'Golden Eye' diamond expected to sell for millions at auction

From The Telegraph (UK): 'Golden Eye' diamond expected to sell for millions at auction

The diamond was seized in 2006 by the FBI in an undercover operation that led to the conviction of a businessman for money laundering.

It is currently being kept at a federal building in Cleveland, Ohio and bids will start at $900,000 (£550,000) in the online auction on Sept 6.

According to court documents businessman Paul Monea tried to sell the diamond, along with a home he owned in Ohio, to an undercover FBI agent for $19.5 million (£12 million) and a boat. The home involved had previously been the estate of boxer Mike Tyson.

The diamond originated in South Africa but it was unclear how it ended up with Monea. He was alleged to have told others involved in the case that he owned a diamond mine in Africa and received the it from a friend.

US. Marshal Pete Elliott of the Northern District of Ohio, said: "This precious gem is sure to generate interest worldwide." The Department of Justice said money raised from the sale of the diamond would help to pay for law enforcement and community programmes.

From Wikipedia:
The Golden Eye Diamond is a flawless 43.5-carat (8.7 g) Canary Yellow diamond, claimed to be the world's largest of its cut and color. It is listed at number four of the top ten notable diamonds. It came from the Kimberley area of South Africa.

Ownership
Prior to its acquisition by Ohio businessman Paul Monea, its history is unclear. The Federal Bureau of Investigation seized the diamond following an undercover investigation of Monea that resulted in his conviction for money laundering and the diamond's forfeiture to the U.S. government in 2007.

It was approved to be auctioned by a federal judge. Its sale was planned tentatively in January 2011, but after a delay it was announced it will be sold via online auction in September 2011, with a minimum bid of $900,000

Honduras finds 2.5 tonnes cocaine in submarine

Okay, not really a tale of sunken treasure, but interesting for any authors out there looking for plots featuring submarines...

From BBC News, Latin American & Caribbean: Honduras finds 2.5 tonnes cocaine in submarine
Honduran General Rene Osorio said there were more than five tonnes of cocaine on the vessel, and authorities would need two days to retrieve all of it.

The vessel is submerged because the crew tried to sink it after they were intercepted two weeks ago.

Honduras is on a key route used by cartels trafficking drugs to the US.

Coast guard officials intercepted the submarine-like craft off the Caribbean coast of Honduras near the province of Gracias a Dios.

Shipwrecks' effect on environment probed

From Delaware Beaches: Shipwrecks' effect on environment probed
OCEAN CITY -- Veteran scuba diver Ted Green isn't worried about sunken vessels near area beaches that are under scrutiny for potential oil leaks. The oil they once held, he thinks, is long gone -- already dispersed into the sea.

You would be very hard-pressed to find a shipwreck off the coast of Delmarva that has any appreciable amount of oil left in it, said Green, the owner of OC Diver. If he's right, he's ahead of the curve now that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is combing through documents about known shipwrecks to decide which ones might be at risk for leaking oil.

NOAA is working to determine which of the more than 30,000 coastal shipwrecks they've identified contain fuels that could cause ecological damage, if they spring a leak. Lisa Symons, NOAA damage assessment and resource protection coordinator, pointed out five submerged vessels offshore of the resort the administration is assessing. The closest is the Marine Electric, a coal carrier that sank in 1983. Another is the India Arrow, a tanker that had been carrying a cargo of 88,369 barrels of diesel fuel during World War II when it was torpedoed by a German U-boat and sank about 20 miles southeast of Cape May, N.J.

Green routinely dives both locations and said to the best of his knowledge the vast majority of oil has been gone from both vessels for years, maybe even decades. The India Arrow would have posed a greater ecological threat due to the nature of its cargo, but Green's travels through the inside of the boat have indicated to him that the holds that used to contain oil have all emptied out, meaning any damage done from its fuel cargo has long since transpired.

"The boats that are carrying fuel are going to carry more potential for hazard than the others whose only fuel on board was what they were actually using for transportation," Green said. "The damage from those boats is still significant, but definitely not the same as a tanker full of oil."

Green said that even if a ship is leaking oil, it wouldn't pose any kind of threat to a scuba diver. There are a number of ships along the East Coast he said do still contain oil, and leak it in small droplets that quickly dissipate in the water and cause "fairly minimal" environmental damage.

It's not clear whether the submerged vessels will pose an environmental threat or not, according to Symons. She doesn't know for certain whether or not oil is still onboard any of the vessels. The agency hopes to conclude its investigation by the end of this year, she said, and at that point will turn its findings over to various Coast Guard bureaus. The Coast Guard will then decide if measures should be taken to further investigate the wrecks and possibly extract the fuels to prevent future leaks. The vessels in question will most likely fall under the jurisdiction of the Fifth Coast Guard District, based in Portsmouth, Va.

"It's still very much in the assessment process," Symons said of the project. "We're trying to be as smart as we can about working through this and providing the Coast Guard with the most accurate risk assessment we can."

Some of the vessels may not have broken apart completely and may still have intact fuel tanks that could begin to leak as corrosion progresses, according to Symons.

The ships assessed by the NOAA were sunk after 1907 and meet a specific criteria for size and amount of fuel on board, Symons said. Many of them were sunk by U-boats during World War II.

"That's not to say they're the only ones, because there are smaller boats with not as significant amounts of fuel on board that were ruled out," Symons said.

There are many sunken boats off Ocean City's coast, but Monty Hawkins of the Maryland Artificial Reef Committee agrees with Green that the waters surrounding the resort will dodge any problems from sunken vessel oil leaks.

Many of the sunken ships were put there intentionally as part of the artificial reef program, like the USS Arthur W. Radford, which is slated to be sunk off the coast sometime this year.

"When we sink a ship, it has to be very clean, and the Radford, for instance, is so clean right now you could open a restaurant on it tomorrow," Hawkins said. "I don't really see us having much of a problem from leaking shipwrecks near Ocean City."

Orleans man delves into sea serpent ‘mystery’

From Wicked Local (Cape Cod): Orleans man delves into sea serpent ‘mystery’
ORLEANS — During the 1800s and early 1900s eyewitness reports and newspaper articles about a sea serpent in the waters off Gloucester and the South Shore abounded. The serpent, said to be 100-feet in length, so fascinated folks that a scientific commission was formed to study it.

No credible explanation for the accounts ever surfaced and in the last 60 years there has been little mention of the creature.

But a man looking out his enormous plate glass windows that provide a panoramic view of Nauset Beach may have unraveled the mystery late last month.

Edward “Kin” Carmody, who lives on Callanan’s Pass on a bluff overlooking the beach, is a talkative, engaging man who has found time for various hobbies since he retired as a top marketing man for Kraft Foods 10 years ago. And if he isn’t working in his garden or creating new varieties of day lilies he’ll relax by sitting in a particular white wicker chair in his living room, look out at the Atlantic and watch for whale spouts. And on June 29 around 3 p.m. he saw something that is now etched in his memory.

“I saw, slightly to left,” he said pointing, his binoculars on the table beside him. “Quite a commotion of whales.”

He knew they were minke whales because they have a dorsal fin.

That was when he saw a common animal exhibit and uncommon behavior. It was a behavior that just may explain why people over the centuries have sworn they have seen a snakelike creature swimming in the water.

“As soon as I saw it I said ‘Oh my God, that may be the answer to a 1,000-year old mystery’,” Carmody recalled.

Then taking out a pad of paper on a recent sunny morning he sketched out what he saw that day: a chain of minke whales, nose to tail, whose backs looked much like the coils of the iconic sea serpent.

“They were in a chain line, they curved. It was synchronized exactly,” he said. “It was just like a gigantic snake.”

And then he pulled out another drawing.

“That is the classic sea monster that people see,” Carmody said, having quickly sketched the undulating body and dragon-like head.

The obvious difference between the two pictures is the missing head and tail in the whale drawing, but, said Carmody, the mind is a powerful thing. It will often create what you want to see, as evidenced by various mind games where your brain fills in missing words and the famous unreliability of eyewitness accounts.

First he thought the six, maybe eight, whales were playing, but then thought that was something that happened often. This ritual would need to be unusual, so he believes it may determine who the leader of the pod will be.

“That’s my hypothesis,” he said.

Scott Landry, director of the disentanglement program for Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies, said there are an abundance of minke whales around. But, he explained after the caveat that the whales are poorly studied, they are usually solitary creatures – mainly because they have to eat so much a day – and don’t have a herd structure.

Still, it’s quite possible that the minke whales were in a group because there was a lot of fish or sand lance around. The line could have been “coincidental,” Landry said.

Sightings such as Carmody’s are probably one of the reasons myths develop, he added.
Carmody’s fascination with the sight may have stemmed in part from his knowledge of paleontology, another of his hobbies. (In fact he has a few fossils in his basement.) He knows there is no fossil record of anything resembling a sea serpent and he also knows that when snakes swim they swim left to right, just as they coast across the land. They don’t propel themselves up and down as a sea serpents have been depicted.

Carmody isn’t professing that he is made one of the greatest scientific discoveries of the century; he is in fact concerned, he admitted with a chuckle, that his wife will be less than pleased that he has given folks the opportunity to say he is a little nutty. But there has been nothing that has been able to explain why so many people have thought they have seen a sea serpent.
Until now perhaps.

Armada wreck discovered off Donegal

From the Belfast Telegraph (Aug 5): Armada wreck discovered off Donegal
The wreckage of a sunken vessel believed to be from the Spanish Armada has been discovered off the Donegal coast.
Underwater archaeologists are to explore the historic wreck, located in shallow waters in Rutland Harbour, near Burtonport.

Evidence uncovered during a dive survey revealed the vessel was likely to be a 16th-century ship, possibly part of the 1588 Spanish Armada.

Heritage minister Jimmy Deenihan has granted 50,000 euro for the excavation by the underwater archaeology unit from his department's National Monuments Service.

He said the discovery was a major find of significance not only to Ireland but also to the international archaeological, historical and maritime communities.

"If, in fact, it proves to be an Armada vessel, it could constitute one of the most intact of these wrecks discovered to date," he said.

"It could provide huge insight into life on board and the reality of the military and naval resources available to the Armada campaign."

Up to 24 ships of the 130-strong ill-fated fleet were wrecked along Ireland's rocky coastline. The location of the latest vessel means the search team will have better than usual access to find any artefacts that may still be on board.

Nearly 10,000 pieces of valuable treasure were discovered on the biggest ship in the fleet, the Girona, which sunk off the Antrim north coast in October 1588. The haul brought ashore by divers included hundreds of gold and silver coins, gold chains, pendants, rings and cameos containing inset rubies and pearls, silver forks and spoons, the ship's anchor, cannons and cannon balls.

Mr Deenihan said the Geological Survey of Ireland is supplying one of its research vessels, the RV Keary, free of charge as the main dive vessel off Donegal and will also carry out detailed marine geophysical surveys in the vicinity of the wreck.

The World Trade Center Ship, From Stern to Stem

The New York Times: The World Trade Center Ship, From Stern to Stem
After finding the stern of an 18th-century sailing vessel in landfill where the new World Trade Center is being constructed, what could be better? Finding the bow — or at least enough to gain a clearer picture of the length of the vessel and how it was constructed; all of which might help solve the mystery of what it was doing anchored off Lower Manhattan in the first place.

The most intriguing theory now in circulation is that the vessel may have been used around the time of the Revolutionary War as a troop carrier of some sort. “That ties in really neatly with the British military button found between the frames,” said Warren Riess of the Darling Marine Center at the University of Maine.

Archaeologists unearthed the boat in July 2010, west of and perpendicular to Washington Street, between Liberty and Cedar Streets, where the waters of the Hudson once reached. It was immediately evident that the sunken hull had long ago been sundered by underground excavation. The remaining wood was so deteriorated that archaeologists couldn’t even tell at first whether they were looking at the fore portion or the aft.

[Fred R. Conrad of The Times created a panoramic view of the vessel in place.]

Once that was settled, they hoped to find what they surmised must exist under the east side of Washington Street: the bow. That had to wait a year, until the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey began excavating that area for the subterranean vehicle security center.
That brings us to July 27, when archaeologists from the firm AKRF, working for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and the Port Authority, left the scene of the excavation — just where they thought the bow ought to be — utterly dejected. They’d found nothing but a few slivers.

“We walked to O’Hara’s, ordered a pint and said, ‘Well, we gave it our best shot,’ ” said A. Michael Pappalardo, one of the archaeologists.

His colleague Elizabeth Meade said, “We called ourselves ‘The Boy Who Cried Ship.’ ”

Argh, but maritime stories always have a twist. Two days later, as an excavator bucket pulled away at a small shelf of soil, the archaeologists were thrilled to see whole pieces of wood falling out. They asked that workers slow the excavation. Under the mud and muck was a small but cohesive bit of the lower bow. Its discovery was reported Thursday by the Manhattan news site DNAInfo.

There was no bowsprit to be found, or figure head, or quarterboard to give the vessel’s name. This was the submerged portion of the bow, where structural timbers known as the apron, the stem post and the gripe are found. Still, it was an exciting discovery.

It can now be said that the vessel was about 50 feet long. Thirty-two feet of the stern were exposed last year, 10 to 15 feet amidships were lost long ago and three to six feet of the stem were exposed on July 29. The remnants were left in place last weekend so that Dr. Riess could inspect them. They were then taken to the AKRF office at 440 Park Avenue South to be readied for shipment to the Center for Maritime Archaeology and Conservation at Texas A&M University.

A dendrochronological examination of wood samples by Columbia University has already disclosed that the trees almost certainly grew in the Philadelphia area and were cut down no later than the 1770s.

A button found aboard the ship, from the coat of a private in the British Army 52nd Regiment of Foot, which battled the American rebels.The button to which Dr. Riess referred is a pewter disc with an ornamental border and the number “52″ in the center. Diane Dallal of AKRF said it corresponded with the 52nd Regiment of Foot, a light infantry regiment of the British Army that tried to suppress the colonial uprising in these parts. The fact that it is pewter — not silver — means that it adorned a private’s uniform, she said.

Archaeologists are careful not to associate many of the interesting things found around the boat with the boat itself. But this button was discovered last summer between two wooden frames of the ship. So though they do not yet know the boat’s name or its mission, they may have their first inkling of who the passengers were. And they know they have found the whole thing.

Chinese submersible "Jiaolong" attempts 5,000m dive

From Xinhuanet.com: Chinese submersible "Jiaolong" attempts 5,000m dive
BEIJING,July 21 (Xinhuanet) – China's deep-sea submersible, Jiaolong, is performing an experimental exploration mission to reach depths of 5,000 meters in the northeast Pacific.

This would set a new record for a manned submersible dive. The vessel entered the water four hours ago. So far it has dived more than 4000 meters. Crew members have sent back to the control center photos they took during the diving process. The vessel is expected to resurface in about one hour. Jiaolong's main missions, include physical, chemical and biological research, as well as exploration and deep-sea salvage.

The vehicle is the world's deepest-diving manned submersible, designed to reach depths of 7,000 meters. The difference between a submersible and a submarine, typically depends on the support from another facility or vessel. In this case, a ship, The Ocean-6 helped Jiaolong in previous tests, conducting surveys of the area ahead of the dive. Jiaolong completed 17 dives in the South China Sea between May 31st and July 18th last year, reaching depths of over 3700 meters at its deepest dive.