News flash!!!!!! Mini cars are dangerous in crashes!

Just watching CBS News The government runs a crash test on cars - I forget the name of the agency - and of the 11 mini cars ("smart cars") tested, 10 of them were judged unsafe if in an accident. The steering column gets pushed back into the driver and could skewer him or her.

This is news?

Of course, the problem is that the government, rather than insisting that these teeny tiny boxes be kept off the roads, might instead insist that the larger cars, which would run over them, be rejected... if two smart cars ran into each other they'd probably just bounce right off!

Researchers Return to Queen Anne’s Revenge Site

From MarineLink.com: http://www.marinelink.com/news/researchers-revenge357774.aspx

Many unknown treasures and concretion-encased surprises await researchers on the wreck of Blackbeard’s flagship, Queen Anne’s Revenge (QAR), near Beaufort. Part two of this year’s dive season resumed this week, and the plan is to recover artifacts from 60 five-foot by five-foot units by October 31. After nearly 300 years on the sea floor, the artifacts often are locked in a concrete-like crust of sand, shells and marine life that is removed during the conservation process.

This summer’s earlier dive ended in mid-June with the recovery of two eight-foot cannons. To date, 15 cannons have been recovered, and six other cannons that then could not be retrieved now await recovery. Plans to lift them in June were upset by unfavorable wind and weather.

“We still hope to recover the other cannons; one is already in place and ready to go,” said Project Director Billy Ray Morris. “We are seeking a vessel to lift the others since the retirement of the R/V Dan Moore, by Cape Fear Community College. It was a wonderful partner with us for many years.” The team will ask the college about use of its new vessel, R/V Hatteras, for further cannon recoveries.

Work will be concentrated in the area just forward of the main pile, running toward the bow of the ship. More than 280,000 artifacts have been recovered, led by the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources Underwater Archaeology Branch, which administers the site. Full recovery of artifacts is planned in 2014. Many artifacts are displayed in the Blackbeard’s Queen Anne’s Revenge, 1718 exhibit at the N.C. Maritime Museum in Beaufort.

The Queen Anne’s Revenge ran aground in Beaufort in June 1718. Intersal, Inc., a private research firm, discovered the site believed to be Queen Anne’s Revenge Nov. 21, 1996.

QAR was located near Beaufort Inlet, N.C., by Intersal’s director of operations, Mike Daniel, who used historical research provided by Intersal’s president, Phil Masters. Daniel now heads up Maritime Research Institute, the nonprofit corporation formed to work on the project in cooperation with state archaeologists and historians of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources.

The Underwater Archaeology Branch and the N.C. Maritime Museum, within the Division of State History Museums, are part of the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources.

Archaeology: ancient shipwrecks found off Turkish coast

From ANSAmed:
http://www.ansamed.info/ansamed/en/news/sections/culture/2013/08/26/Archaeology-ancient-shipwrecks-found-off-Turkish-coast_9200476.html

ANSAmed) - ISTANBUL, AUGUST 26 - Work has begun to unearth and exhibit ship remains from different eras that were discovered during an underwater excavation in the ancient town of Limantepe (Greek Klazomenai) on Turkey's western coast, as Anadolu Agency reported. It has been 13 years since the underwater excavations started in Limantepe, a site that attracted the interest of researchers when they could not initially identify areas in the sea on aerial photographs of the skele neighborhood in the district of Urla. Twenty underwater archaeologists, under the direction of Professor Hayat Erkanal, are taking part in the excavations in Limantepe, the site of a prehistoric settlement which witnessed humanity's passage from being hunter-gatherers to farmers.

Klazomenai or Clazomenae was an ancient Greek city on the coast of Ionia and a member of the Ionian League. It is thought that an earthquake or other cataclysmic event that took place in the sixth-century B.C. submerged the port. The excavations, coordinated by the Ankara University Underwater Research and Application Center (ANKUSAM), are continuing on the base of the port that dates back to the seventh-century B.C. Erkanal has reported that they discovered many ship remains from different eras and items that came out of these ships, which have been desalinated in a laboratory in preparation for exhibition. The harbour of ancient Klazomenai encompasses a vast region underwater, meaning excavations are likely to continue in the upcoming years, said Erkanal. Of the many ship remains found, a vessel from the seventh-century B.C. and an 18th-century Ottoman warship were taken into complete preservation underwater, according to Erkanal. Another ship was also discovered by fishermen 400 meters from the excavation site at a depth of 17 meters. (ANSAmed).

Navy dolphins find torpedo lost for 130 years

From Clarion Ledger:  Navy dolphins find torpedo lost for 130 years

Navy specialists found a rare torpedo off the San Diego coast, an 11-foot brass gem called the Howell that dates back 130 years or so and was one of the first torpedoes to propel itself. The Navy specialists who found it were trained dolphins, reports the Los Angeles Times.
"Dolphins naturally possess the most sophisticated sonar known to man," explains a specialist at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific. "We've never found anything like this," says the head of the Navy's marine mammal program. "Never."
Give credit to dolphins Ten and Spetz for finding the torpedo, stamped "USN No. 24," and then directing human divers to the spot.
The torpedo, rendered inoperable by its long stay in the ocean, is now being cleaned and readied for display at the Naval History and Heritage Command in Washington.
"It was the first torpedo that could be released into the ocean and follow a track," says another official at the warfare systems center, and that made it a state-of-the-art weapon in its day.

 

Take your blood pressure medication!

Spent most of yesterday in the hospital, where my mother was admitted. Her doctor had changed her blood pressure medication a couple of weeks ago, it wasn't doing the job. Unfortunately her doctor was out of town and a home therapist said we should take her to the Emergency Room.

Bad idea, as far as I'm concerned. Put her back on her old medication which was working, just causing her to cough.

Instead we brought her to the emergency room, and since she's old and deaf, this got her more stressed out and scared than ever, because they were all gathered around her shouting questions and wanting to run tests and I'm sure she thought she was dying or something, which sent her blood pressure even higher.

She spent the night there, and is still in today for more tests, which I don't think she needs but I guess since they've got her in there they want to get their money's worth out of our insurance...  she's in a private room which must be costing a fortune....

The reason for my headline... she was about 40 when she was first diagnosed with high blood pressure...took pills for a couple of days but didn't like how they made her feel....so she stopped taking them and tried to do the "natural remedy" thing.

Result, 20 years later she had congestive heart failure, and now instead of taking 1 pill a day she has to take 4. And has to go into the hospital periodically on occasions like these.

Moral of the story - go get your blood pressure checked, and if you have high blood pressure make sure you take your meds, otherwise believe me you'll wish you had, when it is too late...

Radioactive scuba diving a potential new Aussie destination sport

From Vancouver Observer:  Radioactive scuba diving a potential new Aussie destination sport

Okay, I am exaggerating, but only slightly, but new anti-regulation laws have recently been passed in Australia that could mean uranium will be shipped out directly over this oceanic masterpiece of nature. 
Ever scuba dived? Or even just put a mask to your face in knee-deep water and looked under the surface at all the brilliant fish and creatures that make a tropical reef their home?
It is brilliant, and one of those moments you never forget.
One place nobody forgets visiting is Australia's Great Barrier Reef, off the coast of the province of Queensland. But some pretty shortminded politicians are positioning to see the Reef become a shipping route for uranium  -- the radioactive substance used for nuclear power and high-powered military weaponry.
Queensland is a a place of seemingly competing economic interests.
On one hand, you have the Barrier Reef that contributes more than $5 billion a year in tourism and employs 54,000 people. On the other hand, you have a series of industrial ports that line the coast of Queensland that are keen to expand and export uranium to overseas markets. For 28 years there has been a ban on uranium mining in Queensland, but that was lifted late last year by  Queenland's Premier Campbell Newman. Now that the ban has been lifted, two mining companies are pushing to ship mined uranium from the coast of Queensland, over the Great Barrier Reef.

"The State Government is not opposed in principle to uranium being shipped from a Queensland port through the Great Barrier Reef," Natural Resources and Mines Minister Andrew Cripps says.

The price tag of the uranium deposits in Queensland, if all extracted and sold is about $10 billion. A pretty big chunk of cash, but worth only a paltry two years of tourism dollars that the Great Barrier Reef brings in. Professor Callum Roberts, a marine expert, told the Australian International Business Times:

"With something as sensitive as the Great Barrier Reef, you have to ask yourself what is it you want in the long term? Do you want those ports or do you want the Great Barrier Reef to continue being great, because you can't have both."

I am not economist, but shipping tons of radioactive material over the Great Barrier Reef seems like a really financially risky idea. As a person concerned about all the degradation we are seeing to natural wonders of the world like the Great Barrier Reef, it is borderline criminal.
To anyone who has looked in wonderment at the fish on a reef, this is not an "Australian issue",  this is an issue that speaks to how we want to leave the world to future generations. Our kids will remember visiting a reef teeming with tropical fish, turtles and fluorescent coral, but what will they remember if it isn't there to be seen? They sure as heck won't remember the quick buck made by uranium mining companies a few decades previous.

 

Never get involved in a land war in Asia

and never agree to transcribe 20 hours of meetings from an Australian business meeting.

That's what I've been doing for the last 4 days...utter nightmare. Could NOT understand their accents. Making it worse were the bad audio levels and the fact that a lot of the people preesnt insisted on talking over each other from all around the room except in front of the microphone... I will never transcribe ANYTHING every again.

Anyway, so sorry to be MIA from my blogs.

Designer creates wetsuit that lets wearers 'fly' underwater

From Digital Designer: Designer creates wetsuit that lets wearers 'fly' underwater

A French designer has created a wetsuit that is designed to allow the wearer a feeling of "flying" while underwater. It is unclear if the product, called 'Oceanwings' is planned for production.

French designer Guillaume Binard partnered with Aqua Lung to create a wetsuit that was inspired by skydiving wingsuits, reported Laughing Squid. The concept was reportedly submitted to Designboom, a website that encourages its readers to submit projects to share with other readers.

The wetsuit, called 'Oceanwings' is designed to allow the wearer to have an underwater 'flight' experience. The premise is that the wearer can swim through the water like a fish, with ease.

Aqua Lung/YouTube

Here the diver spreads on of his "wings" as he gets ready to dive into the water

Like this image1

It has "webbed" arms when extended, and the lower portion of the suit is restricted to keep the wearers legs in position while gliding underwater.

Aqua Lung posted a demo video, which was directed by Jérôme Espla, on its YouTube page on Feb. 5, 2013 to show how it works with a brief description.

[q]This movie shows how powerful are sub-aquatic activities feelings & emotions.

Through out a neoprene wing suit called "Oceanwings", the analogy between aerial and aquatic flight illustrates this intense tridimentionnal feeling met by the underwater Humans. [/q]

No word at this time on whether or not the wetsuit will be put into production. The video, however, is generating a lot of attention.

Aqua Lung/YouTube

'Oceanwings' is supposed to create an underwater 'flight' experience. Here the video illustrates the diver gliding downward

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/343395#ixzz2LBPSQYC5

Switch off crisis for biggest aquarium in Spain

Okay, perhaps not really Volcano Seven material....but there's got to be a plot for a book here!


From the Olive Press:  Switch off crisis for biggest aquarium in Spain

THOUSANDS of rare and endangered fish are at risk of death as Roquetas Aquarium falls further into financial hot water.
Due to a €9,500 unpaid electric bill, Endesa are turning off their electricity supply on February 7, which will cause the death of more than a thousand different species of marine life, including rare and protected fish.
The Aquarium, in Roquetas de Mar, Almeria, is the largest in Andalucía and has been struggling under a €3.5 million debt for several years.
Aquarium director, Enrique Fernandez, is in crisis talks with the energy company and the courts in the hope of postponing the switch off until the summer when the top tourist attraction will benefit from increased revenue.

Talking to the Spanish press earlier this week he admitted that, ‘things look bad’ because the survival of the animals depends on the electric power that powers the tanks.
It is thought a cash injection of 150,000€ would be needed just to keep the centre operating.
The owners- a consortium of Spanish businesses which includes the bank, Cajamar-have been unable to find an alternative aquarium in Spain big enough to take their stock.
Aquarium Roquetas de Mar opened in July 2006 but fell into financial difficulty in 2009.
The tourist attraction managed to stay afloat but has been struggling to pay its staff for several months.

 

South Africa: We're no croc hunters, say Limpopo cops

Well, I don't really know if this qualifies as a Volcano Seven story, but....



News 24: We're no croc hunters, say Limpopo cops

Johannesburg - Limpopo police said on Saturday they were not involved in hunting down crocodiles that escaped from the Rakwena Crocodile Farm after floods in the province.
"[Police] do not have the capacity or the expertise [to hunt the crocodiles], however we are monitoring the situation on a daily basis," Brigadier Hangwani Mulaudzi said in a statement.
Mulaudzi said there were no incidents reported regarding the crocodiles.
Zane Langman, the son-in-law of Johan Boshoff, who owns Rakwena, told Beeld newspaper on Thursday that around 15 000 crocodiles escaped from the farm into Limpopo River during the floods.
A few thousand crocodiles were recaptured in the dense bush next to the river and in the adjacent orange groves.
Langman told the newspaper he and Boshoff were forced to open the crocodile farm's gates, out of fear that the force of the water would crush the walls of Boshoff's home.
"We've been recapturing them as and when the local farmers phone us to tell us that there are crocodiles on their property.
"In Weipe there were a lot, and I also heard there was a crocodile a on school's rugby field in Musina," Langman said.
Most of the recapturing efforts were taking place at night, he said.

OMG!

Never realized I hadn't posted in over 2 weeks!

Sorry, folks

Things have just gotten away from me the last week and a half...posting should be back on schedule starting this weekend.

What did Google Earth spot in the Chinese desert?

(Google Earth via Wired)

From Yahoo News:What did Google Earth spot in the Chinese desert?

Since Google Earth launched in 2005, there have been dozens of mysterious images (supposed planes and bunkers, even the face of Jesus) captured by the satellites used for the virtual mapping program. But according to Allen Thomson, this one may be the weirdest.
Thomson, a former CIA analyst, was recently using Google Earth while searching for an orbital tracking site in southwestern China when he spotted something strange constructed in the middle of the Kashgar desert.

"I haven't the faintest clue what it might be," Thomson wrote in an email to Wired. "But it's extensive, the structures are pretty big and funny-looking, and it went up in what I’d call an incredible hurry."

Thomson, who served in the CIA from 1972 to 1985, "has made something of a second career finding odd stuff in public satellite imagery," according to Wired. The website explains:

He discovered these giant grids etched into the Chinese desert in 2011, and a suspected underground missile bunker in Iran in 2008. When the Israeli Air Force destroyed a mysterious facility in Syria the year before, Thomson put together an 812-page dossier on the so-called "Box on the Euphrates." Old analyst habits die hard, it seems.

Wired is soliciting theories from readers to pass along to Thomson; but at this point, the desert structure remains a mystery.

Theorizing about unexplained images from Google Earth has become a global parlor game.

In 2007, a Google Earth user spotted what was initially thought to be a cruise missile flying over a Utah desert. Others claimed it was simply a "jet airliner with dark-colored wings."

In 2010, a Brooklyn-based photographer discovered an image of what appeared to be a commercial airplane hidden in a housing complex in Bushwick. (Some users claimed it was a film set; others thought it was simply a low-flying plane caught by Google's satellite.)

Google Earth users also spotted what looked like a large plane submerged in the Atlantic Ocean near JFK Airport, sparking plenty of conspiracy theories.

The same year, a British man purportedly using Google Earth "to assess potential vacation spots" discovered what he said was the face of Jesus on Hungarian farmland. “I’m not a religious person looking for images of Mary or Jesus in everything," Zach Evans told the Sun newspaper (via the Daily Mail), "but this is obvious."

2,000-Year-Old Treasure Discovered In Black Sea Fortress

From Yahoo News:  2,000-Year-Old Treasure Discovered In Black Sea Fortress

Residents of a town under siege by the Roman army about 2,000 years ago buried two hoards of treasure in the town's citadel — treasure recently excavated by archaeologists.

More than 200 coins, mainly bronze, were found along with "various items of gold, silver and bronze jewelry and glass vessels" inside an ancient fortress within the Artezian settlement in the Crimea (in Ukraine), the researchers wrote in the most recent edition of the journal Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia.

"The fortress had been besieged. Wealthy people from the settlement and the neighborhood had tried to hide there from the Romans.  They had buried their hoards inside the citadel," Nikolaï Vinokurov, a professor at Moscow State Pedagogical University, explained. [See Photos of the Buried Treasure]

Artezian, which covered an area of at least 3.2 acres (1.3 hectares) and also had a  necropolis (a cemetery), was part of the Bosporus Kingdom. At the time, the kingdom's fate was torn between two brothers —Mithridates VIII, who sought independence from Rome, and his younger brother, Cotys I, who was in favor of keeping the kingdom a client state of the growing empire. Rome sent an army to support Cotys, establishing him in the Bosporan capital and torching settlements controlled by Mithridates, including Artezian.

People huddled in the fortress for protection as the Romans attacked, but Vinokurov said they knew they were doomed. "We can say that these hoards were funeral sacrifices.  It was obvious for the people that they were going to die shortly," he wrote in an email to LiveScience. The siege and fall of the fortress occurred in AD 45.
Curiously, each hoard included exactly 55 coins minted by Mithridates VIII. "This is possibly just a simple coincidence, or perhaps these were equal sums received by the owners of these caskets from the supporters of Mithridates," the team wrote in its paper.
A Greek lifestyle
Vinokurov's team, including a number of volunteers, has been exploring Artezian since 1989 and has found that the people of the settlement followed a culture that was distinctly Greek. The population's ethnicity was mixed, Vinokurov wrote, "but their culture was pure Greek. They spoke Greek language, had Greek school; the architecture and fortification were Greek as well. They were Hellenes by culture but not that pure by blood."
Greeks are known to have created colonies on the Black Sea centuries earlier, intermarrying with the Crimeans. The customs and art forms they introduced appear to have persisted through the ages despite being practiced nearly 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) from Greece itself.
This Greek influence can be seen in the treasures the people of Artezian buried. Among them is a silver brooch engraved with an image of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, and gold rings with gems engraved with images of Nemesis and Tyche, both Greek deities.

When archaeologists excavated other portions of the torched site they found more evidence of a Greek lifestyle.

"In the burnt level of the early citadel, many fragmentary small terra cotta figures were found depicting Demeter, Cora, Cybele, Aphrodite with a dolphin, Psyche and Eros, a maiden with gifts, Hermes, Attis, foot soldiers and warriors on horseback, semi-naked youths," the researchers wrote in their paper, adding fragments of a miniature oinochoai (a form of Greek pottery) and small jugs for libations also were found.

All this was torched by the Romans and later rebuilt by Cotys I, who had been successfully enthroned by Rome. However the treasures of the earlier inhabitants remained undiscovered beneath the surface, a testament to a desperate stand against the growing power of Rome.

 

You should see the one that got a ray! Fishermen from the Forties pose alongside huge catches, including mega mantas and whopping whale sharks

From the Daily Mail:  You should see the one that got a ray! Fishermen from the Forties pose alongside huge catches, including mega mantas and whopping whale sharks

Long famed for sunshine and Disneyland, Florida's original pastime was to take advantage of the seas surrounding it filled with some of the largest creatures in our oceans.
This series of amazing pictures from Florida's state archive reveal how early 20th century anglers hauled in huge catches including a 1,200lb manta ray and a 45-foot long whale shark.
The collection of images, entitled Hooked: Florida’s Big Fish, documents the state’s long history as a centre of commercial and recreational fishing.

Quite a catch: This 1,200lb manta ray was caught by a local fishing guide called Forrest Walker in 1938

Tipping the scales: Anglers with a 30,000lb whale shark they caught in 1912 which was 45 feet long

Hooked: A crew of anglers show off a grouper caught in the Halifax river in the 1920s

Impressive: A couple stand proudly with their haul of sailfish sporting matching knickerbockers in 1935

Threatened: Some species such as the hammerhead shark, pictured left on Palm Beach in 1893, and the Bonito shark, pictured right, are now running low on numbers

The photos give a fascinating insight into the exploits of fisherman in the first half of the 20th century who would still have been discovering some of these creatures for the first time.

 

More...

• Strike a pose and hold your breath: Fashion models take part in stunning underwater freediving photo shoot with whale sharks
• Google boss finds old-fashioned computers in North Korea so quaint that he stops to take a picture
• Fat cat attack: The porky pets proving that humans are clearly not the only ones who overindulged at Christmas

Despite their gentle nature, giant manta rays were much-feared when they were first seen.
Two films in the 1930s, The Sea Bat and The Sea Fiend, portrayed them as 'devil killers of the sea' which helped garnish their reputation as a danger to humans.
One picture also demonstrates how Florida's fishing reputation has attracted some famous angling fans over the years, including author Ernest Hemingway who is snapped with a huge sailfish he caught in the 1940s.
Florida has the longest coastline in the lower 48 states and thousands of lakes, rivers, springs, and swamps.
Some of the famous local species include the tarpon, marlin, giant manta ray and sawfish.
While years of harvesting have taken their toll on sensitive fisheries and ecosystems, Florida’s marine environment remains one of the state's main economic strengths.

Making a splash: Florida's waters attracted famous fishing fans including author Ernest Hemingway, pictured right in the 1940s

Fresh: Anglers standing with a day's catch at Palm Beach around 1900

Unique: Florida is home to some of the world's most unusual species such as the giant manta ray, pictured here in the 1940s

Hook, line and sinker: Bomber crews relax with a spot of fishing at West Palm Beach during World War Two

Acrobatics: A tarpon fish flips out the water in this photo taken in the 1920s

 

Posts resume Thursday

I know I've been saying this periodically but this will be the last time I say it...I'm visiting relatives and although they have Wi fi I don't have a private room to work.

I'll be home Thursaday and will get back into the swing of things then.

Mysterious dock drifts onto Washington beach

From MyDesert.com:  Mysterious dock drifts onto Washington beach

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Scientists inspect a dock that floated up on a beach in northwestern Washington. / Washington Dept. of Fish & Wildlife

Written by

Jeff Barnard

AP Environmental Writer

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• News from the Northwest

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A scientist who examined the dock says it looks just like the one that came ashore on a central Oregon beach last summer. / Washington Dept. of Fish & Wildlife

A scientist who examined the dock that recently washed ashore on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula says it looks just like the one that came ashore on a central Oregon beach last summer, suggesting it also is a piece of tsunami debris from Japan.
John Chapman, an assistant professor of fisheries at Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center, said Friday the Washington dock found earlier this month has the same dimensions and configuration as the one found near Newport, Ore. The Oregon dock broke loose from a Japanese fishing port in 2011.
“It was identical so far as we could tell,” said Chapman, who was one of the eight people who hiked through old growth forest and crossed a rain-swollen creek on Dec. 21 to examine the dock. “It has the same set of cleats. It has the same rollers, the same shape, dimensions, the same bumper configuration.”
But there was no commemorative plaque on the dock found in Washington, like the one in Oregon had, to identify where it came from, he said. A stainless steel plaque identified it as one of four owned by Aomori Prefecture that broke loose form the port of Misawa during the March 2011 tsunami.
Efforts to trace and confirm the origin of the Washington dock have not yet been successful. The Coast Guard spotted it Dec. 18 on a remote stretch of wilderness beach on the northwestern tip of Washington protected by the Olympic National Park.
The Washington Ecology Department said nearly 30 species on the dock have been identified. None poses a high risk of becoming invasive.
Chapman said just the lower number of species and individual organisms on the Washington dock make it a lower risk than the Oregon dock. Also, the crashing surf on the Washington shore is not a hospitable habitat for species from placid waters in Japan, experts say.
So far, there has been no sign any of the Japanese species on the Oregon dock has established in Oregon, Chapman said. However, there is no formal monitoring going on.
The Oregon dock measured 66 feet long, 19 feet wide and 7 feet high and weighed 165 tons before it was cut up and hauled away. Volunteers scraped off 2 tons of seaweed and creatures clinging to it and ran blowtorches over the surface to sterilize it.
Chapman said a flooded stream stopped them from their first attempt at reaching the dock. But they returned the next day, wearing dry suits provided by the National Park Service, and were helped across by a search and rescue team. They used a rope to descend to the beach. The dry suits proved helpful on the beach, where they were dodging 16-foot waves.
“The dock was being pulverized on the rocks there,” Chapman said. Styrofoam was coming out where the concrete had fractured.

 

Scottish diver and researcher maps country's most famous shipwrecks in new book

From Daily Record and Sunday Mail:  Scottish diver and researcher maps country's most famous shipwrecks in new book 

A GHOSTLY gallery of Scotland’s most famous shipwrecks has been revealed.
More than 20 of the country’s sunken relics of the sea have been mapped by a diver then turned into undersea landscapes by an artist.
Rod Macdonald, one of the country’s best known divers, says the sea is revealing more details of the sunken ships as they erode.
He has surveyed and researched 25 lying in Scottish waters for his new book, Great British Shipwrecks.
Rod provides a dramatic account of the ships’ time afloat and their eventual sinking, with each wreck being illustrated by marine artist Robert Ward, of Muchalls, Aberdeenshire.
His journey starts with the famous shipwrecks at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands – where the German fleet was scuttled in 1919.
Also included is the legendary WWI British cruiser HMS Hampshire, on which War Secretary Lord Kitchener perished on a voyage to Russia in 1916.
It rests in over 200 feet of water off Marwick Head to the north west of Orkney.
The famous West Coast shipwrecks ,such as the steamships Thesis, Hispania and Shuna, and cargo ship Rondo in the Sound of Mull are featured. There are the renowned wrecks of the Dutch steamship SS Breda, lost near Oban in 1940, and the WWII minelayer HMS Port Napier off Skye.

The wreck of HMS Port Napier which lies off Skye

Rod also reveals the haunting remains of HMS Pathfinder, the first Royal Navy warship to be sunk by a U-boat torpedo during WWI. It lies in the Forth.
Rod, 53 said: “The authorities at first attempted to cover up the true cause of the sinking.
“They feared the affect that knowledge of the loss of such a ship to a U-boat torpedo would have because it revealed just how vulnerable to torpedo attack British warships were.
“Pathfinder was thus reported, at first, to have been mined. The Admiralty came to an agreement with the Press Bureau, which allowed for the censoring of all reports.
“But other newspapers soon published an eyewitness account from an Eyemouth fisherman who helped in the rescue and confirmed rumours a submarine had been responsible, rather than a mine.
“The true story eventually came out and the sinking of Pathfinder by a submarine made both sides in the conflict aware of the potential vulnerability of large ships to attack by submarines. There were only 18 survivors.
“Small personal items – a brass sextant in the bridge area and brass light cages and lanterns – are strewn about, and all over the wreck are the reminders that this was a warship.
“On the main section of the wreck, the deck collapses downwards towards the seabed.
“Here, there is an ancient large gauge net lying over parts of it. The Royal Navy draped a net over the wreck just after the sinking to catch any bodies floating free from it and it may be part of that net that remains.
“Some of the wrecks I have dived over 50 times – and brought back photographs and video for Rob to draw his illustrations.”
Rod said Scapa Flow was the still the top dive site in Britain and attracts around 4000 divers a year.
But more and more divers are also heading to St Abbs Head and Eyemouth where underwater surveys for offshore wind farms have revealed up to 100 new wrecks.
More than 40,000 dives are now carried out in the area each year.
? Great British Shipwrecks by Rod Macdonald is published by Whittles Publishing.

 

Low-water rivers offering up glimpse of history

From YahooNews.com:  Low-water rivers offering up glimpse of history

Enlarge PhotoAssociated Press/United States Coast Guard, Colby Buchanan - This Nov. 28, 2012 photo provided by The United States Coast Guard shows a WWII minesweeper on the Mississippi River near St. Louis, Mo.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — From sunken steamboats to a millennium-old map engraved in rock, the drought-drained rivers of the nation's midsection are offering a rare and fleeting glimpse into years gone by.

Lack of rain has left many rivers at low levels unseen for decades, creating problems for river commerce and recreation and raising concerns about water supplies and hydropower if the drought persists into next year, as many fear.

But for the curious, the receding water is offering an occasional treasure trove of history.

An old steamboat is now visible on the Missouri River near St. Charles, Mo., and other old boats nestled on river bottoms are showing up elsewhere. A World War II minesweeper, once moored along the Mississippi River as a museum at St. Louis before it was torn away by floodwaters two decades ago, has become visible — rusted but intact.

Perhaps most interesting, a rock containing what is believed to be an ancient map has emerged in the Mississippi River in southeast Missouri.

The rock contains etchings believed to be up to 1,200 years old. It was not in the river a millennium ago, but the changing course of the waterway now normally puts it under water — exposed only in periods of extreme drought. Experts are wary of giving a specific location out of fear that looters will take a chunk of the rock or scribble graffiti on it.

"It appears to be a map of prehistoric Indian villages," said Steve Dasovich, an anthropology professor at Lindenwood University in St. Charles. "What's really fascinating is that it shows village sites we don't yet know about."

Old boats are turning up in several locations, including sunken steamboats dating to the 19th century.

That's not surprising considering the volume of steamboat traffic that once traversed the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. Dasovich said it wasn't uncommon in the 1800s to have hundreds of steamboats pass by St. Louis each day, given the fact that St. Louis was once among the world's busiest inland ports. The boats, sometimes lined up two miles deep and four boats wide in both directions, carried not only people from town to town but goods and supplies up and down the rivers.

Sinkings were common among the wooden vessels, which often were poorly constructed.
"The average lifespan of a steamboat on the Missouri River was five years," Dasovich said. "They were made quickly. If you could make one run from St. Louis to Fort Benton, Mont., and back, you've paid for your boat and probably made a profit. After that, it's almost like they didn't care what happened."
What often happened, at least on the Missouri River, was the boat would strike an underwater tree that had been uprooted and become lodged in the river bottom, tearing a hole that would sink the ship. Dasovich estimated that the remains of 500 to 700 steamboats sit at the bottom of the Missouri River, scattered from its mouth in Montana to its convergence with the Mississippi near St. Louis.
The number of sunken steamboats on the Mississippi River is likely about the same, Dasovich said. Steamboat traffic was far heavier on the Mississippi, but traffic there was and is less susceptible to river debris.
Boiler explosions, lightning strikes and accidents also sunk many a steamboat. One of the grander ones, the Montana, turned up this fall on the Missouri River near St. Charles. The elaborate steamer was as long as a football field with lavish touches aimed at pleasing its mostly wealthy clientele. It went to its watery grave after striking a tree below the surface in 1884.
The U.S. Coast Guard and Army Corps of Engineers urge sightseers to stay away from any shipwreck sites. Sandbars leading to them can be unstable and dangerous, and the rusted hulks can pose dangers for those sifting through them.
Plus, taking anything from them is illegal. By law, sunken ships and their goods belong to the state where they went down.
While unusual, it's not unprecedented for low water levels to reveal historic artifacts.
Last year, an officer who patrols an East Texas lake discovered a piece of the space shuttle Columbia, which broke apart and burned on re-entry in 2003, killing all seven astronauts aboard. And the remains of a wooden steamer built 125 years ago recently were uncovered in a Michigan waterway because of low levels in the Great Lakes.
But treasure hunters expecting to find Titanic-like souvenirs in rivers will likely be disappointed if they risk exploring the lost boats.
"It's not like these wrecks are full of bottles, dishes, things like that," said Mark Wagner, an archaeologist at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. "If there was anything on there in the first place, the river current pretty much stripped things out of these wrecks."
Such was the case with the USS Inaugural, a World War II minesweeper that for years served as a docked museum on the Mississippi River at St. Louis. The Great Flood of 1993 ripped the Inaugural from its mooring near the Gateway Arch. It crashed into the Poplar Street bridge, and then sank.

In September, the rusted Inaugural became visible again, though now nothing more than an empty, orange-rusted hulk lying on its side not far from a south St. Louis casino.

 

New posting schedule

Now that I've got this new full-time job, I'll be posting in this blog twice a week - on Monday's and Wednesdays.

So the next post for this blog will be on Monday.

Thanks for your patience.

Posts resume this Wednesday

I'm a freelance writer and I am way behind on a job I have to do, so I won't be posting here until Wednesday..

Thanks for your patience!