Diving Thoughts

The USNS General Hoyt S. Vandenberg was originally named the USS General Harry Taylor. It saw service ferrying American troops to the Pacific in 1944. After the war it brought troops and holocaust survivors out of Europe. In the 1960′s it spent some time monitoring missile launches in the Cold War.

It has now been sunk in 140 ft (43 metres) 7 miles off the Florida Keys. The City of Key West is hoping that it will attract divers who will help stimulate the local economy by USD 8 million.

The Vandenberg displaced 17,250 tons and was 523 ft. long. It was decomissioned in 1986, and has been sitting on a river in Virginia since then.

It is the second largest ship in the world to have been deliberately sunk as an artificial reef. Experts are hoping that it will be colonised by invertebrates within six months and will provide a new habitat for fish.

There is more detail in the Times Online.

The body of the diver who went missing off Bluff Island has been found. This from the SCMP:

“The body of Ho Hing-tung, 45, a paediatric doctor at Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital, who went missing while diving in Sai Kung on Sunday, has been found. The body was found on the seabed by divers from the Fire Services Department at Ung Kong Wan, north of Bluff Island. ”

Our sympathies go out to his family.

Carl Spencer, a highly regarded British diver, has died after suffering severe decompression sickness after a dive on the Britannic. He had been leading a National Geographic Society expedition to film the wreck. Apparently witnesses saw him suffering convulsions while filming the Britannic’s bow, before rapidly ascending to the surface missing decompression stops. He was flown by helicopter to Athens Naval Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

The Britannic was the sister ship of the Titanic, and she sank in 57 minutes after hitting a mine in 1916 while acting as a hospital ship. The wreck lies in approximately 120 metres of water off Greece.

There is more information in the Times Online from where the above photo comes. There is also a thread on Rebreather World.

An ROV built by researchers in the Irish Republic has been designed to perform seabed surveys down to a depth of 1,000 metres. It is named Latis, after the Celtic goddess of beer and water, which sounds a strange, and not entirely welcome, mix. In fact I was in a bar on Saturday whose manager seemed to be a worshipper of Latis, at least that’s the only way I can explain the rather disappointing pint of Spitfire I was drinking.

Latis has a unique fibre optic gyroscope and something called a Doppler Velocity Log to monitor its speed and direction, allowing the ROV’s position to be calculated with pinpoint accuracy. It can be towed to cover large areas quickly, or can be propel itself in small, confined areas. It could be used to help produce underwater maps, carry out marine surveys or be used to help with environmental impact assessments.

13th May was a deadline for countries to lay claims to extensions to their contintental shelf, and, by extension, the area within which they can exploit natural resources.   Consequently there is currently a lot of interest in how these claims are going to be assessed, since in many cases the claims from several countries overlap. For example Canada, Denmark and Russia are all claiming the North Pole. Latis could help play a part in resolving such competing claims.

The photo above, and the story came from the BBC website.

Again, from SCMP’s brief section -

“Search for diver to resume today

A search for a diver who went missing on Sunday off Bluff Island in Sai Kung was suspended at 6.30pm yesterday and was to resume today. The man, surnamed Ho, 46, entered the water with about 20 divers at Ung Kong Wan at about 2.30pm on Sunday. Police were called at 3.45pm after Mr Ho failed to surface. ”

Apple Daily has an article in Chinese here :

Not got much detail on this, but the SCMP’s “In Brief” section has the following:

“Rescuers search for missing diver

A man in his 30s or 40s was reported missing after going diving at Ung Kong Wan in Sai Kung at 3.40pm. Rescuers were continuing to search for him last night. ”

Ung Kong Wan is off Bluff Island where SCDC did a beach clean-up a couple of weeks ago. There doesn’t appear to be any more information in the English language press at the moment.

WWF is saying that the Hong Kong government should designate no-go areas in the sea off North Lantau, to try and protect the Chinese white dolphin. Their concerns are because the whole area is likely to be affected by major intrastructure projects, including the Hong Kong – Macau – Zhuhai bridge. The land checkpoint for it will apparently need 130 hectares of new land, east of Chek Lap Kok airport. An environmental impact assessment is underway.

Here’s an article from The Standard.

In what could be an important story for anyone planning on losing their dive boat in the Komodo area, the Guardian are reporting that the Komodo dragon is venomous. They are known for ambushing and biting their prey, but then they let it go and the poor deer (or whatever) tends to bleed to death. Up to now most people have thought that their prey was infected by bacteria in the dragons’ teeth.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging scans done by scientists at the University of Melbourne have now shown up what may be complex venom glands in the dragons’ mouths, which had not been documented before. Brian Fry, the team leader, surgically removed the glands from a terminally ill dragon in a zoo. The venom causes a sudden drop in blood pressure, which can send an animal into shock, but it also stops blood clotting, so its victims bleed to death. Similar poison has been found in Gila monsters and snakes.

So if you’re visiting Komodo, don’t get complacent!

The above photo and the story come from the Guardian.

“Calf” in this context refers to a dolphin calf, not a baby cow that happened to fall in the water.

Several adult tucuxi dolphins (Sotalia guianensis) were seen attacking a newborn calf. Six adults separated the calf from its mother, then while four of them kept the mother away, the other two repeatedly rammed the calf and held it under water. Researchers saw the mother a few days later, but sadly not the calf. Speculation is that the calf was killed in the hope of inducing the mother to become sexually receptive.

Infanticide is relatively common in many mammal species, but has not been seen very often in whales and dolphins. Prior to this case it had been reported twice in bottlenose dolphins, but this is the first case seen in tucuxi dolphins.

Tucuxi dolphins live either in the Amazon basin, or off the coast of Brazil up to Nicaragua.

More information from the BBC website.

On Tuesday 19 May 2009 THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY – HONG KONG is hosting  a presentation by Richard Gerrish on “Extreme Caving: Into the Deep”. It will be at  3/F British Council, 3 Supreme Court Road, with a Drinks Reception at 6.30 pm followed by the  Lecture at 7.30 pm.

According to the promotional email:

We are delighted to welcome Richard Gerrish, a world-renowned cave explorer, to speak on “Extreme Caving: Into the Deep”. The world’s caves provide one of the last places on the planet where original exploration is still possible. During this lecture, Mr Gerrish explains his adventures in the extraordinary world of cave exploration. The lecture covers his 2005 expedition to Malaysia exploring the eighth longest cave system in the world and the discovery of the second largest cave chamber in the world. The talk continues with his exploration of deep caves in China in 2006 and 2007, where Mr Gerrish was part of the first descent of the world’s second deepest underground shaft and the discovery of the first 1,000m deep cave in China.

If you’re interested, the lecture will cost HK$100 for Members and HK$150 for guests and others.

Click here for The Royal Geographical Society – Hong Kong’s website.

SCMP has an article today about the Coral Triangle. This isn’t some sort of Twilight Zone-type place like the Bermuda Triangle – an area of sea where coral mysteriously disappears, never to be seen again. In fact the aim of the World Oceans Conference, a meeting of 70 nations that starts today in Manado, is to ensure that coral doesn’t disappear at all.

The Coral Triangle they are referring stretches across 6 nations between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, specifically Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, East Timor (shouldn’t that be Timor-Leste?), Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

Despite looking like the sort of triangle that I used to draw before I discovered the benefits of rulers, it is apparently home to more than half the world’s coral reefs, three-quarters of its coral species and key stocks of fish.

Unfortunately the Coral Triangle is beset by a set of challenges including overfishing and climate change.  Apparently around 120 million people living in the Coral Triangle depend on the sea for their livelihoods which puts tremendous strain on resources. Protecting the area is being touted as  a key target of the World Oceans Conference.

There are plans afoot to introduce a marine protected area around Nusa Lembongan, and part of the intention is to get the support of the local community to look after their environment. If the initiative is successful, hopefully other areas will be able to replicate this.

The SCMP story is here, although you need to be a subscriber to read it.

On Tuesday 12 May 2009 THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY – HONG KONG is hosting  a presentation by Dr Raynor Shaw and Professor Bernie Owen on “Hong Kong Landscapes: 400 Million Years of Geological History”. It will be at  2/F Olympic House, So Kong Po, Causeway Bay, with a Drinks Reception at 6.30 pm followed by the  Lecture at 7.30 pm.

According to the promotional email:

In this lecture, Dr Shaw and Professor Owen provide an overview of the 400 million year geological history of Hong Kong and how that legacy has given rise to the varied scenery that occurs today. Past environments ranged from warm shelf seas to deep oceans, and from extensive river floodplains to arid desert basins. Within these markedly different environments was squeezed a geologically brief episode that had the most profound effect upon the physical landscape, and the subsequent economic development, of Hong Kong. For 25 million years, between about 165 and 140 million years ago, Hong Kong was shaped by violently explosive volcanoes. The volcanic and granitic rocks formed during this period now underlie 85% of the territory, the remaining 15% being underlain by sedimentary rocks.

The  scenery of eastern Hong Kong, which is very impressive,  is apparently going to be added to the UNESCO World Geoparks List, and their presentation will help to show why.

If you’re interested, the lecture will cost HK$100 for Members and HK$150 for guests and others.

Click here for The Royal Geographical Society – Hong Kong’s website.