Sir Robin Knox-Johnston: a force of nature

It's 50 years since Sir Robin Knox-Johnston sailed non-stop around the world.

To mark this unique anniversary, Sir Robin talks to Neil Sackley about his epic voyage and why he did it.

Hybrids

Hybrids - Film from HYBRIDS
When marine wildlife has to adapt to the pollution surrounding it, the rules of survival change.  

Ancient Black Sea shipwreck is unprecedented discovery

 An ancient Greek trading ship dating back more than 2,400 years has been found virtually intact at the bottom of the Black Sea, the world's oldest known shipwreck, researchers say.

From National Geographic by Kristin Romey

Archaeologists say the 2,400-year-old ship is so well preserved that even the mast and rowers' benches have survived for millennia.

Archaeologists are heralding the discovery of an unusually intact ancient shipwreck, found more than a mile below the surface of the Black Sea off of the Bulgarian coast.
The 2,400-year-old wooden vessel features elements of ship construction, including the mast and rowing benches, that until now have not been preserved on ships of this age.

The Black Sea is considered to be one of the world’s finest under water laboratories due to the anoxic (un-oxygenated) layer which preserves artefacts better than any other marine environment.

(Read more about the Black Sea Maritime Archaeology Project.)

 The 23-metre (75ft) vessel, thought to be ancient Greek, was discovered with its mast, rudders and rowing benches all present and correct just over a mile below the surface, off the coast of Bulgaria
GeoGarage platform (NGA chart)

An announcement of the discovery, made by the Black Sea Maritime Archaeology Project (MAP), first appeared in the Guardian.
MAP has discovered more than 60 historic shipwrecks during a three-year survey of the Black Sea.
(See more shipwrecks discovered by the Black Sea Maritime Archaeology Project.)

The 75-foot-long ship, documented by a Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) equipped with cameras, appears similar to merchant vessels depicted on ancient Greek vases.

The 'Siren Vase' showing Odysseus at the mast.

The Trustees of the British Museum

A small piece of the wreck was raised and radiocarbon dated to around the fifth century B.C., a time when Greek city-states were frequently trading between the Mediterranean and their colonies along the Black Sea coast.

Black Sea MAP Maritime Archaeology Project documentary footage

While older intact sailing vessels have been recovered from Egyptian burial sites on land, it is unusual for submerged ancient wrecks to be preserved so well.
The unique preservation of the 2,400-year-old ship is due to the unusual water chemistry of the Black Sea and the lack of oxygen below 600 feet.
This anoxic layer, which makes up nearly 90 percent of the sea’s volume, prevents physical and chemical processes that cause organic decay to take place.

For anyone who prefers their #archaeology in a spin. Same wreck, different view, still amazing. @BlackSeaMAP @ISBSArchaeology @RPachecoRuizSea @felix_pedrotti #Roman #shipwreck pic.twitter.com/XvGtR5ciNR

— Soton Archaeology (@sotonarch) October 24, 2018

National Geographic Archaeologist-in-Residence Fredrik Hiebert, who has searched for Black Sea shipwrecks on an earlier National Geographic-sponsored expedition, says the new discovery reinforces the idea that the anoxic waters of the Black Sea “are an incredibly rich museum of human history.”
“This wreck shows the unprecedented potential for preservation in the Black Sea, which has been a critical crossroads of world cultures for thousands of years,” Hiebert says.
“It’s an incredible find.”

Links :

• BBC : Shipwreck found in Black Sea is 'world's oldest intact'
• National Geographic : This is why Black Sea shipwrecks are such a unique find

Remote Hawaiian Island wiped off the map

East Island in French Frigate Shoals is critical habitat for Green Sea Turtles, Monk Seals, and many types of sea birds.

The Coastal Geology Group from SOEST, University of Hawaii, is investigating the age, origin, evolution, and current status of this island, and Gin Island, to improve understanding of how they may respond to current and future sea level rise.

From HuffingtonPost by Chris d'Angelo

“This event is confronting us with what the future could look like,” one federal scientist said about the loss of East Island, caused by Hurricane Walaka.

A powerful hurricane in the eastern Pacific washed away an 11-acre island in the French Frigate Shoals, part of a national monument in the remote northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

 Location of the East island in the French Frigate Shoals

with the GeoGarage platform (NOAA chart)
see also Google 'streetview' imagery (2013)

Approximately a half mile long and 400 feet wide, East Island was the second-largest islet in French Frigate Shoals ― an atoll some 550 miles northwest of Honolulu ― and a key habitat for the critically endangered Hawaiian monk seal, the threatened Hawaiian green sea turtle and several species of seabirds.

The island’s dramatic vanishing act was first reported by Honolulu Civil Beat and confirmed by HuffPost.
Satellite images distributed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service show the spit of white sand almost entirely erased, scattered out onto the reef to the north.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

from Chip Fletcher Facebook
 

East Island was destroyed by storm surge from Hurricane Walaka, which roared through the northwestern Hawaiian Islands as a powerful Category 3 storm this month.
Seven researchers, including three studying green sea turtles on East Island, were forced to evacuate from French Frigate Shoals before the storm.

 National Weather Service / Via NOAA

Charles Littnan, the director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s protected species division, told HuffPost it will likely take years to understand what the island’s loss means for these imperiled species.
The biggest concern, he said, is the persistent loss of habitat, which has been identified as a significant threat to monk seals and green sea turtles.
Nearby Trig Island was also lost beneath the surface this year, not because of a storm but from high wave activity.
“These small, sandy islets are going to really struggle to persist” in a warming world with rising seas, Littnan said.
“This event is confronting us with what the future could look like.”

French Frigate Shoals is the nesting ground for 96 percent of the Hawaiian green sea turtle population, and approximately half lay their eggs at East Island.
Historically, it has been the “single most important” nesting site for the turtles, he said.

All nesting females had left by the time Walaka hit, so the storm likely had little if any impact on the adult population.
But NOAA scientists estimate that 19 percent of this year’s nests on East Island had not yet hatched and were swept away by the storm.
And 20 percent of the turtle nests on nearby Tern Island, the largest island in the French Frigate Shoals, were lost.

 The island played an important role for wildlife, including the critically endangered Hawaiian monk seal, a species that numbers just 1,400 individuals.

Photograph: Fish & Wildlife Service

The island was also a critical habitat for the federally protected Hawaii monk seal, one of the most endangered marine mammals on the planet.
Roughly 80 percent of the population of just over 1,400 seals live in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands, a remote archipelago that is surrounded by the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument.

courtesy of Friends of Hawaiian Islands National Wildlife Refuge

In a typical year, 30 percent of monk seal pups are born at East Island.
In 2018, 12 pups were born there, and NOAA said it believes that all but maybe one had been weaned before the storm hit.
Littnan said that monk seals are known to move into the water to ride out storms but that scientists won’t know if there was significant mortality until they are able to return to the area to survey the population next year.

Athline Clark, NOAA’s superintendent of Papahanaumokuakea, described the satellite images as “startling” and said that while the long-term implications are not clear, the island’s loss will have significant effects on future nesting and pupping cycles.

Before disappearing, East and Trig islands accounted for 60 percent of the monk seal pups born at French Frigate Shoals, according to NOAA.

Chip Fletcher, an associate dean at the University of Hawaii’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, told HuffPost that after an initial “holy shit” moment, he realized the island’s disappearance makes sense.
“This is not surprising when you consider the bad luck of a hurricane going into that vicinity and sea level rise already sort of deemed the stressor in the background for these ecosystems,” he said.
“The probability of occurrences like this goes up with climate change.”

This month the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading United Nations consortium of researchers studying human-caused climate change, issued a dire warning about the threats the world now faces.
Failing to overhaul the global economy and rein in carbon emissions would come with devastating, perhaps irreversible effects, the IPCC found.

The scientific community — including experts at NOAA — has long warned that anthropogenic climate change influences extreme weather events.
The 2015 National Climate Assessment concluded that “hurricane intensity and rainfall are projected to increase as the climate continues to warm.”

Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane expert at Colorado State University, said the central Pacific is one area where a lot of models forecast that climate change will trigger more frequent and stronger hurricanes.
He said Walaka rapidly intensified at an “impressive rate,” from a tropical storm with 40 mph winds to a major hurricane with winds of 120 mph in just 30 hours.
After reaching Category 5 strength, it weakened as it made its way north toward the national monument.
“The complete loss of the island is very impressive,” Klotzbach said after viewing the photos.

From satellite imagery and observations during a flyover of East Island and Tern Island, Littnan said, NOAA scientists expect that all the islets in French Frigate Shoals were completely washed over by the storm surge.
It’s unclear if any others experienced significant damage.

There’s no telling if East Island will return.

Whale Skate Island, French Frigate Shoal (taken on May 5, 2012)
courtesy of Jim Lewis. Pacific Project 5univ. Hawaii Museum)

 Whale & Skate islands with the GeoGarage platform (NOAA chart)

An islet named Whale-Skate Island, also once an important habitat for Hawaiian monk seals, vanished from French Frigate Shoals in the 1990s and has not reappeared.

Clark, Fletcher and Littnan said scientists are already exploring what, if anything, can be done to intervene to protect these vulnerable habitats and increase the resilience of the affected species.
Those efforts could include pumping sand back above the ocean’s surface to restore islets.

“We’re going to have to look at really creative ways to help support these species to persist into the future,” Littnan said.

Links :

• RT : Hurricane swallows Hawaii island whole
• The Guardian : Hawaiian island erased by powerful hurricane: ‘The loss is a huge blow’
• Slate : Hurricane Walaka Caused a Hawaiian Island to Disappear

This fleet of underwater robots will help citizen scientists make the case for ocean conservation

From FastCompany by Ben Paynter

OpenROV’s cheap robots help people explore their local waterways, and National Geographic is helping get them to more people so they can map their discoveries.

Since David Lang cofounded OpenROV, a low-cost underwater drone company, in 2012, thousands of citizen scientists and explorers have used the bots to explore things like starfish deaths in the Pacific Northwest, or where along the coast of Mexico Nassau grouper tended to spawn.
That information launched bigger efforts to study, document, and ultimately try to protect those species and the places they live.

National Geographic liked idea so much they’re expanding it.
Earlier this month, the company, in partnership with OpenROV and James Cameron’s Avatar Alliance Foundation announced the launch of the Science Exploration Education Initiative to donate 1,000 Trident drones to nonprofits, schools, and activists interested in documenting their adventures on Open Explorer, an online field journal that Lang also helped design.
Open Explorer publicly maps where each project is located and lets groups post updates about observations there.
Trident drones can dive 100 meters deep while streaming video.
The $1,5000 devices are typically piloted through a video game-style controller designed to fit around an Android tablet.
“We have always been idealists in wanting to use technology to really help connect people to the natural world,” says Lang, who considers the ocean a place that most people don’t really understand or even know how to engage with.
“[We’re] doing that not with a lecture on what’s important, but by giving people the thrill of exploration,” he adds.

 OpenROV v.2.8 kit ($899)

Lang and his friend Eric Stackpole built OpenROV’s first prototypes in a garage and raised money through Kickstarter: 1,800 people contributed nearly $1 million.
The duo set up Open Explorer in 2014 after another crucial insight: Along with opening access to a new frontier, they felt obligated to help guide how their new tools might be best used.
“The robots are key to getting people to find these places, but the other part of it was giving people a place to tell these stories of adventure and exploration and citizen science,” he says.

Lang gave a TEDx talk in Berkeley, California, to coincide with SEE’s launch.
In it, he pointed out that oceanic conservation efforts are nearly 100 years behind the land-based ones that lead to the creation of national parks.
But remote exploration tools that highlight challenges of starfish and grouper (among many other things) can certainly make a good case for acting more quickly now.

OpenROV community member Dominik Fretz took a Trident beta unit out to Isla Guadalupe, Mexico for testing. It's safe to say this drone passed the reliability test with flying colors...

SEE’s philanthropic angle makes underwater drones affordable and accessible to everyone.
That aligns with an ideal that Lang coined and is trying to popularize called “New Deal Philanthropy.”
As he explains in a recent post on Medium: “New Deal Philanthropy isn’t about creating more government programs, a new social safety net, or adding regulation. It’s about being more ambitious with regards to creating meaningful work for everyone.”
Such work can be accomplished through “foundations and companies using technology-based platforms to amplify the important work being done by individuals and communities.”

Other backers of the project include Rolex, the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, and OceanX.
But National Geographic is already thinking bigger.
Earlier this year, it acquired Open Explorer for an undisclosed sum.
It’s since deepened the platform’s content across many more terrains–categories include air, land, sea, urban, and backyard missions (along with historical feats featuring archived photos and videos).
People interested in applying for the initiative should visit SEE’s homepage, sign up to start an expedition, and then share more about how they’ll use the Trident.
Several dozen groups have already received robots and are chronicling their efforts.

“It’s fine to buy a robot and to have a robot, but what we’re really trying to do is give people the tools to make their life more interesting,” Lang says.
“We’re building tools to empower those people to ask better questions and to get right up to the front lines of discovery.” 

Links :

• DeeperBlue : National Geographic To Donate 1,000 Underwater Drones For Ocean Exploration
• Engaget : Nat Geo and OpenROV are giving away 1000 robot submarines 
• National Geographic : Searching for great white sharks with underwater robots
• GeoGarage blog : OpenROV will change exploration of last true frontier / OpenROV Trident - An underwater drone for everyone / Robot revolution: new generation of cheap drones to ... / The 'curious' robots searching for the ocean's secrets