The BBC website has a short video from Dan Burton of basking sharks arriving off Cornwall as part of their annual migration. Even though hundreds are now arriving, they are still pretty difficult to spot.
Like their larger cousins, whale sharks, these 7 ton giants are plankton feeders. It is now believed that they come up to the UK to breed.
Go to the BBC website and take a look.
As part of their Seafood Choice Initiative to encourage people to choose what seafood they eat responsibly, WWF Hong Kong have also published a Seafood Guide. In it seafood is broken down into 3 categories:
Whether you are at a restaurant or at the supermarket this gives you the chance to choose seafood from the recommended category.
Unlike some people I know, WWF are not insisting on people giving up seafood altogether, but just encouraging us all to choose what we eat with consideration of the marine environment.
There is a PDF version of the Seafood Guide that you can download, print out, fold up and put in your bag so you’ve got it when you need it. You can download it from WWF’s website.
On 31 May, a robotic sub named the Nereus reached a depth of 10,902 metres at Challenger Deep in the Marianas Trench. This is the deepest known part of the ocean.
In 1960 The Trieste, a bathyscaphe, reached a depth of 10,916 metres. Inside were Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh. Their 9 hour voyage only spent 20 minutes on the seabed. 35 years later a Japanese remotely controlled vehicle, the Kaiko, diving in the same area reached 10,911 metres. Sadly the Kaiko was later lost on an unrelated dive when her cable snapped. So Nereus is currently the only vehicle capable of working at such depths. In addition to operating via a fibre optic tether, it can also be switched into a free swimming, autonomous mode.
The Challenger Deep is in the western Pacific, near Guam and is 2 km deeper than Everest is high. Apart from the Nereus, the other deep-rated submersibles can only get down to about 6500 metres,w hich covers 95% of the ocean floor.
You can read the story from which the pictures came from the BBC website.
The Marine Department says that the amount of trash collected from Hong Kong waters has more then doubled in the last 10 years, from 6,750 tonnes in 1998 to 12,900 tonnes last year. This excludes 15,500 tonnes that were collected at beaches.
About a quarter of that came from Aberdeen and Tin Wan, where fishing vessels unload their catches for the wholesale market. Apparently 600 tonnes were picked up off Central.
Lisa Christensen is director of Coastal Cleanup Challenge, which is an international event to promote ocean protection. She says that statistics from cleanup events showed that at least three-quarters of the floating trash was produced locally.
However Clarus Chu Ping-shan, a senior conservation officer at WWF Hong Kong also pointed out that some of the rubbish is washed down from the mainland in bad weather. He said “Whenever there are heavy downpours and the water current is right, [a massive amount of] rubbish will drift into the city. Much of it is foam, broken furniture, plastic bags and bottles with labels written in simplified Chinese characters,“. He certainly has a point, I’ve been out diving off Waglan after a week of heavy storms, and been amazed at some of the stuff that floats past, including a massive quantity of plastic flip flops. It’s usually in a large area of very muddy water and is presumably stuff that has come down the Pearl River. Incidentally the muddy water tends to be a surface layer, and when you get underneath it the vis is often much better.
If you are a subscriber, you can read the story from the SCMP’s website.
The Plastic Vortex is an area of the Pacific Ocean which contains millions of tons of floating plastic waste. No-one knows how large it is, but some estimates put it as wide as Texas or nearly 4 times as large as Japan. It is in an area north-east of Hawaii, and approximately five days by boat from Hawaii or from San Francisco
Because of its molecular structure, plastic does not biodegrade and rot away. It is also toxic and is killing vast quantities of marine life.
Project Kaisei has been set up to study how to capture, detoxify and recycle plastic waste into diesel fuel. They are planning a research mission to the largest area of the Plastic Vortex this summer to try and understand the logistic needed in a clean-up operation. According to their website they are going to undertake a 70 day expedition to
They will also be producing a documentary for National Geographic. You can find out more and even make donations on the Project Kaisei website.
The team behind it includes one of the people who taught me to dive, Jo Ruxton. After she left Hong Kong she was a key member of the BBC’s highly regarded National History Unit diving team for many years. You can find out what she’s up to now from her website.
David Watson’s wife Tina died on the first dive of a 10 day trip to the Great Barrier Reef off Townsville in October 2003. Afterwards Mr. Watson went back to the US, but in mid-2008 the coroner found that it was likely that that he had killed her by turning her air off and holding her under water. Late last year prosecutors charged him with murder. It was seen as either a crime of passion or motivated by a small life insurance claim.
Mr. Watson recently went to Brisbane, where he has pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Crown prosecutors have accepted the plea and he will not face trial for murder. Instead he has been sentenced to 4.5 years in jail.
The prosecutor told the court the manslaughter plea was accepted because Mr. Watson had failed in his duty as Tina’s dive buddy by not giving her emergency oxygen, that he also allowed her to sink to the ocean floor without making any serious attempt to retrieve her, and that he did not inflate her buoyancy vest or remove weights from her belt. All of which makes you wonder why they didn’t pursue the murder charge.
More details in the Daily Telegraph and News.com.au.
I’ve just come across a report into the fatal accident off Port Island (Chek Chau / 赤洲) on 27 July 2008, where a diver was killed by a turning propellor. It was compiled by the Marine Accident Investigation Section of the Marine Department. This report is not intended to apportion blame or liability, but to try and identify the factors involved with a view to avoiding similar incidents in future.
Their conclusions are basically as follows
Inevitably there were complications. The Master was concerned the vessel might capsize, and this was the second time the Master had engaged the engine. In the meantime an unrelated speedboat had towed several divers (including the victim) close to the Crescent Island so they could board. One of the dive instructors was supposedly acting as a lookout at the stern of the vessel, but didn’t see the speedboat or the divers.
The full report is here.