Well now, first it was champagne, now it’s beer.. The Baltic Sea seems to be a fully stocked bar in it’s own right. What’s next? A martini shaken not stirred?

Divers have managed to drag up an astounding find. This past Thursday they drudged up the world’s oldest drinkable beer from a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea this past Thursday, just in time for the weekend. This happens just days after efforts began to bring up cases of 200 year old champagne, officials in the area commented.

“We believe these are by far the world’s oldest bottles of beer,” a spokesman for the local government of Åland, Rainer Juslin, said in a statement.

The bottles of beer were discovered in a shipwreck which is though to be somewhere in the viciniy of 200 years old, as divers were just beginning to bring up bottles of champagne, discovered back in July. One question this reporter begs to ask… Is why the heck have they taken so long to start bringing up the bubbly?

The haul, which was found intact on the seabed somewhere around 50 meters down beneath the waves. The find comes from a wreck believed to have sunk off the coast sometime in the 18th century, officials of Aaland have postulated.

“The constant temperature and light levels have provided optimal conditions for storage, and the pressure in the bottles has prevented any seawater from seeping in through the corks,” a statement this Thurday said.

A group of scientists have discovered four ancient shipwrecks off of Zannone, a tiny Italian island, which appear to have their cargoes of wine and oil intact.

The skeletons of these wrecks, which date back from the first century BC up until the fifth to seventh century AD, are at a depth of approximately 165 meters beneath the waves, which saved them from being disturbed by fishermen for centuries.
“The deeper you go, the more likely you are to find complete wrecks,” an official from the archaeological services section of the Italian culture ministry, Annalisa Zaratinni said.

The wooden hulks have all but disappeared, as tiny marine organisms used it as food. However the skeletons as well as the cargoes are still in the same positions as the ay they sank.

“The ships sank, they came to rest at the bottom of the sea, the wood disappeared and you find the whole ship, with the entire cargo. Nothing has been taken away,” Annalisa Zaratini explained.

These ancient wrecks were discovered by the the Aurora Trust, a US foundation which promotes the exploration of the Mediterranean seabed, and Italian authorities.

The wrecks, which were about 18 meters in length, had been carrying large jars of wine from Italy, and other cargo which included olive oil, fruit, and even a fish sauce.

Another wreck was discovered, and appears to have been carrying bricks for building. It is not clear as of yet, just what led these ships to their demise, and there have been no human remains found, making these apparent “ghost” ships.

As reported earlier here and here, the retired 523-foot military vessel “Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg” was scheduled to be sunk this month to become an artificial reef off the Floridian coast, and we can now happily report that everything has gone according to plan.

After being slightly delayed last minute by a sea turtle venturing into the sinking zone, Vandenberg was successfully put to rest roughly 7 miles south-southeast of Key West at 10:24 a.m., May 27.

Once 44 carefully positioned explosive charges had been detonated, Vandenberg gracefully slipped below the water’s surface in no more than 1 minute and 54 seconds. It is now resting rightside-up on the sea bottom at a depth of roughly 140 feet (43 metres) in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

Divers and other underwater specialists are currently surveying the ship to make sure it is safe for the public to explore. Hopefully, Vandenberg will open up for public diving by Friday morning.

Over 20 cameras were mounted on the vessel to capture images of it descending into the blue, cameras that are now being retrieved by an underwater team.

Vandenberg is the second largest vessel ever intentionally sunk to become an artificial reef. In 2006, the 888-foot long USS Oriskany, also known as CV-34, was sunk in the Gulf of Mexico, south of Pensacola, Florida.

Scuba diving tourists are an important source of income for Egypt, but now the tourism sector might be sawing off the branch on which they’re sitting by over-exploiting the sensitive coral reefs of the Red Sea. According to a study by Hasler and Ott, heavily dived dive sites near the town of Dahab have a significantly lower level of coral cover compared to areas without recreational diving.

Located off the south-eastern coast of the Sinai Peninsula, the reefs of Dahab is one of Sinai’s most treasured and well visited diving destinations. Dahab is still a fairly small town, but it is situated no more than 80 km (50 miles) from Sharm el-Sheik, a bustling tourist hub which attracts tens of thousands of visitors each year. Some of the dive sites off Dahab are among the world’s most heavily dived sites with over 30,000 dives per year.

According to Hasler and Ott, heavily dived sites in the studied area exhibited a reduced coral cover compared to non-dived sites and there were also significantly higher levels of broken and damaged corals. Differences could also be observed within the same reef, with coral communities located on reef crest areas being significantly more damaged than coral communities growing on reef slopes.

Divers are not only causing trouble by damaging corals directly; they can also stir up the sand around the reefs, thereby promoting sedimentation on top of the corals. Attached corals cannot free themselves of sediment particles and being covered in sand is therefore very dangerous for them.

In order to combat the problems faced by heavily exploited reefs, Hasler and Ott have suggested implementing ecologically sustainable dive plans for individual sites and limiting the total amount of dives per year. According to the authors, it is also very important to educate dive guides and divers.

For more info, read the results of the study which are due to be published shortly in Marine Pollution Bullentine. “Hasler H and JA Ott (2008) – Diving down the reefs? Intensive diving tourism threatens the reefs of the Northern Red Sea. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 2008 Aug.”