Bonnie Schubert, along with her eighty-seven year old mother, have been scouring the coast of Florida for decades in the search of treasure.

In a common day they will burrow up to a dozen times, dive deep into murky water, and wind up with a beer can or fishing lure for their efforts.

“I spent a whole season and only came up with a musket ball,” explains Bonnie.

However, on one such excursion this past August, the Schuberts were searching near Frederick Douglass Beach when they hit the motherlode.

“The first thing that came into focus was the head of the bird and the wing…and it was something I never imagined…just didn’t expect at all..” Bonnie recalls.

What they had stumbled upon was a 22-carat solid gold bird, a find they thing may date back to 1715, as part of a cargo of a lost Spanish ship. This Spanish fleet, which wrecked close to Fort Pierce, is believed to have dumped millions of dollars of gold and jewels all along the bottom.

“It’s truly been amazing. It’s not something we could have ever predicted,” commented a principal with 1715 Fleet-Queen’s Jewels, LLC, the corporation that holds the rights to treasure hunting in the region, Brent Brisbane.

While the Schuberts obviously have a claim, however the State may wish to have the bird, leading to some “treasure trading” to make things right. However, there is no doubt that this mother-daughter dive team has found the find of their lifetime.

The Baltic Sea

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.

Champagne

Divers have recently uncovered what might just be the world’s oldest champagne (which hasn’t turned to vinegar) in a shipwreck off the Baltic Sea. They celebrated by popping open a bottle even before they made it back to dry land.

Christian Ekstrom, a diving instructor, has said that the champagne is thought to be from the 1780s and was likely on its way to Russia before it met its fate. The origin of the wreck has not yet been determined.

“We brought up the bottle to be able to establish how old the wreck was,” he said at a press conference, “We didn’t know it would be champagne. We thought it was wine or something.”

He went on to say that the diving team was ecstatic when they popped open a bottle after hauling the find up some 200 feet (60 meters) out of the water.

“It tasted fantastic. It was a very sweet champagne, with a tobacco taste and oak,” Ekstrom vividly explained.

The wreck was discovered near the Aland Islands, between Sweden and Finland last Tuesday. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 bottles of the prime bubbly are thought to be aboard the sunken derelict ship.

Ekstrom has said that the age and authenticity of the champagne is beyond refute, however samples have been sent off to private laboratories in (where else?) France for testing. “We’re 98 percent sure already because of the bottle (we found),” he explains.. But then, wouldn’t your judgment be a little off after drinking a bottle of bubbly with some friends?

Stay Tuned for the outcome!

Wonder what that would go for on Ebay?

Scuba divers are threatening the survival of the infinitesimal Pygmy seahorses found on the coral reefs around Sabah’s east coast islands in Malaysia.

Sabah, a Malaysian state situated in the northern part of the island of Borneo, is home to two species of pygmy seahorse Hippocampus bargibanti and Hippocampus denise. Both species are fairly widespread in South East Asia and are found on coral slopes from southern Japan and Indonesia to northern Australia and New Caledonia.

Barely five years ago, the pygmy seahorses were discovered at popular Sabah divespots, such as Bodgaya, Mabul and Pulau Sipadan, and since then dive operators have brought large numbers of scuba divers to see the tiny creatures. In some of the most popular spots, over 100 divers can be seen exploring the reef simultaneously and this puts a lot of stress on the reef and its inhabitants.

Photographing divers have for instance been spotted breaking off sea fans – the natural habitat of the pygmy seahorses – and moved them just to get a better angle for their pictures.

In an effort to improve the conditions for the seahorses, marine biologist Yeong Yee Ling of the Universiti Malaysia Terengganu has held a two-day seminar about how to behave when scuba diving in seahorse habitat. The seminar was attended by 57 participants, including representatives from most of the 15 dive operators based in Semporna. Sabah Parks, the conservation-based statutory responsible for conserving the scenic, scientific and historic heritage of the state of Sabah, was also involved in the event.

“Our hope is that the discussions from the seminar would eventually be synthesised into a code of conduct for divers. We are thankful the dive operators have been supportive of this effort,” said Yeong, who has been researching pygmy seahorses for the past three years.

The seminar was funded by the Shell Malaysia’s Sustainable and Development Grant.

The Maldives is planning to ban shark fishing in its waters, a move which would make the Maldives the first nation in the region to enact such a protective law.

The announcement was made by the Maldives Minister of State for Fisheries and Agriculture, Dr Hussein Rasheed Hassan, at the South West Indian Ocean Fisheries Commission steering committee meeting in Mombasa.

“We have realised that it is more economically viable to leave the shark and other sea creatures unharmed because the country currently earns about $7 million annually from the diving industry,” said the minister.

In 1998, the Maldives imposed a 10-year moratorium banning shark fishing around seven atolls that received a lot of vacationers from abroad. Now, the country intends to expand the ban to include all reef shark fishing across the Maldives within a 12 nautical mile radius (22km).

During recent years, the number of sharks in the Maldives has plummeted due to overfishing for the lucrative shark fin market.

“The marine ecosystem is very fragile and that is why we have to regulate activities that coupled with the treats of climate change could adversely affect the major sources of income for the country,” Hassan explained.

The Maldives is an island country consisting of a group of atolls stretching south of India’s Lakshadweep islands. Despite having a population of no more than roughly 300,000 individuals, the Maldives receives over 600,000 tourists each year.

An Australian frigate will be sunk off Terrigal on the New South Wales Central Coast to form an artificial reef.

Yesterday, the commonwealth handed over its decommissioned frigate HMAS Adelaide to the New South Wales government. HMAS Adelaide served the Royal Australian Navy for 27 years, participating in operations such as the Gulf War of 1991 and the East Timor peace-keeping mission of 1999. It has picked up capsized yachtsmen in the Southern Sea as well as rescued asylum seekers from a sinking ship.

“I think this is a great project, I’m very confident we’ll see HMAS Adelaide become a great national, and I suspect international, attraction for recreational divers […],” said Defence Minister John Faulkner.

NSW Premier Nathan Rees agrees with Faulkner.

“Coral will grow on the metal you see before you, fish will swim through the corridors that once rang with the sound of action stations,” he said. “And divers will find a place of contemplation and beauty as nature slowly reclaims her broken frame.”

The federal government will contribute up to 5.8 million AUS to make the ship is safe before it’s sunk.

Hundreds of thousands of tourists visits Green Island each year to enjoy scuba diving and snorkelling among its beautiful reefs, but no sewage treatment exists so an average of 1,500 tons of untreated sewage is flushed into the sea on a daily basis.

According to The China Post , no sewage treatment project has been prepared for the island since land can’t be procured for a sewage plant. Researchers now fear that the untreated sewage is to blame for the spread of the so called “Black Death” among the corals.

Chen Jhao-lun, a senior research fellow at the Academia Sinica who has studied the coral
reefs, describes the affected colonies as being covered slowly with a piece of black cloth.
“As this black sponge which multiplies itself covers the colonies, it shuts off sunlight to stop
photosynthesis by coral polyps,” Chen explains. The polyps die and no new corals are formed.

The “Black Death”, a type of necrosis, typically manifests in the form of black lesions that gradually spread across the surface of an infested colony.

However, very little is known about the Black Death and some researchers think that other factors, such as changing water temperatures or overfishing, might be to blame – not the untreated sewage. It is also possible that a combination of unfavourable factors have tipped the balance of the reef, causing the disease to go rampant. Temperature does appear to be a key variable associated with outbreaks, but it remains unknown if a temperature change alone is capable of causing this degree of devastation.

Molecular studies on lesions have not been able to identify a likely microbial pathogen, and according to Chen, the black layer might actually be an opportunistic second effect rather than the causative agent of the coral mortality. Montipora aequituberculae corals seem to be especially susceptible to the disease, but at least five other coral species from three different genera have been affected as well.

When Chen surveyed the water of Green Island last year, only four colonies off Dabaisha or Great White Sand showed signs of Black Death. In April this year, Chen found 24 affected colonies – six times as many as last year. If nothing is done to remedy the problem, Great White Sand near the southernmost tip of Green Island may have only dead colonies in five to six years, Chen predicts.

Green Island
Green Island is known as one of the world’s best spots for scuba diving and snorkelling. Located roughly 16 nautical miles southeast of Taitung on east Taiwan, Green Island used to house a concentration camp for political prisoners. Today, it is instead famous for its rich coral reefs.

(The picture is not from the green island but rather the great barrier reef)

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.

If you want to learn more about how the charismatic creatures known as stingrays feed, you should check out a new study published in the most recent issue of Neotropical Ichthyology.

While spending days and nights scuba diving and snorkelling in the upper Paraná River of Brazil, researchers Domingos Garrone-Neto and Ivan Sazima made 132 observations of freshwater stingrays and noticed three different forms of foraging behaviour.

Picture of Motoro Sting Ray, Ocellate river stingray – Potamotrygon motoro.
Copyright www.jjphoto.dk

The first hunting technique involved hovering close to the bottom, or even settle on top of it, while undulating the disc margins. By doing so, the stingray would stir up the substrate, unveiling small invertebrates. The invertebrates – typically snails, crabs and larval insects – could not escape from under the ray’s disc and ended up as food.

When using its second hunting technique, the stingray would slowly approach shallow water while keeping its eyes on suitable prey items that concentrate in such environments. When it got close enough, it would make a rapid attack; stunning the prey or trapping it under its disc. This hunting technique did not target tiny invertebrates hiding in the sand; it focused on tetras and freshwater shrimps instead. The studied stingrays only used this method during the night when they could sneak up on prey without being seen.

The third technique observed relied on the presence of vertical or inclined surfaces in the water, such as boulders and tree stumps, including man-made structures like concrete slabs. On this type of objects a lot of different organisms, e.g. snails, like to crawl around or attach themselves. The hunter would simply position itself with the anterior part of its disc above the water’s edge and start picking the animals off the surface, one at a time.

The two studied species were Potamotrygon falkneri and Potamotrygon motoro; both belonging to a genus of freshwater stingrays found exclusively in South America.

As mentioned above, you can find the paper in Neotropical Ichthyology 7.

Garrone-Neto, D and I Sazima (2009) Stirring, charging, and picking:

hunting tactics of potamotrygonid rays in the upper Paraná River. Neotropical Ichthyology 7, pp. 113–116.

A company named Ghost Pros is currently exploring the ship wrecks of Florida in search not of gold, silver or precious stones but of ghosts. The company is using the latest underwater ghost-detection technology, including submersible high powered sonar listening devices. Ghost Pro divers have also teamed up with Tampa’s Sea Viewers, the makers of high definition studio cameras which will be used to develop under water rovers.

“We’re listening to everything and anything we can down there,” says Ghost Pros’ Lee Ehrlich, explaining that you have to know what is not a ghost before you can find one. “[…] before you can tell you need to know what that ship sounds like alone,” he says.

Unlike Ghost Busters, Ghost Pros doesn’t get paid to hunt ghosts, but the search does generate a lot of attention from ghost aficionados and ghost critics, as well as from the general media. Hunting for the para-normal has proven to be an excellent way of creating some very normal buzz for Ehrlich and his companions, who – when not hunting down the ghosts of voyages past – are developing advanced submersibles for search and rescue operations.

As a diver, I would like to recommend any readers of this blog to leave the deep sea ghost hunting to professionals like Ehrlich and his crew. If you start seeing ghosts while scuba diving, make a safe ascendance and wait for the nitrogen poisoning to wear off.