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about 8 years ago
Manta Ray hot lunch Marianas Variety (Press Release) — The Manta Ray Band will be having a hot lunch this Saturday, Feb. 6, 2016, to raise funds for their trip to the Tumon Bay Music Festival on Guam next month. The lunches are $5 each and include fried chicken, lumpia (fried spring roll ...
about 8 years ago
gulfnews.com Whale shark sightings along UAE coast not alarming: experts gulfnews.com Dr. Elsayed Ahmad Mohammed, Regional Director, Middle East and North Africa, of International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), told Gulf News that the recent appearances of the fish make sense given the whale shark feeds close to the surface and often ... and more »
about 8 years ago
KHON2 Whale shark surprises tour group off Haleiwa KHON2 A group led by North Shore Shark Adventures was visited by a whale shark Friday morning, the intimate experience captured on video. They were about three miles off Haleiwa when the shark slowly emerged. “It swam right up to the boat, really slow ... and more »
about 8 years ago
Thanh Nien Daily Carcass of beached whale shark to be preserved by Vietnamese scientists Thanh Nien Daily The Nha Trang Oceanography Institute in central Vietnam has decided to preserve the carcass of a whale shark that died after it got caught in a fishing net last week. Fishermen and local authorities on Thursday handed over the dead fish to the institute. Giant whale shark to be embalmed for scientific researchVietNamNet Bridge all 2 news articles ...
about 8 years ago
National Geographic Manta Rays Get Crittercams for First Time Ever National Geographic We didn't think suction cups would work because manta ray skin is really rough like sand paper. We knew suction cups worked well on the smooth skin of whales. The cups were originally designed to move pieces of glass. But we gave it a try, and with a ... Scripps Grad Student Receives Prestigious Environmental FellowshipScripps Oceanography News all 4 news articles » ...
about 8 years ago
Video From a Whale Shark's Point of View National Geographic Their goal was to deploy Crittercams on whale sharks to get a glimpse of the sharks' underwater world and to better understand their behavior along the reef. Like most people, Wilhelm had never seen a whale shark. He worked on the Crittercams for about ... and more »
about 8 years ago
Zap2It Dominic Monaghan on meeting the Whale Shark: 'I had this sort of out of body experience' Zap2It “Wild Things With Dominic Monaghan” returned to Travel Channel with its third season on Wednesday (Jan. 27). The premiere, aptly titled, “Majestic Mozambique,” finds our host on the hunt for the elusive — and quite massive — Whale Shark. Early on in ... Monaghan knows where the 'Wild Things' areVirgin Islands Daily News all 9 news articles ...
about 8 years ago
CBC.ca Brian Keating swims alongside La Paz's mysterious whale sharks CBC.ca They're such huge animals," said Keating, who saw his first whale shark less than 15 minutes out of the bay. By the day's end, Keating had met at least a dozen whale sharks. He even managed to snap a few underwater photos from their tail end as proof.
about 8 years ago
FIS Fishing ban for giant manta ray FIS The Ministry of Production (Produce) has banned the capture of the giant manta ray (Manta birostris) in the Peruvian marine waters, in order to preserve this species on the coast of the country. The measure, established by a ministerial decree, is in ... and more »
about 8 years ago
The National Whale shark seen swimming in Abu Dhabi marina The National ABU DHABI // A whale shark between three and four metres long has been seen swimming in the marina at the InterContinental Abu Dhabi. Employees at the hotel first noticed the fish at 1.45pm on Friday and quickly took a video and photos to capture the ...
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Saturday
Oct092010

Gallo on Titanic

Me and David (right) at the Capital City ClubI had the very good fortune on Thursday to see a talk by David Gallo from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, which he delivered to the Atlanta chapter of the Explorers Club.  David, who is Director of Special  Projects for WHOI and a prominent speaker on TED.com, mixed it up between general ocean wonders and some stuff about Titanic.  He opened his talk with a lot of the stuff in that TED link, but the Titanic stuff was all new because he had just returned from a research cruise where they mapped the entire debris field in unprecedented detail using ROVs and AUVs

 

Not the RMS Titanic, but a good example of the side-scan sonar effect. In this case the sound is coming from the upper right, creating sound shadows to the lower left. Image: NOAASide-scan sonar featured prominently in the survey work, which makes for really cool imaging.  Side-scan is an increasingly popular technique that uses sonar signal deployed at an angle to generate images with a sort of bas-relief effect.  This is in contrast to regular sonar which pings vertically and reconstructs a sort of plan view of the area in question. A lot of the sonar data was pretty raw, but rather than make it hard to interpret, it actually added a layer of excitment; as I understand it we were among the first folks to see any of those data.

They also took down 3D and HD cameras and filmed/photographed every square inch of the visible parts of the bow and stern sections, which lie some three quarters of a mile apart and 2.5 miles down in the icy waters off Newfoundland.  We were treated to snippets of that footage, which shows undeniable deterioration of the wreck, including the mysterious disappearance of the crows nest, distortion of windows, disappearance of walls and a huge profusion of “rusticles” (like icicles made of rust) on the bow section.  Estimates of the complete disintegration of the wreck range from 20 to 200 years, but there seems little doubt that the unsinkable ship will be mostly gone in our life-spans, which was one motivation for the painstaking documentation; they plan to develop a sort of “virtual Titanic” to be made available so that the public can explore her too.

Gallo closed his talk with a section on their next big project, which is a search for the wreckage of Air France flight 447, which crashed in the west Atlantic in June 2009.  Hope remains that the flight data recorders from the crash are still intact and the consortium involved in the operation is apparently very confident that they will find the wreckage and the black boxes and bring closure to the families of the 228 victims of the crash.

The submersible Alvin. Image: NOAAAfter the talk I asked David about recent news that China is making a big move into the world of deep sea exploration.  I asked him whether the deep sea and China would be to the next decade what space and Russia were to the 60’s.  He replied that if you want to view it that way, then the US is already well behind.  He confirmed that the Chinese government has made a huge investment, as has South Korea, and he added that its kind of crazy that the US still relies so heavily on Alvin, a submersible that - while capable - is very old (commissioned in 1964!) and certainly far from the cutting edge in deep sea technologies.

It was a terrific talk and I was very excited to have the chance to finally meet David.  I teach every year in Woods Hole, but our paths have never crossed there.  We made an agreement to share a beer at the Captain Kidd next time I am up there for AQUAVET, and that is something to look forward to.

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