Deep sea explorers have discovered a
treasure trove of new species who've make themselves at home on the
Lonqui vents in the Indian Ocean.
There is still so much we do not know about the planet we live on, let alone the universe we inhabit.
Longqi vent field localization with the GeoGarage platform (UKHO chart)
Unique New Species
An
undersea expedition in November 2011 to study deep sea hydrothermal
vents revealed previously unrecorded species of unique marine life.
The
team behind the discoveries is composed of scientists from the
University of Southampton, together with colleagues from the Natural
History Museum in London and Newcastle University.
The results of their
study is published in the journal Scientific Reports.
"Jabberwocky," a black smoker vent in the Longqi vent field on the Southwest Indian Ridge. Credit: University of Southampton
The
hydrothermal vents, undersea hot springs about 2.8 km (1.7 miles) deep,
are located in an area called Longqi (Dragon’s Breath).
It’s an
undersea region spanning an area the size of a football stadium located
in the southwest Indian Ocean and about 2,000 km (1243 miles) southeast
of Madagascar.
These Longqi vents are the first of their kind known in
the region.
The team found more than a dozen mineral spires or
“vent chimneys.”
Rising about 2 stories high from the seabed, these
vents sustained a veritable ecosystem of living creatures surviving from
the hot fluids gushing out of these rocks — and are rich in copper and
gold.
The team analyzed the vents using a deep-diving remotely operated
vehicle (ROV).
Deep Sea Exploration
The research team, led by Jon Copley,
was the first to actually study the Longqi vents and the marine life
attached to them.
A group of hairy-chested ‘Hoff crabs’.
Credit University of Southampton
After genetic comparisons with other species in
different locations were done, the team identified six new species
known only to Longqi: a hairy-chested species of ‘Hoff’ crab, two snail
species, a species of limpet, a scaleworm species, and another species
of deep-sea worm.
The stalked barnacle Neolepas sp. collected from Longqi.
credit David Shale
Most of these are yet to be formally described, except
for one snail species, given the scientific name Gigantopelta aegis.
“We
can be certain that the new species we’ve found also live elsewhere in
the southwest Indian Ocean, as they will have migrated here from other
sites, but at the moment no-one really knows where, or how
well-connected their populations are with those at Longqi,” Copley explained.
“Our results highlight the need to explore other hydrothermal vents in
the southwest Indian Ocean and investigate the connectivity of their
populations, before any impacts from mineral exploration activities and
future deep-sea mining can be assessed.”
These discoveries show us
that space isn’t the only frontier that still needs exploring.
We have
much to learn about our planet’s own mysterious space, the oceans that
comprise about 96.5% of the Earth’s waters.
In West Oz – Lucky Bay, more precisely, 60 clicks from Esperance – a filmer named Ash Gibb went diving to acquire footage for a shark conservation documentary he's planning to make. It was during this dive – the first time shooting for the doco – that he was aggressively rammed in the back, before turning to see a great white shark circling him. Let's hand over to Ash: "I dove down. I was in about five metres of water getting a great shot of this fish and I felt this massive thump from behind. Very quickly I saw the great white shoot into the picture. "At first I was quite excited. I thought, great, this is what I came for. The biggest thing for me was just focusing on my breathing. I didn't want to show that I was scared. I reminded myself of my belief about sharks, which is the fact that they don't eat humans on purpose. We're not their food. "I think that's sort of what got me through a lot of nerves, because it was very intense. Even though I wanted to go and do that, it was a very testing situation. "I went there to show people that they are beautiful creatures, so there was no chance of me fleeing that situation. "I was there to film. I got the opportunity. The chances of that actually happening are one in a million, so I took that opportunity and did my best to keep my hand steady, and capture it on film. "I want to continue on filming. I'd love to see another great white. The bigger the better. "I have over 300 skydives and the Adrenalin does not compare.” (courtesy of Stabmag)
On a recent great white shark cage diving trip we experienced a very rare event, a shark breaching the side of the cage.
What might appear to be an aggressive great white shark trying to attack the cage, this is not the case.
These awesome sharks are biting at large chunks of tuna tied to a rope.
When a great white shark lunges and bites something, it is temporarily blinded.
They also cannot swim backwards.
So this shark lunged at the bait, accidentally hit the side of the cage, was most likely confused and not able to swim backwards, it thrust forward and broke the metal rail of the cage.
There was a single diver inside the cage.
He ended up outside the bottom of the cage, looking down on two great white sharks.
The diver is a very experienced dive instructor, remained calm, and when the shark thrashed back outside the cage, the diver calmly swam back up and climbed out completely uninjured.
The boat crew did an outstanding job, lifting the top of the cage, analyzing the frenzied situation, and the shark was out after a few long seconds.
Everyone on the boat returned to the cages the next day, realizing this was a very rare event.
The boat owner, captain, and crew are to be commended for making what could've been a tragic event into a happy ending.
I'm sure God and luck had a bit to do with it too!
New footage captures huge great white shark in Mexico
The massive predator, nicknamed Deep Blue, was spotted in the waters near Mexico's Guadalupe Island. The shark, who is estimated to be around 50 years old, is believed to be one of the largest great white sharks ever seen. She was featured last year in a Discovery network documentary after local researcher Mauricio Hoyos Padilla managed to tag her. (see Discovery article) But Hoyos has posted new footage of Deep Blue that shows her come nail-bitingly close to a cage diver. Hoyos posted the video on Facebookon Monday, August 10, 2015, under the title, “I give you the biggest
white shark ever seen in front of the cages in Guadalupe Island… DEEP
BLUE!!!” The unbelievable footage shows the mammoth shark
swimming around the cage, seemingly ignoring the divers in a roof-less
steel cage. One brave diver decides to swim out of the cage and reaches out to touch the shark. Divers
from across the world travel to Guadalupe, which is located 165 miles
west of Baja California, to see its famous great whites.
In “Distance Between Dreams,” the most historic year in big-wave surfing comes to life through the eyes of iconic surfer Ian Walsh, as he sets mind and body in motion to redefine the upper limits of what’s considered rideable.
With massive El Niño-powered swells building across the Pacific, Ian, Shaun, DK and Luke Walsh band together in a way that only brothers can to progress surfing to unimaginable heights.
Big-wave surfing’s transition from Jet Ski assists to paddling-in raises the stakes, putting Walsh’s intense physical and mental training, the latest technology, swell modeling, safety team and his brothers to the ultimate test.
Surfers John John Florence, Greg Long, Shane Dorian and more link up with Walsh as he rides an emotional rollercoaster through this momentous winter.
The second feature in Red Bull Media House’s “The Unrideables” franchise, “Distance Between Dreams” invites viewers right into the heart of the action with first-person perspective, state-of-the-art cinematography and captivating sound.
Through unprecedented access, prepare to truly experience Walsh’s quest to survive and thrive in one of the most hostile environments on Earth.
A World Meteorological Organization expert committee has established a
new world record significant wave height of 19 meters (62.3 feet)
measured by a buoy in the North Atlantic.
The wave was recorded by an automated buoy at 0600 UTC on 4
February 2013 in the North Atlantic ocean between Iceland and the United
Kingdom (approximately 59° N, 11° W).
It followed the passage of a very
strong cold front, which produced winds of up to 43.8 knots (50.4 miles
per hour) over the area.
The previous record of 18.275 meters (59.96 feet) was measured on 8 December 2007, also in the North Atlantic.
Note that this is "significant" wave height -- in essence, what an
observer would have seen if he/she averaged over 15-20 waves passing by
the buoy -- that is a much better thing than "rogue waves" which really
cannot be accurately measured.
According to one of our of panel's "wave
experts": "There have been many more less reliable estimates of rogue
waves from other platforms, and from satellite SAR. These are generally
unverifiable, since there is no ground truth for the satellite, and the
others tend to be from pitching and rolling platforms such as ships, and
estimates are often based on damage to the superstructure, which may
not have been level at the time."
Significant wave height
recorded is four times the RMS value of the water level above the
average level of the water surface measured over a 17½ minute period.
The factor of 4 applied to the RMS value is because the waves are
trochoidal in nature.
(Waves at sea, especially those growing under the
influence of the wind, tend to be short-crested, i.e. the wave crests
project further above the mean level than the troughs are below it.)
The
‘average’ wave period, again over a 17½ minute sample, is the average
of the periods over 7 successive 2½ minute samples (each determined from
the number of wave cycles in the sample).
Figure (above) shows the hourly
significant wave heights from the Datawell heave sensor, together with
the wave measurements from the Triaxys sensor.
The WMO Commission for Climatology’s Extremes Evaluation Committee classified it as “the highest significant wave height as measured by a buoy”.
The Committee consisted of scientists from the United Kingdom, Britain, Canada, the United States of America and Spain.
The buoy (K5) which recorded the wave is a part of the UK Met Office’s network of Marine Automatic Weather Stations.
Moored and drifting buoys form a vital part of an extensive
international observing network coordinated by WMO and its partners.
They complement ship-based measurements and satellite observations which
monitor the oceans and forecast meteorological hazards on the high
seas.
During the period of the highest waves the wind speeds measured on
the buoy were over 35 kn for the 12 hours preceding the highest waves,
with a maximum wind speed reported of 43.8 kn, as shown in Figure 2 above.
The
winds were measured using a Gill windsonic (acoustic) anemometer on the
buoy at around 3½m above sea level.
The synoptic situation at 0600 on
4th February shows an intense depression to
the north of the buoy with prolonged strong westerly to northwesterly
winds at the K5 station.
Record was evaluated by the committee of J. Turton, M. Brunet .T. Peterson, V. Swail, and R. Cerveny.
“This is the first time we have ever measured a wave of 19 meters. It
is a remarkable record,” said WMO Assistant Secretary-General Wenjian
Zhang.
“It highlights the importance of meteorological and ocean
observations and forecasts to ensure the safety of the global maritime
industry and to protect the lives of crew and passengers on busy
shipping lanes,” he said.
“We need high quality and extensive ocean records to help in our
understanding of weather/ocean interactions,” said Dr Zhang.
“Despite
the huge strides in satellite technology, the sustained observations and
data records from moored and drifting buoys and ships still play a
major role in this respect,” he said.
A separate record – that of the highest significant wave height as
measured by ship observation – was measured in February 2000 in the
Rockall Trough, also in the North Atlantic between the UK and Iceland.
Wave height is defined as the distance from the crest of one wave to
the trough of the next.
The term “significant wave height” means the
average of the highest one-third of waves measured by an instrument, and
is comparable to what an observer would see as an average of about
15-20 well-formed waves over a period of about 10 minutes.
The highest waves typically occur in the North Atlantic, rather than
the Southern Ocean.
Wind circulation patterns and atmospheric pressure
in the North Atlantic in winter leads to intense extra-tropical storms,
often so-called "bombs".
This means that the area from the Grand Banks
underwater plateaus off the Canadian coast around Newfoundland to south
of Iceland and to the west coast of the UK, including the Rockall
Trough, are prime candidates for wave records.
“The new world record will be added to the official WMO archive of
weather and climate extremes which is being constantly updated and
expanded thanks to continued improvements in instrumentation, technology
and analysis,” said Randall Cerveny, Joint Rapporteur on World Records
of Climate and Weather Extremes for WMO.
“Oceans cover some 70 per cent of the world’s surface. Ocean
observations are therefore critical to understanding and forecasting our
weather and climate,” he said.
The archive includes the world’s highest and lowest temperatures,
rainfall, heaviest hailstone, longest dry period, maximum gust of wind,
as well as hemispheric weather and climate extremes.
A WMO committee of experts earlier this year established two new
records - the longest reported distance and the longest reported
duration for a single lightning flash in, respectively, Oklahoma (United
States of America) and southern France.
Seventeen years and more than 10 billion euros ($11 billion) later, Europe's Galileo satnav system is set to go live on Thursday, promising to outperform US and Russian rivals while boosting regional self-reliance.
Initial services, free to use worldwide, will be available only on smartphones and navigation boxes already fitted with Galileo-compatible microchips.
Some devices may only need a software update to start using the new technology, and European Commission spokeswoman Mirna Talko said several smartphone giants were already making chips compatible with it.
"It will be the first time that users around the world will be able to be guided by Galileo satellites," said Lucia Caudet of the Commission, which funds the project.
Somewhat fuzzy at first, the signal will be boosted with help from satellites in the US military-run GPS system, growing stronger over time as orbiters are added to the now 18-strong Galileo network circling 23,222 kilometres (14,430 miles) above Earth.
According to its proud parents, the Commission and European Space Agency (ESA), Galileo should be fully operational by 2020, providing time and positioning data of unprecedented accuracy.
"GPS allows a train to know which area it is in—Galileo will allow it to identify the track it is on," according to Jean-Yves Le Gall, president of France's CNES space agency, one of ESA's 22 country members.
Such precision would also be invaluable for safer driverless cars and nuclear power plants, as well as better telecommunications.
Find out which of your devices use the EU's Galileo Satellite Constellation using the GSA's new online search tool.
Setbacks
The civil-controlled service is also of great strategic importance for Europe, which relies on two military-run services—GPS and Russia's GLONASS, which provide no guarantee of uninterrupted service.
It will be interoperable with these, but also completely autonomous.
"Having a system that is somewhat independent of the US system that is controlled by the military is probably a good thing," explained George Abbey, a senior fellow in space policy at Rice University in Houston, Texas.
This would be especially pertinent "if there were some conflicts or disagreements... that would cause the United States to have to limit GPS," he told AFP.
Named after Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, the project was first approved with an initial budget of around three billion euros and plans to be operational by 2008.
But it has suffered several technical and budgetary setbacks, including the launch of two satellites into the wrong orbit in 2014.
The European Commission expects the project will ultimately be an important commercial venture.
Almost 10 percent of Europe's gross domestic product is thought to depend on satellite navigation today—a figure projected to grow to about 30 percent by 2030.
By 2020, says the commission, the global satnav market will be valued at about 244 billion euros.
EGNOS is a satellite based augmentation system that used a network of ground stations and satellites to increase the accuracy and integrity of existing positioning system, like the GPS or GLONASS.
It sends a correction signal to EGNOS enabled receivers that can improve the accuracy of the positioning and provide information on the reliability of the system at any given time.
GALILEO is Europe's state-of-the-art global satellite navigation system that will provide a highly accurate, guaranteed global positioning service under civilian control.
The fully deployed system will consist of 30 satellites and the associated ground infrastructure.
Galileo will be inter-operable with GPS and GLONASS, the two other global satellite navigation systems.
Billionth of a second
Galileo itself is expected to add some 90 billion euros to the EU economy in its first 20 years.
The system's groundbreaking accuracy is the result of best atomic clocks ever flown for navigation—one per satellite—accurate to one second in three million years.
A mere billionth-of-a-second clock error can mean a positioning error of up to 30 centimetres (12 inches).
Galileo also has more satellites than either GPS or GLONASS, and better signals which carry more information.
With these features, Galileo's free Open Service will be able to track positions to within a metre (3.3 feet), compared to several metres for GPS and GLONASS.
Its signal will eventually reach areas where none is possible today—inside traffic tunnels and on roads where high buildings shield radio waves from some satellites.
A paying service will allow clients to track locations even closer, to within centimetres, and governments will have access to an encrypted continued service for use in times of crisis.
Screen recorded (Nov. 29) from a BQ Aquaris X5 plus smartphone, today the only Galileo compatible Android smartphone. It has a fully working and integrated Galileo receiver (actually a combined GPS, Galileo, GLONASS receiver)
Faster rescue
Another key feature is a service allowing rescuers to locate people lost at sea or in the mountains much faster than before.
Currently, satnav technology can take up to three hours to track a person to within a 10-kilometre (six-mile) range.
"With Galileo's Search and Rescue Service, the detection time is reduced to 10 minutes and the localisation is reduced to less than five kilometres," Caudet told AFP.
Satellite navigation works by ultra-precise clocks in orbit broadcasting their time and position to Earth via radio waves travelling at the speed of light.
Anyone with a receiver can combine data from at least three satellites to determine their position, speed and local time on Earth.
Europe's Galileo satnav: a rocky road
Europe's Galileo satnav system, first approved in 1999, had a difficult birth—taking 17 years and more than triple the original budget to get to the point of going live.
Here's a look at the bumpy road to this week's expected launch of Galileo's initial services:
December 1999: The European Commission formally approves Galileo, a joint project with the European Space Agency, with a budget of between 2.2 billion and 2.95 billion euros ($2.34-3.14 billion). The project "to safeguard European strategic needs" is set for completion in 2008.
April 2008: After failing to raise private sector funding, the Commission—the European Union's executive—takes over the project with a new estimated budget, entirely taxpayer-funded, of 3.4 billion euros until 2013. A further 7 billion euros is budgeted for the 2014-2020 period, according to France's CNES space agency, an ESA member.
October 2011: The two first Galileo satellites are launched into orbit, followed by two more in 2012.
March 2013: The four satellites pinpoint the system's first-ever ground location, with an accuracy of between 10 and 15 metres (32 to 49 feet). One of the orbiters develops antenna problems, but can still transmit on one frequency.
August 2014: After a more than year-long delay over "technical difficulties", satellites five and six are launched into a lopsided, elliptical orbit of little use for satellite navigation. Subsequent launches are delayed to investigate the cause—frozen fuel pipes onboard the Russian Soyuz rocket.
December 2016: With 18 satellites in orbit, Galileo is set to go live with initial services on Thursday. The commission has already ordered eight more orbiters, for launch in 2017 and 2018, with the last four in the 30-satellite constellation yet to be confirmed.
