Sunken whaling ship of 'Moby Dick' captain found

Out of America: historic find has links to a grisly saga that inspired 'Moby-Dick'
(courtesy of NOAA)

From TheIndependant

You might suppose that oil of the petroleum variety was the world's first global energy industry.
Not so.
That distinction belongs to whale oil, which, for roughly a century after 1750, lit lamps and provided wax and lubricants for what passed then as the developed Western world.
And now comes a fascinating new reminder.

Today Nantucket is a holiday playground for the gilded rich of Wall Street.
Back then, though, the small island off the southern coast of Massachusetts was the equivalent of modern Houston and Saudi Arabia, home to a whaling fleet of wooden ships that ranged the seven seas, on epic voyages that might last three years or more, and end with no return at all. But no wrecks were ever found – until now.

For the first time, American marine archaeologists have discovered the remains of a Nantucket whaler, the Two Brothers, that sank 188 years ago in this very same February week of 1823.
She was on her way to newly opened whaling grounds off Japan when she foundered on a hidden sandbank beyond the far western end of the Hawaiian archipelago, some 12,000 miles from her home port.
Note : the atoll is part of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, a conservation area that covers nearly 140,000 square miles of ocean northwest of Hawaii.
(position with the Marine GeoGarage)

On Friday researchers from the government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) presented their findings, and a fascinating tale it is. (see misssion blog)

The NOAA team was exploring a treacherous stretch of atoll called the French Frigate Shoals, 600 miles north-west of Honolulu, looking for other, more recent wrecks.
But just before they were due to leave, they noticed an old anchor resting on the seabed 15ft below the surface, clearly visible through the crystalline water.
Naturally the wooden structure of the Two Brothers had long vanished, but what remained was sufficient to identify the vessel: the anchor from the early 19th century, lances and harpoons to catch the whales, plus ceramic fragments and three metal trypots – cauldrons in which whale blubber was rendered into the precious oil.

All this would have been remarkable enough, proof that these maritime odysseys were not just seafarers' yarns.
But the tale of the captain of the Two Brothers makes the story even better.
He was a man named George Pollard Jr, only 32 years old at the time of the shipwreck.
But the Two Brothers was not his first whaling command.
Three years earlier he had been captain of the Essex, the Nantucket whaler whose terrible end was one of the most celebrated maritime sagas of the age, and inspiration for Herman Melville's Moby-Dick.

The Essex had set sail from Nantucket in 1819, rounded Cape Horn and entered the Pacific Ocean the following January.
Then on 20 November, about 1,800 miles west of the Galapagos Islands, the vessel was rammed twice by a enraged sperm whale – some 85ft long, almost the length of the Essex itself.
That attack finds fictional form at the climax of Melville's great novel.
The subsequent reality for the crew of the Essex was more harrowing still.

The crew abandoned ship, divided up their meagre provisions and set off in the three small whaleboats, hoping to make landfall in Chile or Peru.
But their supplies ran out, and as one crew member after another died of starvation or thirst, the others resorted to cannibalism to survive.
Eventually there were only four men left on Pollard's boat, and they decided that one should be killed to provide food.
They drew lots, and the unlucky individual was Pollard's cousin, 19-year-old Owen Coffin, who bravely accepted his fate and was shot dead.

Finally on 23 February 1821, Pollard and his one fellow survivor were rescued by another whaler and taken to the Chilean port of Valparaiso, from where they made their way back to Nantucket.

For most sailors, so dreadful an experience would keep them from going back to sea for ever.
Not Pollard, however.
A year later he agreed to captain the Two Brothers in the belief, as he reportedly put it, that "lightning never strikes in the same place twice." But it did.
Back in Nantucket after being rescued for a second time, he was regarded as a "Jonah" – a sailor who brought ill fortune with him.
Pollard never went whaling again, and spent the rest of his life as a nightwatchman until his death in 1870.
But Melville did meet him during a visit to Nantucket in 1852, a year after the publication of Moby-Dick, and described the captain of the Essex as "the most impressive man, tho' wholly unassuming even humble, that I ever encountered".

By the time Pollard died, whaling was changing.
Coal and oil were the new fuels of the industrial age, and men hunted whales for food with an industrial ruthlessless that brought whole species close to extinction.

But whaling's monuments survive, relics of a vanished age – from the cobbled streets of old Nantucket, with its wonderful whaling museum and handsome captain's houses with their rooftop balconies, from which women scanned the sea for their menfolk's return, to the long-abandoned whaling stations of South Georgia at the other end of the world.

To these must now be added another monument: a dazzling coral reef off Hawaii that is the last resting place of the Two Brothers.

Links :

• NationalGeographic : Rare 1823 wreck found—Capt. Linked to "Moby-Dick," cannibalism / pictures
• NYTimes : No ‘Moby-Dick’: a real captain, twice doomed
  

The physics of sailing

www.kqed.org/quest/television/the-physics-of-sailing (note)

From KQED

We have a storied, 500-year history of sailing.
But despite this rich heritage, scientists and boat designers continue to learn more each day about what makes a sail boat move
Contrary to what you might expect, the physics of sailing still present some mysteries to modern sailors.

To make a sailboat move, you need both wind and water, in addition to a sail, of course!
When a sailboat sails downwind, wind blows into and pushes against the boat's sails.
Because the wind is faster than the boat, the air pushing into the sails is decelerated.
As the sails push back against the wind, the wind pushes forward on the sails and the boat moves.

But working with just the sail and the wind in this way, the boat will move slowly and only in the direction the wind carries it.
To really make a sailboat move quickly, a sailor needs to know how to harness aerodynamic and hydrodynamic lift force.
Bernoulli's principle is a scientific principle stating that as the speed of a moving fluid or gas increases (or decreases), the pressure within the fluid decreases (or increases).
It’s the guiding principle behind the physics of lift.

By sailing closer to the wind, a boat will generate more aerodynamic lift.
To move around the sails, the wind will have to change direction.
This creates a change in wind velocity and harnesses lift force.
But instead of being fully forward of the boat, the force is now primarily sideways on the boat. This means that the sailboat will move sideways if left unchecked.

This is where the keel comes into play.
Unlike the keel in other kinds of boats, a sailboat keel is typically very large and uses the forward momentum of the boat to generate hydrodynamic lift and counter the lateral force coming from the air interacting with the sail.
Instead of lying flat or nearly flat against the boat hull, a sailboat keel drops down into the water beneath the boat like a large rudder.
When the boat moves sideways, the keel must push a lot of water sideways.
Like the interaction between the wind and the sail, the water resists the push from the keel to generate lift.
Because of the similar roles the keel and sail play in generating lift, the keel on a sailboat is sometimes regarded as a "second sail."
Between the sail and the keel, a boat generates enough lift to accelerate forward.

In fact, in this way a sailboat can even move faster than the wind!
When moving, a sailboat generates its own wind, often called apparent wind or relative wind.
This is the flow of wind acting upon the sail.
The faster a boat travels, the more of this kind of wind occurs and the more force there is acting upon the sails.
This means greater acceleration, and the boat will travel faster than the true wind speed.
Many modern, extreme design sailboats and larger skiffs are built especially with this purpose in mind -- to sail faster than the wind.

Links :

• American Institute of Physics : the physics of sailing (book)
  

"Way of the Ocean" Australia

Way of the Ocean: Australia, explores the connection between man and sea
through a visual feast of poetic motion.

From PresidioSports

When you think of tropical islands, those little surf paradises, what do you think of?
Hawaii, Fiji, Indo… the Maldives maybe. But do you think of Australia?

Matt Kleiner’s documentary “Way of the Ocean” will make you.
Kleiner sets out to make surfing synonymous with Australia, the world’s largest island, in his film debuting at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival Saturday 29th of January at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.

“Way of The Ocean” is a nature driven, poetic epic about the relationship between Australia and surfers through the ages.
Since surfing was introduced to the island in the early 1900s, it has become a way of life and more for the people of the water-locked continent.
From the Barrier Reef to the cold Southern Ocean, Australia provides some of the best surfing in the world within its 20 thousand miles of coastline.
It is also a coastline that has – for the most part – been preserved and well-kept, an important message the film hopes to convey.
“Even throughout frequent use and some over-crowding in certain places, it is clear that they look after the beaches and maintain this pristine environment. Living in Southern California makes it easy to see that we need to start taking serious steps towards cleaner water and beaches,” Kleiner said.

Kleiner, a Santa Barbara native, said the production process was a tedious one.
“I spent two years back and forth between Australia and Santa Barbara.”
Kleiner produced the film without a film crew, working with his brother Ryan, the film’s art director. “The whole process, although grueling, was a lot of fun and really enjoyable… it really was the experience of a lifetime.”
While the film is not necessarily an environmental film, Kleiner hopes that it might inspire
people to appreciate the ocean and do what they can to help preserve it in our area of the world.
The film is by no means short on high-performance surfing footage either, as it features Asher Pacey, Josh Kerr, Taj Burrow, Adam Robertson, Jordy Smith, Dane Reynolds, Craig Anderson and Kelly Slater.
Using a combination of 16 mm and high definition cameras, Kleiner tackles water and land alike to create a visually stunning film about the nature of surfing and man’s relationship to the water.
“A lot of surf movies will have really great cinematography but then they slap it together with a look and sound that doesn’t fit the moment,” Kleiner said, “My goal was to try to create something that worked as one, so we spent a lot of time creating an original score to help mirror the footage.”

Kleiner believes this movie will appeal to surf fans and non-surf fans alike.
“The movie was made so that people can see the enjoyment that surfing and the ocean bring to our lives and to remind people to stop and smell the roses every once in a while.”
Between the breath-taking scenery, the smooth blend of image and sound, and the spirit of surfing, there’s something for everyone in this film.

“Way of the Ocean” is part one of a five part film series that intends to span across the globe’s oceans and surf.
Kleiner said of the series, “Once I developed the concept for the Way of the Ocean series with my brother Ryan, we decided Australia was the best place to start. Surfing is a huge part of daily life in Australia and the people well and truly live by the way of the ocean.”
The second installment in the series will be covering North America, which has started production this month.

Oceanography in China : who rules the waves ?

China’s ocean scientists will soon start exploring a controversial patch of sea

From TheEconomist

Imperialism and oceanography often go hand in hand.
The British Admiralty’s surveys of the world’s coastlines and shallow seas during the 18th and 19th centuries brought a wealth of scientific knowledge.
They also did no harm to the ability of British merchantmen to navigate the world—and of British warships to dominate it.

Viewed from that perspective, China’s southern neighbours might be slightly nervous about a meeting held in Shanghai on January 26th and 27th, which gathered the country’s oceanographers (including several who work abroad) to discuss a project called South China Sea-Deep.
As its name suggests, this project is intended to explore the South China Sea, a patch of water with an area of 3.5m square kilometres and a maximum depth of 5.5km that China’s government regards (despite competing claims from every other country with littoral waters there) in much the same way that ancient Romans regarded the Mediterranean: mare nostrum.

South by Southwest

The scientists in question disclaim any intent to push back frontiers other than those of human understanding.
They also say the project’s focus is on basic scientific matters rather than a search for things like oil and mineral resources.
No doubt that is true—just as it is true that many who sailed under the Admiralty’s aegis were motivated by a thirst for pure knowledge.
But knowledge is power, and if Chinese scientists are the first to explore the depths of the South China Sea, then Chinese businessmen will be better placed than others to exploit any commercially valuable finding that they make, and the Chinese navy will be better placed to defend them.

South China Sea-Deep is led by Wang Pinxian, of Tongji University in Shanghai, a doyen of the field.
To assist him, he will be able to call on the services of Jiaolong, China’s latest deep-submersible vehicle (pictured, planting a flag), which is designed to dive to a depth of 7km. Last July Jiaolong managed 3.8km.
The craft’s handlers aim to push that to 5km this summer and to the full amount next year.

The project is partly inspired by a study carried out aboard a vessel called Dayang Yihao in 2007, of the then little-known Southwest Indian Ridge.
This is part of the system of mid-ocean ridges that form as the tectonic plates of the Earth’s crust move apart—a process known as sea floor spreading.
Among other things, the researchers on board Dayang Yihao located rich deposits of copper, lead and zinc, associated with hot springs called hydrothermal vents that are often found near mid-ocean ridges.
And when the International Seabed Authority, which looks after such matters, promulgated regulations last May for the exploration of these sorts of deposits, China quickly made an application to do so in the Southwest Indian Ridge.

The South China Sea, too, is thought to be a product of sea floor spreading—though the spreading in question happened between 32m and 16m years ago.
And Lin Jian of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, in Massachusetts, one of the leaders of the expedition to the Southwest Indian Ridge, is also running a sub-project intended to study the tectonic evolution of the area.
This should help settle the questions of how the South China Sea came into existence, how much of its floor is basaltic ocean seabed, of the sort spewed out of mid-ocean ridges, and how much is continental rock that simply happens to be below sea level.

The second part of the project, a study of sedimentation and the ancient climate, will follow up Dr Wang’s original examination of the area, in 1999, which was part of an international effort called the Ocean Drilling Programme.
Despite all the disclaimers, this will be the bit of most interest to the oil and gas industry.

Three large drainage systems, the Mekong, the Red River, and the network that debouches into the Pearl River delta, have carried about 14,000 trillion tonnes of sediment into the South China Sea over the past 30m years or so.
That forms traps for oil and gas.
It also preserves a huge amount of information about past temperatures, rainfall and sea levels.
Jian Zhimin, also of Tongji University, and his colleagues hope to use this information to unravel the evolution of the modern climate—particularly of the Asian monsoon which, by providing enough rainfall for agriculture, keeps much of the continent’s population fed.

They will investigate the modern climate directly, too, for the South China Sea’s eastern edge is part of an area called the Western Pacific Warm Pool.
This has an average temperature of 29˚C, making it the hottest body of water in the ocean.
It is thus an important source of climate-controlling heat and moisture, and is involved in regulating both the monsoon and El Niño, a weather-altering arm of warm water that reaches intermittently across the Pacific from South America.

Spreading information

The third part of the project will look at the South China Sea’s biology—particularly at depth. This will be led by researchers including Jiao Nianzhi, of Xiamen University in Fujian province, and Tian Jiwei, of the Ocean University of China, in Qingdao, Shandong province.
They will study the sequestration of carbon by micro-organisms, examine life around the springs and vents of the ocean floor, and make long-term measurements of currents and the exchange of nutrients and plankton between different parts of the South China Sea, and between it and the Pacific.

All this costs money, of course.
The budget for South China Sea-Deep is 150m yuan ($22m), to be paid for over the next eight years by the National Natural Science Foundation, a government agency based in Beijing.
Nor is this China’s only oceanographic enterprise.
A deep-sea technology centre in Qingdao will cost 400m yuan and a network of sea floor observatories similar to Canada’s Neptune programme and America’s Ocean Observatories Initiative will clock up another 1.4 billion yuan.
Money well spent, no doubt, in the interests of pure research.
Still, it cannot hurt, as Zhang Gongcheng, of the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, observed in his talk at the meeting, that the reserve of natural gas in the South China Sea is estimated at 200 trillion cubic metres.
Pure research is all very well.
But buttering a few parsnips at the same time can do no harm.

Links :

• Marine GeoGarage blog : China becomes fifth country to acquire deep-diving technology

Whale sharks: Biggest fish could be even bigger

from National Geographic

From BBCNews

Whale sharks, the world's biggest fish, could be even bigger than previously recorded, a new study reveals.
Scientists working in Mozambique have developed a new method of measurement using a camera mounted with lasers.
Although previously estimated at up to 20 metres in length, accurate details of the giant fish have been difficult to obtain in the past.
Researchers believe regular measurements will reveal more about the lifecycles of these sea giants.

Scientists studying whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) describe a technological breakthrough in understanding the plankton-eating giants.
Working with the University of Queensland, the Marine Megafauna Foundation and CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, the team's findings are published in the Journal of Fish Biology.
"Our paper is the first to publish accurate measurements for whale sharks in the field," says PhD candidate Christoph Rohner.
"Other researchers have previously tried to measure the sharks with a tape measure, or by visually estimating size, which is obviously difficult to do accurately," he explains.
Many previous size records were based on the photogrammetery method: estimating measurements from photographs.

Researchers claim they have dramatically improved the precision of this method with the addition of two laser pointers.
By positioning the lasers 50cm apart on either side of the camera, the distance between the projected points provides a fixed scale so that photographs can be analysed with greater accuracy.
"The laser system will allow us to reliably obtain accurate measurements from free-swimming sharks, so we may well find out that the world's largest fish is even larger than presently recorded," says Mr Rohner.
Researchers say their new method has already seen the recorded size of some individuals increase by up to 50cm.

In addition to recording the length of whale sharks, researchers say the photographs could reveal more about the enigmatic species.
"Whale sharks can be individually-identified using the distinctive pattern of spots on their flanks. We project laser spots onto this region, allowing us to obtain both the identity and length of the shark with a single photograph," says Mr Rohner.
"At present we have no clear idea about how long whale sharks live, but it may be for over one hundred years. By repeatedly measuring the same individuals over time, we hope to be able to eventually find out how old a twenty metre shark might be," he adds.

Conservationists are concerned that the giant fish are under threat from commercial fishing including harpoon fisheries and incidental capture.
Researchers claim that by understanding whale sharks' lifecycles, they can more accurately predict how populations are impacted by these activities.
Mr Rohner emphasises the importance of measuring individuals over time to learn more about their development and confirm their growth rate.
"Whale sharks are globally threatened, and this kind of basic but hard to get information is vital for effectively conserving the species," he says.

Researchers estimate that 19% of the global population of whale sharks has been recorded off the coast of Mozambique.
Recent satellite tagging experiments have shown the fish migrating extremely long distances of up to 13,000 km ( CSIRO).

Links :

• Whale shark project