HOT NEWS !

By Laura Roberts - Telegraph

But now researchers believe they will be able to raise the Titanic - digitally - after amazing High Definition images were beamed back from its final resting place.

Images originally designed to give scientists an insight into how long it takes for wrecks to disintegrate are to be turned into a 3D map of the wreckage. 

It will mean people could one day be able to take a 3D tour of the shipwreck. Using state-of-the art HD robotic cameras and sonar, scientists have been able to take the clearest pictures yet of the ship. 

And they were amazed to find it is far better preserved than was previously thought, despite nearly a century underwater.

"In many ways we are raising the Titanic digitally. It's a new way of archiving these special wrecks.

"I'm just excited about one day being able to put on some 3D glasses and see the wreck as it," said Susan Avery, President and Director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, whose scientists are working on the site with RMS Titanic Inc.

Thousands of images and hours of video were taken by robots for Expedition Titanic two and a half miles beneath the surface of the Atlantic - just over 370 miles from the coast of Newfoundland - using the latest high definition cameras and sonar technology.

The team will return next month for two weeks before compiling the footage into the 3D map which is likely to take more than a year. It had been thought that the front of the ship was on the verge of collapse but the birdseye view shows the bow, railings and anchors are all still in tact. 

The largest passenger steamship in the world collided with ice on April 14, 1912, during her maiden voyage and sank with the loss of 1,517 lives.

Dr Avery added: "It could be that there are some new ecosystems living on the Titanic. We will understand better how these wrecks decay and how long we have to preserve records of them."

The new images have found evidence of rusticle - rust formation similar to an icicle or stalactite - growth on the starboard side of the bow including one of the anchors and covering portholes. Oceanographers, who began working at the site two weeks ago, have been forced to return to Newfoundland due to high seas and winds brought on by Hurricane Danielle. 

On their return they will assess the rate of deterioration of the wreck to see how fast it is decaying.

Read more...

By Deidre Woollard - Luxist

From the depths of the ocean to your wine cellar. Spectrum Wine Auctions, Southern California's leading auction house of fine and rare wine, will hold its first sale of the fall 2010 auction season on September 24 including a bottle of shipwrecked Madeira wine dating to the 1800s.

The bottle, which is estimated at $1200 was discovered off of the Savannah, Georgia coast by professional diver Bill Kinsey in the late 1970s.

The lot comes from a collector who bought the only two bottles from the shipwreck in 1980 at The Heublein Premiere National Auction of Rare Wines XII. He tasted the first one on television and noted that it was fantastic and in perfect condition. The thick mud on the ocean floor protected the bottles from worms and water.

The sale will take place at 6 p.m. PDT at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills and Saturday, September 25 at 9:00 a.m. HKT at the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong.

Other highlights from the sale include some of the greatest vintages from producers in Bordeaux, Burgundy and California including 37 lots of Harlan Cabernet Sauvignon, 47 lots of Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon and several verticals of Chateau Montelena in magnum, three-liter and five-liter bottles.

The total pre-sale estimate for the 761 lots on offer is $3.2 million.

From Yle

A group of Swedish divers have begun lifting to the surface a sunken consignment of champagne dating from the 1700’s from the seabed in the Åland Islands.

Diving for the liquid treasure of around 80 champagne bottles started last week.

The bottles are located in the hull of a vessel that sunk sometime in the eighteenth century.

Both the vessel and its cargo of champagne are property of the Åland autonomous region. It has not yet decided what to do with the bottles. 

French experts have tasted the contents and determined it to be champagne.

From VOA News

Russian authorities say a mini-submarine plumbing the depths of Lake Baikal has found several shiny metal objects that could be evidence of the legendary Czarist gold lost nearly a century ago during the country's civil war.

Explorers discovered the metal objects - described as resembling gold bullion - 400 meters below Lake Baikal's surface Monday. Attempts so far, however, to pick up the objects with a mechanical arm have failed.

Explorers have long been hunting for the treasure, some 1,600 tons of gold allegedly carried by the White Army of Admiral Alexander Kolchak as it fled the advancing Red Army during the 1918-1921 civil war.

The admiral, portrayed in a 2008 Russian film of the same name, led the pro-Czarist White Army against the Bolsheviks after the October revolution of 1917.

One version of the legendary disappearance has Admiral Kolchak's troops freezing to death in temperatures of of minus-60 degrees Celsius in the winter of 1919-1920 as they fled across the lake with the treasure.

Under that story line, the imperial gold sank to the bottom of the vast lake, which contains a full 20 percent of the world's fresh water, when the Spring thaw finally arrived.

Read more...

From RT (first published 1st of May, 2010)

After a decade of painstaking underwater searching, the wreck of a Soviet World War II submarine has been found in the Baltic Sea.

The vessel went down with its fifty-man crew in 1940 after being sunk by a mine laid by Finland. The relatives of those who died say it is a matter of honor to establish what really happened all those years ago.

For seventy years, it was a mystery how, where and even when the S-2 submarine perished. During the war between the Soviet Union and Finland, the sea around the Aland Islands became a focal point for the naval conflict, much of it underwater.

The S-2 – which set sail on January 1, 1940 – was sent by the Soviet High Command to roam and disrupt Finland's supply lines. Retired submarine captain Igor Kurdin told RT that “surviving on a submarine like this was very difficult. There was no air purification system. The heat was stifling. Besides, the commanders had little information about this area.”

Three days later – just as the S-2 was entering the conflict zone – all communication was lost. A lighthouse officer described seeing the submarine surface on January 3, then hearing a shattering explosion. That officer's grandson, professional diver Ingvald Eckerman, dedicated ten years to finding it.

“My father told me the story of the submarine since I was a child. But there were no specific coordinates. We searched everywhere. The moment we found it – it was amazing!” he recalled. However, not everyone believes the S-2 was lost without a fight.

Aleksandr Tutyshkin was only a toddler when his father, the most senior officer on the S-2, died. To honor him, he became a navy man himself.

“I turn 73 soon. I have only one dream left. That is to visit the place of my father's death, and to find out how he really died,” he said.

Aleksandr Tutyshkin claims the S-2 was engaged in action, battling bravely before sustaining serious damage. Leaking oil, with a failing radio system, it tried to communicate with another Soviet ship – but could not make itself clear. Knowing they were doomed, the crew tried to return home, before being bombed by Swedish boats which were helping Finland.

Tutyshkin claims Sweden's war neutrality meant that the incident was hushed-up. Now the S-2's final resting place has been found, researchers may at last discover how it sank. Yet unless it is declared an official war grave, underwater treasure hunters may get there first.

By RT - Prime Time Russia

The Russian Empire's lost gold may be buried at the bottom of Lake Baikal. That is the guess of an underwater research expedition, after it caught sight of something shiny.

Expedition members think they may have found the gold that admiral Kolchak seized during the Civil War almost a century ago. This was part of the country's gold reserve and amounted to more than 180 tonnes of gold.

All trace of the hoard was lost after a train crash in the region of Lake Baikal. Last year, researchers found the remains of a train carriage. Currently, the deep-water sub "Mir" is exploring the site.

It is still unclear if the find is the real thing or not. Some believe the gold reserve is being kept in Japanese and British banks. Scientists say there is no evidence that any treasures are hidden in the lake.

"This would be totally unscientific to comb the whole lake without any proof or documents hinting that the treasure was buried there,” Anatoly Sagalevich, head of the Baikal expedition, was quoted as saying by Izvestia newspaper.

“In fact, we have found much more than Kolchak’s gold – the giant solid gas hydrate deposits. In the future, these could be used as alternative fuel – without any harm to the lake.”

By Randy Boswell - Postmedia News

Canadian government scientists hoping for a second major Arctic shipwreck discovery this summer came up empty after a six-day search for the Terror and Erebus, the lost vessels of the 19th-century Franklin Expedition.

Parks Canada archeologist Ryan Harris, who led July's successful search for the wreck of the HMS Investigator — one of many British ships sent to look for the Terror and Erebus in the 1850s — said Monday a 150-square-kilometre sweep of the Queen Maud Gulf seabed near Nunavut's O'Reilly Island yielded no sign of the ill-fated vessels.

Last month's discovery of the Investigator, found at the bottom of Mercy Bay off Northwest Territories' Banks Island, had fuelled hoped that the Terror or Erebus — long viewed as Holy Grails of global marine archeology — might finally be found as well.

But Harris and Marc-Andre Bernier, Parks Canada's director of underwater archeology, said this summer's search — along with a previous probe in 2008 — has at least narrowed the hunt for the ships to a 150-sq.-km area on the northeast side of O'Reilly Island, located between mainland Nunavut and King William Island.

A third season of searching is expected to take place in 2011.

"I'm always disappointed if we don't find something," Harris said during a conference call with reporters.

But asked if he believes the Franklin ships will eventually be found, he said: "I'm fairly confident they will be."

The federal officials emphasized that although no wrecks were found this summer, the probe has provided important new information to help various government agencies map the Arctic Ocean sea floor in an area where little survey work had been done in the past.

"We learned a lot about the underwater topography of this area," Harris said.

He and Bernier also said that it was always expected to take three research seasons to scan the entire target area and that the team remains on schedule to complete the mission — and possibly discover one of the ships — next year.

"We are confident that neither of the wrecks lies in the area scanned to date," Harris said.

The search area was identified based on conflicting contemporary reports about where the Franklin ships went down.

 
Read more...

By Pete Hardie - Santa Barbara Independent

Researchers hope to use sonar images of the SS Montebello to determine if the sunken vessel could leak oil.

The Montebello Assessment Task Force sent a robotic submersible down to the wreck — which lies seven miles off California’s coast, near Cambria — last week.

The vessel’s tanks are presumed to still contain the three million gallons of Santa Maria crude oil that were loaded before its departure in December 1941.

The SS Montebello lies at a depth of approximately 900 feet. It sunk after being torpedoed by an Imperial Japanese submarine.

Kim Fulton-Bennett of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) said, “When the ship was sunk by the Japanese submarine, you might have expected the oil to leak out, as the whole bow of the ship fell off.”

However, according to Fulton-Bennett, neither the rescued sailors nor their rescuers reported any signs of oil leakage.

The second question, as Fulton-Bennett put it, regards the state of the oil if it does in fact remain in the ship’s tanks. It may be that the oil solidified over time and doesn’t threaten to leak out, but it is difficult to accurately predict whether this is the case.

The Montebello Assessment Task force was commissioned in 2008 by California Assemblymember Sam Blakeslee after he read an article on the sunken ship. The Task Force will work to identify all environmental issues resulting from the wreckage.

It includes representatives from MBARI, the Office of Spill Prevention and Response, the U.S. Coast Guard, and Caltrans.

The MBARI’s robotic submersible — commissioned by the Task Force to investigate the wreckage — embarked on a three-day mission and gathered data using three different types of sonar.

This allowed researchers to build a full 3-D picture of the shipwreck’s external condition and layout, and of the sea floor’s rock densities.

Read more...