A rusted out pocket watch covered in barnacles was discovered inside a wreck from the seventeenth century. The pocket watch was of impeccable make and its internal workings were almost perfectly preserved.

Scientists of the National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh utilized cutting edge technology including x-ray machines to take a gander at the cog wheels and Egyptian-style pillars and were even able to make out the inscription of the watch maker.

They then used these images they collected to build a 3D virtual model of the watch and its functions. Both the watch and the 3D image are now on display in the Treasured exhibition of the National Museum of Scotland. They are scheduled to remain on display there until sometime in 2011.

The wreck the pocket watch was discovered on is thought to have been the Swan – a low level war ship which met its demise off of Scotland’s west coast sometime during the English Civil War. A diver from the navy happened across the wreck back in the 1970s, and excavation began in the 1990s.

The remarkable CT technique used to get the images is accredited to Andrew Ramsey and cohorts at X-Tek Systems in Tring, Hertfordshire in the UK. It allowed them to get high resolution images, even through dense metal.

The watch is really amazing in craftsmanship, and just goes to show, they really don’t make them like they used to. Don’t believe me? Try dropping your Timex in the ocean and seeing how it looks after only 5 years.

There are literally hundreds of thousands of varieties of marine life making their home in the oceans around the world today. This statement comes from a ten year long project, whose results were just recently released, to try and categorize them all.

The Census of Marine Life, an international project which commenced back in 2000 and was finally completed this past Monday, was the work of over 2,000 experts from around the globe, and represented the combined efforts of 670 different organizations.

“We prevailed over early doubts that a Census was possible, as well as daunting extremes of nature,” the chair of the Census Steering Committee, Dr. Ian Poiner, commented in a recent statement. “This cooperative international 21st century voyage has systematically defined for the first time both the known and the vast unknown, unexplored ocean.”

The group of international scientists have completed over 500 different trips and have spent an astounding 9,000 days on the sea to complete what is the world’s first, easy to understand catalog of the varying life forms which live in the sea.

The Associated Press reports that they have successfully taken note and made a tally of a total of 201,206 different marine lifeforms, but the group of international scientists has explained that despite the $650 million dollar project has been completed, there are certainly many more species yet to be accounted for.

“All surface life depends on life inside and beneath the oceans. Sea life provides half of our oxygen and a lot of our food and regulates climate. We are all citizens of the sea. And while much remains unknown, including at least 750,000 undiscovered species and their roles, we are better acquainted now with our fellow travelers and their vast habitat on this globe,” explained Poiner.

Salmon fry

The wild salmon of the North Pacific are becoming fewer in number as they are being forced to fight for their food and rapidly declining living space, as billions of farmed salmon are being released into the oceans every year, a study by researchers out of B.C. and Washington State explains.

The concern is coming from the fact that the salmon populations, mainly of the sockeye, pink and chum variety, across the Pacific Rim is much higher than usual.

“The total number of salmon out there is at an all-time high, in fact, the abundance is about double what it was in the 1950s,” commented a fisheries management scientist at Simon Fraser University, Randall Peterman, who is also a co-author of the newly published report.

Releasing a huge amount of artificially grown salmon to help and supply a food fishery is detrimental to the native salmon, he explains. “Hatchery fish have been causing deterioration in the wild population for some time.”

“The fact is that hatchery fish from one nation can influence the health of salmon stocks in another nation,” Peterman explains. The amount that these hatcheries release, especially in Alaska and Japan, has reached a level of an astounding five billion salmon a year and it’s continuing to increase. Which means that the salmon are under imminent threat.

First it’s overfishing, now it’s over fish releasing? Well I have an answer for you boys, grab the frying pan, it’s time for a fish fry…

Well, this guy just doesn’t sleep does he? David Mullins, super kiwi, has beaten yet another world record. However, even he has conceded that a third record today may just be pushing the envelope a bit too far.

Mr. Mullins swam 218 meters beneath the waves, without the assistance of fins, at the Porirua Aquatic Center yesterday to break the shared record of 213 meters he had with Tom Sietas of Germany.

He was a tad short of his personal best of 232 meters, which happens to be a record in New Zealand, but it has yet to be officially recognized by the international judges of such things.

The stress of his swim of 265 meters, performed with fins, left Mullins a bit short on energy, but it did nothing for his determination to keep blowing records out of the water left right and center.

“I was pretty shattered [on Sunday] and I was coming right [yesterday] but I still wasn’t 100 per cent,” he said. “You only really know that halfway into the swim. I wasn’t feeling fantastic, but good enough.” Mullins commented.

He could literally feel his muscles giving in to fatigue earlier than usual, and he also felt light-headed early on, and this told him things just weren’t quite kosher. He didn’t want the record to be quashed by passing out while swimming, so he surfaced instead.

So he didn’t do the full 232 meters, 218 is still good enough in our book. One has to ask, what will Mullins do next?

David Mullins, freediving enthusiast from New Zealand, has just broken yet another world record.

He has managed to break the “dynamic apnea, without fins” record after diving to a depth of 218 meters beneath the waves, all without taking a single breath in Porirua at the Porirua Aquatic Center.

This isn’t the only record which Mr. Mullins has broken. In conjunction with Tom Sietas, who hails from Germany, they held the previous best mark at 213 meters beneath the tranquil waters. It is interesting to note that the unofficial personal best, which he has accomplished by yet to be acknowledged, and the New Zealand record is 232 meters beneath the waves.

This past Saturday, the New Zealander really stuck it to Frenchman Fred Sessa, after breaking his record for the “dynamic apnea, with fins” category, swimming a cool 265 meters under the water without taking air at the Naene Olympic Pool.

He decided that he would put the shorter 25 meter long pool in Poriura, utilizing the extra turns to push off more and harder, without fins.

“I didn’t swim to my potential, I was a bit tired today after Saturday’s effort but I’m glad to have achieved what we set out to do,” a proud Mullins told NZPA.

“I probably could have pushed it a bit more today but if I had tried to kick on and things had gone bad, I could have been disqualified and I would have kicked myself. I’m happy to have just broken the record.”

And by all counts we think he will someday break all records, way to go David!

Shark fins

Seafood traders have had enough of all the cruel practices used when hunting sharks and have made an agreement amongst each other to help bring it to an end. The plan is to create a task force, one which would make sure hat sharks are not finned and thrown back into the water.

The Marine Products Association in Hong Kong commented yesterday that a conservation and management committee will be ready to do some actual good about half a year from now. It will include marine experts, nongovernmental organizations and of course the seafood traders who started the whole ball of wax rolling.

Charlie Lim Tin-que, the general secretary of the Marine Products Association, announced the creation of this task force, slash conservation and management committee, at the International Marine Conference yesterday. This conference is widely attended by international marine experts, seafood traders, officers from Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department and the Customs and Excise Department.

Lim took the podium and had a very attentive audience as he explained: “Due to the raised public concern on international finning incidents, in which fishermen are said to be cutting whale sharks’ fins while still alive and then releasing them back into the sea to die a slow and painful death, we decided to set up an advisory committee on banning the trade in endangered species and illegal food importation,”

There you have it, in six months we will have an anti shark-finning task force, and they sound like they mean business. One can only hope this doesn’t escalate into some form of heavily armed vigilantism…

USS Arthur W Radford

The U.S. Navy Destroyer Arthur W. Radford, a massive 563 footer, is due to be sunk 30 miles from the shore of Cape May County next month. This is the largest ship thus far which has been sunk to become part of an artificial reef system.

It is expected that this ship will become the star of the show, and attract many inquisitive scuba divers and fishermen at the Deljerseyland Reef. The reef is the brainchild of New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland to help not only help the environment, but to also promote tourism in the area. Rather than sell the hulk off for scrap, they instead raised the estimated value of $800,000 from private parties interested in supporting the project, and will be trying to do some good with it. The $800,000 raised is being split by the three states, whom will all benefit from the artificial reef project.

Some question the logic behind doing such a project, however it is a very good move, both economically and politically. The green groups will be happy, as it is helping out the environment, and the tax payers will be happy, as the added tourism and influx of funds generated by the reef, should help to ease the drain on their wallets.

The destroyer is currently sitting at the Philadelphia shipyard and awaiting the torpedoes which will place it into its new watery home at the bottom of the sea.

Alligator babies - Ianaré Sévi

People from all over the US have been crying foul, over the way an American woman killed a humongous 465 kilogram alligator in South Carolina.

Mary Ellen Mara-Christian, a 48 year old thrill seeker, has really made quite an impact across the US, as the small woman who conquered a huge gator.

However, the way in which she killed it has been getting some rather angry persons lashing back. She took two hours to finally kill the beast.

“This woman should be in jail, not on TV,” wrote one outraged user on carolinalive.com, a new website out of South Carolina.

You see, it took them two hours to tie the gator up, and then proceeded to shoot it 8 times with a .22 calibre gun. However, the 8 shots did nothing to ease the alligator of its suffering, and she eventually killed the poor thing by ripping out its spinal cord.
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The general concensus of the online world is that her bahavior is nothing more than “senseless brutality”.
“They tortured that alligator for hours. That’s just plain sick,” a commenter wrote on Bostonherald.com.

“This is trophy hunting at its worst,” commented another reader on Cbsnews.com.

However Mrs. Mara-Christian is very proud of herself, and says the act was to do her part to save the alligators, as part of her idea of population control.

“I hunt because I want these creatures to be here forever,” she commented to The Boston Herald.

Well, this reporter, while having no great love for gators, sides with the online readers consensus, there was no need to torture it before killing it.. There is no talk of criminal charges, but there should be…

The caught shark

Just as a deep sea fisherman was about to cut away a hook from a wide open mouth of a shark to let it go back on its merry way to the sea, the most surprising thing sprung forth.. A human foot.

“Everything was intact from the knee down,” commented Humphrey Simmons, a Bahamian investment banker, “it was mangled, but there was still flesh on the bone.”

What a morbid way to end such a beautiful day of fishing for Mr. Simmons and his two cohorts, who spent the majority of their morning trying to get away from the sea beasts.

When they finally managed to reel in the curiously heavy and bulging Tiger shark, at the Defence Force’s Coral Harbor base and they got around to sticking a knife in him, to see what was what, a headless body came tumbling out of the freshly opened cavity. The leg which the shark so unceremoniously coughed up appeared to belong to the man, as he too was missing a foot. Upon closer examination of the sharks insides, they indeed found the rest of the man; severed right leg, two severed arms and a torso in two sections.

As Mr Simmons’ ten year old daughter calmly pointed out, the shark had the feast all to himself. There were no signs of a struggle, or fighting from other sharks. The theory going around now is that the unlucky man drowned, and then was scarfed up by the shark.

Herbert Nitsch - Picture by Eirik Solheim

Herbert Nitsch, a daredevil freediver, is getting ready to break his own world record by taking 1000 foot dive toward the bottom of the ocean, taking in only a single breath of air while contracting his lungs to the size of a tennis ball.

Wearing nothing but a standard issue wetsuit, Herbert Nitsch is planni9ng to strap himself to a plank and use a rope to guide him into the murky depths off of Greece in November, minimizing movement needed to do so.

While he fights to stay conscious in the mounting pressure of the water, he will be letting an airbag go to pull him back to safety. In order to survive on a single breath of air, Nitsch has developed the uncanny ability to slow down his heart rate and put a lid on his breathing reflex.

The pressures he will be facing are extraordinary. At the bottom of the dive, he will be subjected to pressures of 450 pounds per square inch, that is ten times more than your standard car tire.

Back in 2007, the Australian airline pilot got to an amazing depth of 702 feet, using a technique which involved him moving his essential organs into his chest cavity to protect them from the pressure, however the biggest risk he will face is a buildup of nitrogen in his blood, which can cause narcosis.

If successful, this dive will be the world record, and it will probably remain so for a long time to come.