Canada: Where to swim between giant whale bones

From The Globe and Mail (Canada): Where to swim between giant whale bones
What’s the deal?
Explore the remains of Canada’s whaling industry.

Where’s it at?
From the late 19th century until 1972, when a moratorium on commercial whaling was imposed, about 20,000 whales were taken for oil, meat and fertilizer in Newfoundland and Labrador. Rather than study grainy, black and white photos and artifacts in a museum, don scuba gear and dive at a former whaling station.

Head to south Dildo (yes, that’s the name) and book on a guided dive tour of the Dildo Whaling Station with Ocean Quest Adventures (oceanquestadventures.com).

As you descend into the sandy bay, the skeletons of several dozen fin, minke and sperm whales, which are still bright white decades after being submerged, will come into view. It’s an eerie experience. The tree-trunk-size vertebrae and skulls are now home for other marine life such as lobster, cunners and sculpins.

After you’ve done your dive, visit the small seaside Dildo Whaling Museum and you’ll have a better appreciation of this important part of East Coast history. You may even spot some live whales – minkes are often seen in the harbour.

Who’s it for?

Those who like their history first-hand.

Take the Plunge: 4 Incredible Shipwreck Dive Sites

From Fox News: Take the Plunge: 4 Incredible Shipwreck Dive Sites
Those who’ve sported SCUBA or snorkel gear and submerged beneath the surface of the sea have witnessed the fantastical underworld that lies below. Through the lens of a diving mask is a flooded universe where a symphony of plant life sways back and forth to the sub aqua beat, and gangs of fish nose around for something to eat. To look out across a seascape is to delve into the dynamic and awe-inspiring; while at the same time observe something dark, scary and lonely.

While it's not eco-PC to dig man's underwater destruction, it is an otherworldly journey for the imagination to explore a ship or plane wreck via dive or snorkel. Marine life and their eco systems are surprisingly resilient. Submerged flora and fauna have no problem hopping onboard and moving into sunken ships once the waters have calmed.

UNESCO estimates that there are roughly three million shipwrecks worldwide and billions of dollars strewn across the ocean floor. Don’t get too excited. It costs about $4 million to send an underwater robot to hunt those treasures. Nevertheless, here are five wrecks to wreak exploratory havoc on in bodies of water all around the world.

MS Antilla
My first foray with sea wreckage was a close examination of the 400-foot long Antilla -- one of the largest wrecks in the Caribbean. Just off Aruba’s Arashi reef, the German freighter was initially used during World War II to provide provisions to submarines patrolling the Dutch Antilles. When Germany invaded Holland, Aruba joined forces with the Allies. Anchored in shallow waters, after being ordered to surrender in 24 hours, the German crew obliged, but the captain opted to scuttle the ship rather than let it fall under Allied control. The Antilla sits at a shallow depth – peeking out of the surface and maxing out at a mere 60 feet. As a snorkeler, I was both dazzled and terrified by the ghostly presence of a ship that once was and now today is festooned with cheerful sponges, corals and a plethora of marine life that made the ship home.

Dive with: Mi Dushi (www.midushi.com)

SS Yongala
March marked the 100th anniversary of wreck located in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park in Queensland, Australia. The Yongala hit the ocean floor in 1911 but was mysteriously undiscovered for more than 50 years despite all on board perishing. Considered one of the top wrecks in the world, the coral-encrusted ship attracts massive blue gropers and staggering schools of huge trevally, cobia, pinnate batfish and fingermark. Not to mention bull sharks, marble rays and juvenile Humpback whales along with thousands of other sea creatures. The sea voyeurism continues when floating up closer to the surface where harmless sea snakes and turtles go about their business.

Dive with: Yongala Dive (www.yongaladive.com.au)

HMS Thistlegorm
Most Americans don’t think of Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt as a dive destination, but thanks to the 1941 bombing of the HMS Thistlegorm, the 400ft long WWII British container ship replete with motorbikes, tanks, aircraft, armored trucks and rifles is the busiest dive wreck in the world. Today the superstructure is broken in two, but still largely intact as one bomb split the hull to reveal all that fancy cargo. The Thistlegorm, lying within the Red Sea’s Straits of Gubal is still armed with well-preserved antiaircraft and machine guns, but the only armies and squadrons’ onboard are soldierfish, barracuda, lionfish, crocodilefish, blackspotted sweetlips, jackfish, and grouper. Nevertheless, the Jolanda, a Cypriot Merchant ship in Ras Mohammed and 20km south of Sharm, is said by those in-the-know to be an even better wreck dive spot.

Dive with: Aquarius Diving Club (www.aquariusredsea.com)

Superior Producer
The final voyage of the 200-foot Superior Producer, now anchored on the ocean floor off Curacao, was in September 1977. It sank on it’s way to Colombia, barely making it beyond the Willemstad Harbor because it was packing some serious weight in Christmas and household goodies. Because it barely left the shore before hitting rock bottom, it’s close enough for excellent swimmers to shore dive the wreck if the oft-strong currents are down. Unfortunately, there aren’t any leftover holiday treasures as the ship was pillaged of its purchases right after taking the plunge. Today it’s covered in black coral, sponges and sea anemones, and frequented by grouper, snapper, mackerel, barracuda and large lobsters. Bring a flashlight not just on night dives (when the coral blooms), but daytime ones too: there are a lot of cool entries to navigate once through the ship’s manhole. First time wreck divers prefer the Superior Producer; the pros prefer nearby Tugboat and Car Pile.

Dive with: Ocean Encounters Curacao (www.oceanencounters.com)

Black Jack B17
It’s not every day anyone, much less a wreck diver, gets to explore a B17 military bomber. The Blackjack, also known as the “Flying Fortress” fell into the sea following a bombing raid on a Japanese base in 1943. Almost 70 years later and it is still remarkably intact. Neatly submerged in roughly 148 feet of water and atop an immaculate white sandy sea floor, the plane’s cockpit and turret guns are open for inspection. Ammunition belts are still loaded into 50 caliber machine guns whose barrels still rotate and are now adorned with feathered stars, bright, soft corals and littered with crinoids. Swimming or guarding the site is schools of barracuda, hammerhead and reef sharks, manta and eagle rays, grouper and other nomadic fish. Those who make the trek to Milne Bay in Papua New Guinea are frequently dazzled if not overwhelmed by how many ocean and aircrafts have plummeted here as tour operators call it a wreck diving Mecca.

Dive with: Black Tomato’s offers a cool adventure package with dive (www.blacktomato.co.uk/44604/the-ultimate-tropical-adventure-in-png)

Treasure hunters eye huge silver haul from WWII ship

From Yahooo News: Treasure hunters eye huge silver haul from WWII ship
When the SS Gairsoppa was torpedoed by a German U-boat, it took its huge silver cargo to a watery grave. Seventy years later, US divers said they are working to recover what may well be the biggest shipwreck haul ever.

Florida-based Odyssey Marine Exploration on Monday confirmed the identity and location of the Gairsoppa and cited official documents indicating the ship was carrying some 219 tons of silver coins and bullion when it sank in 1941 in the North Atlantic some 300 miles (490 kilometers) off the Irish coast.

That's worth about $200 million today, which would make it history's largest recovery of precious metals lost at sea, Odyssey said.

"We've accomplished the first phase of this project -- the location and identification of the target shipwreck -- and now we're hard at work planning for the recovery phase," Odyssey senior project manager Andrew Craig said in a statement.

"Given the orientation and condition of the shipwreck, we are extremely confident that our planned salvage operation will be well suited for the recovery of this silver cargo."

Recovery is expected to begin next spring.

After a tender process the British government awarded Odyssey an exclusive salvage contract for the cargo, and under the agreement Odyssey will retain 80 percent of the silver bullion salvaged from the wreck.

The 412-foot (125-meter) Gairsoppa had been sailing from India back to Britain in February 1941, and was in a convoy of ships when a storm hit. Running low on fuel, the Gairsoppa broke off from the convoy and set a course for Galway, Ireland.

It never made it, succumbing to a U-boat's torpedo in the contested waters of the North Atlantic. Of the 85 people on board, only one survived.

The Gairsoppa came to rest nearly 15,400 feet (4,700 meters) below the surface, but Odyssey is insisting that won't prevent a full cargo recovery.

"We were fortunate to find the shipwreck sitting upright, with the holds open and easily accessible," Odyssey chief executive Greg Stemm said.

Scientific advances may finally reveal Franklin’s lost ships

From Nunatsiaq Online: Scientific advances may finally reveal Franklin’s lost ships

A Parks Canada-led team of researchers is trying — again — to unravel the ultimate Arctic mystery: the whereabouts of the lost ships of the ill-fated Franklin Expedition.

The experts are armed with everything from historical Inuit testimony and the scrawled writings of 19th-century explorers to state-of-the art seabed scanners and the latest computer simulations of ice movement through the Arctic Archipelago.

And while underwater archeologist Ryan Harris and his colleagues from a host of federal and Nunavut government agencies are optimistic that this could be the year for a worldshaking discovery, they know they’re not the first to harbour that hope.

Still, the veteran Parks Canada diver and marine historian is excited about fresh data being supplied by Canadian Ice Service scientists that should help the search team retrace what happened to the stranded Franklin ships more than a century and a half ago — and to help pinpoint where they might lie on the bottom of the Arctic Ocean.

“They’ve undertaken a historical ice climatology study to help us narrow our search area,” Harris said in a preexpedition interview. “It’s quite innovative. It’s looking back at archived Radarsat ice imagery and trying to reconstruct patterns of ice formation, drift and breakup” in the waters known to have been sailed by Sir John Franklin when his ships — HMS Erebus and HMS Terror — fell prey to pack ice 165 years ago.

The freeze-in led to the loss of the two vessels and, eventually, to the deaths of Franklin and all 128 men under his command.

“There were some very simple questions which we didn’t know the answer to, like what happens to the ice coming from Victoria Strait? Does it all go west of the Royal Geographical Society Islands or does it bifurcate?” asks Harris, noting that a key pinch-point appears to lie where the Victoria Strait reaches the southerly Alexandra Strait near the southeast tip of Victoria Island.

The ice “bottlenecks at the top of Alexandra Strait and that is the area where one of the vessels luckily made it through and the other got pinched and sunk.”

It appears that the ice data “reinforces our suspicion that there’s a big stoppage as it enters Alexandra Strait” and that “this is what imperilled the expedition in the first place.

“Once they were caught in the ice in the eastern portion of Victoria Strait, it’s almost like a peristaltic effort to get it eventually to come out into Alexandra Strait,” Harris said. “It’s just a terrible blockage point, and Erebus and Terror unfortunately got caught up in this, and that was ultimately their undoing.”

Previous searches by federal scientists in 2008 and 2010 were steered by historical reports that situated one of the lost ships - disabled but finally freed of the Victoria-Alexandra ice jam - near O’Reilly Island, southwest of King William Island in a body of water just off mainland Canada, the Queen Maud Gulf.

This year’s search is targeting an area farther north, between Victoria Island and King William Island, where the other ship is believed to have gone down after remaining trapped near the smaller Royal Geographical Society Islands.

And, at least for now, Parks Canada has the full and enthusiastic backing of the Canadian government in its bid to find one of the famous wrecks.

“The sense is that we’re close - oh, so close - and there are big hopes this might be the expedition that locates it,” Environment Minister Peter Kent told Postmedia News this week.

Ghost ship unveiled: Stealth vessel is 'virtually unstoppable'

From Seacoastonline.com: Ghost ship unveiled: Stealth vessel is 'virtually unstoppable'

By Elizabeth Dinan
edinan@seacoastonline.com
August 21, 2011 2:00 AM
After years of research under top-secret conditions, Greg Sancoff has unveiled a "game changing" invention he describes as "like an attack helicopter on water."

Named Ghost, it's the world's first "supercavitating" water craft, meaning it travels across water like a boat, but through a tunnel of gas below the surface, he said. The significance of the technology means Ghost moves through the gas instead of water which has 900 times more drag, he said.

"We're creating an artificial environment around our underwater structure," said Sancoff, who is developing Ghost with his own money, while the project is "controlled by the government."

"We're reducing hull friction, which hasn't changed much since the Vikings," he said. "This, in many ways, is probably one of the largest advancements made in the Navy. It's like breaking the sound barrier."

Ghost is also stealth, is powered by jet fuel, can carry thousands of pounds of weapons including torpedoes and is "virtually unstoppable," Sancoff said. He added the cockpit of the prototype is like one found inside a plane and the rear can seat multiple Navy SEALS.

According to a statement by retired Navy Admiral Thomas Richards, who serves on Sancoff's board of directors, Ghost can travel at speeds "in excess of a mile a minute."

The technology can be applied to surface or submersible watercraft which can be manned or unmanned, Sancoff said.

"You can leave Portsmouth and come up off the coast of Africa," he said.

"Secrecy orders," which barred images of Ghost being released to the public were lifted by the Navy on Aug. 10, coinciding with the launch of a prototype in waters off the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.

"It'll be seen," explained Sancoff, who said he's discussed the project with officials from the Navy, Coast Guard, Drug Enforcement Agency and the defense industry.

"The government is very interested," Sancoff said, while declining to discuss specifics.

Ghost is being tested from a previously vacant building at the shipyard that Sancoff is leasing. Headquarters for the company he built around Ghost, Juliet Marine Services, are in a circa 1725 ship captain's home on Deer Street in Portsmouth. The doors are always locked, he said, and exterior surveillance cameras are visible to visitors.

"We don't usually let anyone in the office," Sancoff said.

A "medical device guy" with 38 medical device patents, Sancoff, 53, said he's started and sold multiple companies, which has allowed him to retire "a bunch of times" and enjoy financial comfort.

"This is not about making money," he said. "I've been very successful and instead of retiring or playing golf, I'm focused now on solving this problem for the government."

The problem, he said, is attacks on American service people at sea by terrorists, as well as attacks on civilians by pirates. He said he began thinking about it in 2002 after the USS Cole was attacked while the destroyer was refueling in a Yemeni port. The suicide bombing killed 17 sailors, injured 39 "and just about sunk a billion-dollar destroyer," he said.

"Every single day there are men and women out there who are unprotected on ships," he said.

A former inboard hydroplane boat racer, Sancoff said he began reading "every thesis I could find" and talking to experts about the subject of supercavitation.

"I came up with the concept," he said, adding, "We don't want anyone to understand how this works underwater."

Patent protected, Ghost has been under development since 2005 and because of his working relationship with the Office of Naval Research, Sancoff said he's "been unable to talk about it without specific approval" until last week.

"We're very limited on what we can say," he said. "It has to be that way."

He's hired nine employees, including marine design engineers, and has multiple advisors. They've adapted a "skunkworks" model, which Sancoff said means "we're a small company, but we're a sophisticated company."

"We're a group of highly technical people with clearly set objectives," he said. "There are millions of decisions and we make it happen or we don't go home at night. It takes a very special group of people."

Sancoff said Ghost is being developed with private money for the government and "if we do our job correctly, they'll be interested in it." His goal, he said, is to "grow a very successful business here" and be "a leader, a pioneer in hydrodynamic research."

Other applications for the technology could include cruise ships, container ships, torpedoes and unmanned underwater vehicles, he said.

"We have interest from the shipping industry, which loses 10,000 containers a year," he said. "We're just not focused on that now."

Sancoff said he expects to open a second facility in Portsmouth within seven months, then possibly build "a sizable manufacturing facility" at Pease International Tradeport.

"I'd like to have a building where the scrap metal pile, or the salt piles are right now," he said, referencing Portsmouth's working waterfront. "We are very interested in having this be a New Hampshire-based company."

Sancoff said he's already turned down offers for government earmarks and outright company buy-outs.

"I'm not interested," he said.

Antarctic letter hints at dissent in the ranks

From the Dominion Post: Antarctic letter hints at dissent in the ranks
Terse field instructions written in pencil in 1915 by one of Sir Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition team members is up for auction.

The letter written by Ross Sea Party member John Cope to fellow party member Richard Richards orders him and his team, in no uncertain terms, to return to Hut Point.

"You are to proceed straight back to Hut Point and you are not to take anything from any depot unless you are absolutely forced to do so, except from the depot we laid on the 21st ultimate.

"From there you will take as follows – 1 empty kerosene case, 1 ice pick, 3 ski sticks, 1 pair of skis and 2 coils of rope," the letter said.

Mowbray Collectibles owner John Mowbray said he had never seen a working document written in Antarctica from this era before.

"It is very rare. It appears there was some dissent in the ranks – disobey orders at your own risk," he said.

The Ross Sea Party was part of Shackleton's doomed 1914-17 expedition. Its task was to lay a series of supply depots to prepare for Shackleton's third expedition to march across the continent to the South Pole and on to the Ross Sea.

Disaster struck the expedition in early 1915 when its ship, the Endurance, was trapped in pack ice and slowly crushed. It sank 10 months later.

Shackleton's main expedition was unable to land. He eventually led his men to safety but the transcontinental march did not take place.

Despite setbacks, the Ross Sea Party survived squabbles, extreme weather, illness and the deaths of three of its members to carry out its mission during its second Antarctic season.

Along with an envelope hand-addressed by Shackleton, the letter is being auctioned at an estimated value of $2500 at John Mowbray International's annual public stamp auction at the West Plaza Hotel in Wellington today, where 1000 lots will be offered.

Mystery of lost 19th century ghost ships

From CNN News: Mystery of lost 19th century ghost ships
(CNN) -- It's been described as one of the greatest Victorian gothic horror stories of all time. Two ships with 129 men on board and fitted with the latest technology, vanish with barely a trace left behind. One hundred and sixty years of searching -- one attempt as recent as last month -- have failed to find "HMS Erebus" and her sister ship, the somewhat appropriately named "HMS Terror" -- the two vessels lost in the Arctic.

In 1845 British Royal Navy captain Sir John Franklin set out with some of the finest sailors of the time on a mission to map the Northwest Passage. Franklin's expedition wasn't the first to the region, but it is the most infamous.

"Why did this fail when all the others didn't," asks author William Battersby. "There was something jinxed about the expedition." Battersby is one of many to be transfixed by the mystery of Franklin's last voyage. "We love adventure stories, of derring-do, win against all odds, but in this story they don't and we still don't know why."

The environment of the Northwest Passage is unforgiving. The landscape is vast and deserted, comparable only to Jupiter's moons. The winters are unrelenting and bleak. Franklin's men were faced with particularly brutally harsh temperatures and blizzards when they reached the region.

Ryan HarrisDespite the ships being reinforced with steel and holding three years worth or provisions, it appears the environment got the better of the crew. "Man proposes, God disposes," says Bob Headland from the Scott Polar Research Institute, who regularly visits the region. '"And the ice gods are a fickle lot."

The disappearance of the Erebus and the Terror has prompted the longest search mission in history: Although there have been numerous attempts to find the ships, there has been no sign of them.

Ryan Harris from Parks Canada led the most recent mission to try to locate the shipwrecks. Last month, his crews spent hours scouring the ocean floor, searching waters up to 50 meters deep. "It's an incredible story. It's got shipwrecks, the remoteness of the Arctic, putting the might of English industrialism against Mother Nature," says Harris.

Since 1997 Parks Canada has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars attempting to locate the "Erebus" and "Terror." The tale of the Franklin expedition has enthralled Canadians -- the wreckage has the dubious honor of being the only national historic site in Canada that hasn't been found yet.

"Once Franklin received his orders that sealed his fate," Harris explains. "In directing them south-west into ultimately the Victoria Strait it took them to the ice choke point. Once they fell into the clutch of that area, their fate was sealed. There's not much wildlife there and it is isolated."

William BattersbyThe last known account of the "Erebus" and "Terror" came in 1848. A rock cairn with a message on it indicated that the harsh conditions had already claimed their first lives, with only 105 men left alive.

Franklin was one of the first casualties of his own expedition. That same year the men abandoned their ships, archaeologists believing they began making their way south in a desperate bid to find food.

However the harsh environment supported little, and with few animals to hunt and over 100 men to feed, the chance of survival was low. It's been suggested that the men may have resorted to cannibalism in their last-ditch efforts to survive. "There were far too many men to live off the environment. What man plans and what nature allows are two different things," says Headland.

Archaeologists have relied heavily upon oral Inuit history to try to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Based on their accounts it is thought some of the men lived for another three or four years after abandoning ship.

But questions remain over exactly what happened to them. In 160 years only two skeletons and three perfectly preserved bodies have been uncovered. It is likely diseases such as scurvy claimed many lives but Battersby believes it may have been the ships themselves that killed the sailors.

His theory is that the men succumbed to lead poisoning derived from the internal pipe system used to melt ice into drinking water. It's hoped the discovery of the ships will provide answers.

'"There's a charm to the story," acknowledges Harris. "By solving a mystery it takes the allure away." But having said that, Harris is determined the search will go on until the "Erebus" and the "Terror" are found. Parks Canada insists that their searches have not been futile and they'll continue to gather information to help with future efforts. "I hope we're the last," says Harris.

But after 160 years it's possible that this tale may be frozen in time forever. "These are the last of the ghost ships," says Battersby. "It is the world's biggest ghost story."