes for “troublesome diving conditions” according to Einarsson.

“When the divers recovered fragments for dating, they were literally ‘looking’ with their hands,” he said.

“The sediment is so easily disturbed that it makes it almost impossible to see what you’re doing. In some ways, it would be easier if the ship was ten times deeper.”

While the cost of excavating the ship is enormous and the decision to do so is in the hands of the Kalmar county administrative board, Einarsson explains that the potential contents of the ship may make the mammoth project feasible.

“We really want to determine why the ship was abandoned.

We want to know if it was dramatic, or whether it was just left because the ship became too old-fashioned,” he told The Local.

“If it was left under dramatic circumstances, who knows what treasures the insides of the ship may hold ?

The contents would be tremendously helpful in making a connection to the cultural and historical context of the ship.”

Full story...

From RT

A “UFO-shaped” object, found at the bottom of the Baltic Sea last year, has puzzled many.

And a Swedish expedition that plunged into the deep eventually surfaced with more questions than answers.

Covered in soot, with little “fireplace”-like structures and lying at the end of a 300-meter “runway” – this is not something you would expect to find sitting on the sea floor.

And whatever you think about extraterrestrial life, “the thing” is still there and there has to be an explanation.

So what could it be ?

On June 19, 2011, a team of Swedish treasure hunters was exploring the bottom of the Baltic Sea with their sonars when they noticed a bizarre, disc-like structure at a depth of 90 meters.

Back then, international experts failed to explain the sonar images.

In 2012, after months of preparation, the Ocean X Team, as they call themselves, went back in order to unveil the mystery.

“We've heard lots of different kinds of explanations, from George Lucas's spaceship – the Millennium Falcon – to ‘It's some kind of plug to the inner world,’ like it should be hell down there or something,” The Daily Mail quoted one of the founders of the Ocean X Team, Peter Lindberg, as saying.

Full story...

From Hurriyet Daily News

Although the city is 250 kilometers away from the sea Konya’s Selçuk University runs Turkey’s only underwater archaeology department. The head of the department, says it sheds light on underwater richness.

Turkey’s first underwater archaeology department isn’t located near the sea, but resides at Selçuk University in the central Anatolian province of Konya, 250 kilometers away from the sea.

Students in the department are trained to carry out all kinds of underwater research and excavations.

The head of the university’s archaeology department, Professor Adil Tırpan, said it was very important for the university and for Konya that the first underwater archaeology department in Turkey, a country surrounded by water on three sides, be located in a central Anatolian city university.

The department had been filing a big gap in Turkey’s underwater research for 12 years, Tırpan said, adding that the department offered all kinds of technical equipment and expert teams in the field of underwater archaeology.

Three professors, three assistant professors and two research assistants work in the department, according to Tırpan. Selçuk was the only university to also have master and doctorate students in the underwater archaeology department.

“This is the first and only department in Turkey that is also recognized internationally and was chosen in 2011 as the leading university in the field of underwater archaeology.

Turkey has a coastal line of 850 kilometers. The line was used as a trade route in the ancient ages. If five ships sank every year since 2000 B.C., when overseas trade began, until today, it equals 25,000 ships in 5,000 years.

All of these ships lie under the sea. And of course they are very important cultural artifacts if they are removed.

We are trying to shed light on a long history by educating underwater archaeologists,” Tırpan said.

 By Jennifer Welsh -  Live Science

An ancient warship's ram has been slowly disintegrating since it was retrieved from the floor of the Mediterranean Sea.

A new analysis shows sulfuric acid buildup is to blame.

Researchers are racing to find a way to slow the disintegration and perhaps, in the process, learn how to preserve other ancient wood structures after they've been plucked from the ocean and exposed to the air.

Currently the ram — known as a rostrum, a beak-like part of the prow that ancient warships used to ram holes into enemy ships — is being stored underwater, and some of the acidity from its exposure to air (when it was brought to the surface initially) has washed away.

But if it were ever to be displayed out in the air, the sulfuric acid production could turn out to be a real problem, study researcher Patrick Frank of Stanford University told LiveScience.

In 2008, one ship's rostrum — made of bronze, over a core of wood — was discovered 150 feet (46 meters) offshore from Acqualadrone ("The Bay of the Pirates") in northeastern Sicily, under 22 feet (8 m) of water.

The ship had sunk around 260 B.C., during the battle of Mylae, researchers said.

From The Atlantic
 

Just after 11:00 yesterday morning, East Coast time, four divers plunged into the warm waters off Key Largo, Florida, descending over 60 feet to the ocean floor.

Their destination: Aquarius, the world's only undersea scientific laboratory.

The researchers -- three astronauts and an astronomy professor, two from the U.S., one from Britain, and one from Japan -- are testing concepts for a mission potentially scheduled for 2025: an expedition to an asteroid.

The pressurized environment of the deep sea is nicely analogous to the environment that astronauts will encounter as they explore rocks hurtling through space; the ocean depths, in that sense, make for an ideal training ground for extra-atmospheric exploration.

The current group of explorers will stay submerged for twelve days. Their trip will mark the sixteenth mission of Nasa Extreme Environment Mission Operations -- abbreviation: NEEMO.

The participants in that mission are probably not in need of any extra exuberance as they go about their undersea adventure: As far as temporary professions go, "aquanaut" is about as exhilarating as they come.

Still, if they find themselves wanting some additional inspiration during the twelve days they'll spend isolated from their land-locked loved ones, the Aquarians might look to Robert Sténuit -- who, among many other accomplishments, has the distinction of being the world's first aquanaut.

Sténuit is one of those remarkable renaissance men that the mid-20th century proved so good at producing: He has been variously an explorer, a historian, a journalist, an author, an archaeologist, a business advisor, an engineer, a dolphin advocate, a treasure hunter, and a spelunker.

In 1953, at the age of 20, Sténuit -- who was then studying politics at Brussels' Free University, preparing for a law degree -- read Harry Reiseberg's 600 Milliards Sous les Mers, a fictional account of an undersea treasure hunt.

Sténuit, whose side passions were scuba diving and (because this cannot be said enough) spelunking, was inspired.

He promptly dropped out of school, and the next year began searching for the Spanish treasure that might remain from the 1702 Battle of Vigo Bay.

Unsuccessful in that attempt, he teamed up with another treasure hunter, the American John Potter, doing search and recovery for the Atlantic Salvage Company.

Fulll story...

 
Photo Marin Mätteknik

By Brandon Keim - Wired

The Baltic Sea's floor is a marine archaeologist's delight: Shipworms and other wood-gobbling organisms can't survive in its cold, brackish water, and sunken ships are preserved intact for centuries.

"Archaeology is often about research and reconstruction of scarcely distinguishable residues, hard-to-interpret remnants or crumbling ruins.

Not so with the Ghost Ship," wrote Swedish archaeologists Niklas Eriksson and Johann Rönnby of this 17th century Dutch trading vessel, its name a reference to its uncanny degree of preservation.

"The Ghost Ship is an exceptional maritime archaeological find, which in terms of its state of preservation probably has few equals in the world."

Carved knightheads, a structural element used to tie mooring lines to a ship's bow, are visible in the photo above.

Archaeologists hope the ship will teach them about the techniques of Dutch shipbuilders, who by the 17th century were among the world's finest, helping the tiny nation define itself in a newly globalized world.

Full story...

From Holland Sentinel

The Kalamazoo Valley Museum’s Summer Hands-On Happenings series is based on the theme of the new traveling exhibit, “Treasure.”

The exhibit runs from June 16 to August 26 and explores the history of treasures and treasure hunting, the technology that enhances it, and the people and personalities who hunt for treasure.

The Summer Hands-On Happenings program, "In Search of Lost Treasures," takes place on Wednesdays from 1 to 4 p.m. beginning on June 27 and ending on August 15. There is no session on July 4.

The June 27 session, “Holding On to Treasure,” is about the ways that treasures are protected.

Pirate-related crafts like eye patches and treasure maps will be created during the July 11 session, “Pirates and Their Treasures."

The July 18 event, “Treasures of the Sea,” is all about mysterious treasures waiting to be found under the sea.