HOT NEWS !

From Free Press Release

Michael Harlow, expedition documentary film leader, announced today his team is seeking funding to document mysterious crystals he previously discovered while exploring a sunken ship in the South Pacific.

 "This is a very exciting time," said Michael Harlow, Team Leader of Explore - Crystal Wreck Dive. "With James Cameron going to the abyss of the Challenger Deep and re-releasing the epic Titanic movie, as well as the renewed public interest in underwater exploration, the crystal wreck discovery has invigorated the marine research community." 

Explore - Crystal Wreck Dive has collaborated with numerous researchers from Scripps Institute of Oceanography, NOAA and Texas A&M to identify these mysterious crystals. Since the crystals in the submerged wreck have never been identified, the researchers are excited to obtain samples that would be collected during the filming of the documentary.

The documentary team will dive to 135 feet below the ocean's surface and penetrate the wreck. A massive air chamber with approximately 135,000 cubic feet of oil saturated air holds the unidentified crystals.

"It is extremely rare, if not unheard of, to just find an air chamber that is that massive in a sunken ship. Imagine a 3 story building about 50 feet long and 30 feet wide," continues Michael. "To have translucent and multicolored unidentified crystals covering every square inch of the chamber, is miraculous".

Full story... 

By Erica Blake - The Toledo Blade

Before the Lake Erie coastline had cities, it had ships that transported people and goods -- including many vessels that sank to the lake's floor.

Although this portion of Ohio history is of sight for many, Lake Erie's maritime past is still attainable.

The Maritime Archaeological Survey Team, or MAST, is a nonprofit group of volunteers who study and document Lake Erie shipwrecks.

Made up of scuba divers and land-based researchers, the group has a membership of more than 250 who research the ships and preserve the information for others.

This weekend, the group has scheduled a workshop for those interested in helping survey these pieces of sunken history by teaching the basics in underwater archaeology.

"It expands our understanding of our submerged cultural heritage," said Carrie Sowden, MAST coordinator and an archaeologist for the Great Lakes Historical Society.

"That's a fancy way of saying, these areas of Ohio, their expansion doesn't exist without the lakes being there. And incumbent with that are shipwrecks."

Ohio established a law protecting its shipwrecks in 1992.

The law governs the management of certain "submerged property" and prohibits the uncontrolled recovery of items from the lake.

Although the legislation protects the ships, the role of documenting Ohio's shipwrecks has been taken on by volunteers.

Jack Papes of Akron joined MAST in 2003 during a quest to learn more about area shipwrecks.

A scuba diver, Mr. Papes said he wanted to learn more about the shipwrecks that he glided above when he was under the water.

Mr. Papes now shares his knowledge with new members as a speaker at the group's annual workshop.

Full story...

 
Sketch Robert Doornbos

By Stephen Kloosterman - The Holland Sentinel

The wreck’s woodwork appears specked with tiny shellfish, and — at 350 feet below the waves of Lake Michigan — is barely visible in the dark and murky water.  

But a video captured by a Holland-based group of shipwreck hunters still shows the elaborate scroll work on the bow of a once-proud, 90-foot schooner that sank more than a century ago.

The nonprofit Michigan Shipwreck Research Association on Friday released details and video from a groundbreaking dive that took place in October.

“This is the deepest schooner yet found in Lake Michigan,” said Valerie van Heest, a member of the association board of directors. After months of research, the organization believes the vessel is the St. Peter, a schooner abandoned off the coast of Wisconsin in 1874.

The divers, Holland’s Jeff Vos and Saugatuck’s Todd White, breathed a special mix of helium and air, and practiced advanced dive techniques months in advance of the deep dive at a site about 20 miles off the coast of Grand Haven.

“It’s always exciting, seeing something new nobody else has seen before,” Vos said. “You could still see the grain of the wood on the deck.

“We’re definitely going to have to go back,” he added, saying there were a number of artifacts, such as the anchor and pulleys, that could help them positively identify the wreck.

Full story...

By Graham Smith - Daily mail

It may look like an alien life-form has washed up on a beach, but this striking neon blue effect is a completely natural phenomenon.

The incredible image was taken by photographer Doug Perrine during a visit to Vaadhoo, one of the Raa Atoll islands in the Maldives.

It captures a natural chemical reaction called bioluminescence, which occurs when a micro-organism in the water is disturbed by oxygen.

Although a rare sight on a shoreline, the phenomenon is more commonly seen at sea in the wake of ships that stir up the oxygen in the sea, which causes the bioluminescent bacteria to glow. 

Many undersea organisms ‘glow’, especially creatures that live at depths where light from the surface is less likely to penetrate. The night-time glow is a side-effect of blooming red algae, known as red tide, which can turn entire beaches scarlet and murky during the day.

Full story...

 
Photo Mark Thiessen

From MSNBC

James Cameron's deep-diving team has been keeping busy.

Just days after the filmmaker plunged more than 35,756 feet (10,890 meters) into the Pacific Ocean to the Mariana Trench, the deepest place on Earth, his team piloted Cameron's innovative submersible to yet another deep-sea spot.

This time, members of the expedition took Cameron's lime-green Deepsea Challenger to a depth of 3,600 feet (1,100 meters) off the coast of the tiny island of Ulithi, part of Micronesia.

The spot isn't far from place where Cameron made his historic dive on March 26, although it is only about a tenth as deep.

The image of the Cameron's Deepsea Challenger was taken by an unmanned seafloor "lander" — a large contraption that is baited, hoisted over the side of a ship and dropped to the seafloor.

Once it's on the bottom, bait ideally lures seafloor creatures, and the lander's suite of instruments can take samples, photographs and data.

Cameron was slated to have a lander by his side during his Mariana Trench dive, but the plan was scuttled because of various mechanical problems, so Cameron went down to the bottom without any robot companions.

He spent about three hours in the Challenger Deep, the deepest part of the Mariana Trench.

Humans had visited the deepest spot on the planet only once before, in 1960.

Full story...

From My Fox DC

The wreck of the Titanic, which lies at the bottom of the North Atlantic ocean, is now under the protection of UNESCO, 100 years after it hit an iceberg and sank on April 12, 1912, the UN cultural agency announced Thursday.

The wreckage of the doomed ship is now covered by a 2001 convention on protecting underwater heritage, which means that the destruction, pillage or sale of objects found at the site can be outlawed by the 41 countries that signed up to the treaty.

The site was not eligible for protection before now because the convention only applies to remains that have been underwater for 100 years.

"The sinking of the Titanic is anchored in the memory of humanity and I am pleased that this site can now be protected by the UNESCO convention," Irina Bokova, UNESCO's director-general, said in a statement.

She added, "But there are thousands of other shipwrecks that need safeguarding as well.

All of them are archaeological sites of scientific and historical value. They are also the memory of human tragedy that should be treated with respect."

By Mary Forgione - LA Times

Deep Ocean Expeditions offers the ultimate Titanic tour this summer: See the shipwreck firsthand from a tiny submersible during the 100th anniversary of its sinking.

Despite the stiff $60,000 price tag, the Titanic dives became so popular among tourists that the company added a third trip.

Now expedition coordinator Rob McCallum tells National Geographic News that Titanic dives planned for July and August will be the company’s last. Deep Ocean holds the exclusive charter for Titanic dives.

"Our support ship is going into retirement soon, and the submersibles are going to go back into government work," he said in the story.

Robert Ballard, the deep-sea explorer whose team discovered the Titanic’s wreck on the ocean floor in 1985, has long been concerned about access to the ship, which sits 380 miles southeast of Newfoundland, Canada.

"The Titanic is really a deep-sea museum with the doors wide open," he says in a National Geographic TV show set to premiere 10 p.m. Monday.

Ballard warned that if the shipwreck remains unprotected, "it will get stripped until all the jewels have been taken off the old lady’s body."

By Roland Lloyd Parry - The Times of Malta

Ship that sank in 1804 yields a booty that has the US, Spain, and Latin America at odds.

A court battle over treasure from an old Spanish shipwreck has reached Gibraltar, where descendants of the sunken cargo’s owners are fighting to win back part of the booty from Spain.

The British-administered territory has been drawn into a tangled squabble between Spain, US treasure hunters and the Latin American descendants, in a case harking back to the days of the Spanish empire.

Mathilde Daireaux Kinsky, an Argentinian who lives in Colombia, says part of the cargo of the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes, sunk by the British in a sea battle in 1804, belonged to her ancestor Diego de Alvear y Ponce de Leon.

A Spanish general in the colonies at the time, he was not on board himself but lost his wife and seven of his children along with his precious coins in the shipwreck.

“We are not doing this for the money. We are seeking respect for the memory of our family members who died on board the Mercedes,” said Ms Daireaux, 49, one of six descendants claiming the treasure in the Gibraltar courts.

Odyssey Marine Exploration, a company that specialises in salvaging deep-sea wrecks, hauled the treasure – mainly gold and silver coins mined and minted in the former Spanish colonies – from the seabed off Portugal in 2007.

It transported most of the treasure via Gibraltar, a sunny enclave of British pubs and red telephone boxes at the mouth of the Mediterranean, to Florida, where the company is based.

A court in Florida last month let the Spanish government claim this share – 23 tons of silver coins and other items, worth €350 million – and fly it back to Madrid.

But several hundred more silver coins were left behind in a crate in a Gibraltar customs house, where they were blocked pending Spanish legal efforts to claim them, says Daniel Feetham, a lawyer acting for the descendants.

“The descendants have issued a claim in the Supreme Court of Gibraltar and there is an order from the court here preventing these coins from being taken out of the jurisdiction,” said Dr Feetham.

Full story...