HOT NEWS !

By Jeffrey Groberman


Decompression dive of an intact Second World War wreck isn't for beginners or the faint of heart.

I'm floating inside a sunken ocean liner. It's darker than the inside of a cow. My small dive light barely makes a dent in the darkness.

The last time I could see my depth gauge, it read 48 metres, which is a bit troublesome since the waterproof case on my digital camera is only guaranteed to 37.5 metres. 

My dive computer is beeping, signaling that I've exceeded my depth time and I'm now into decompression mode and I've never done a decompression dive before.

Did I mention that ocean liner is lying on its side ? So here's the burning question: Am I having fun yet ???

I'm on Espiritu Santo, part of the island republic of Vanuatu. Vanuatu is in the South Pacific about 1,700 kilometres east of Northern Australia and west of Fiji.

It was a French colony, but English is the main language, along with Bislama -- a type of Pidgin English spoken on several South Pacific Islands.

By Jared Paul Stern


Some vintage 1907 Heidsieck champagne that's been sitting on the bottom of the ocean for the past 80 years is being sold for $275,000 a bottle at the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow. 

Over 200 bottles of the long-lost, perfectly-preserved bubbly were salvaged from a shipwreck off the coast of Finland, Russian newspaper Komersant reports.

At the time of the accident in 1916 the wine was on its way to the Russian Imperial family. 

The Ritz-Carlton, where top suites go for upwards of $15,000 a night, is now offering them at $275,000 a bottle, making it the world's most expensive champagne. Sounds like the perfect drink for all those oligarchs.

From the Canadian Press


A Saskatoon dive team is searching for a sunken treasure of old champagne bottles, fine china and giant stern wheel spokes from the last steamboat to sail through the city on the South Saskatchewan River.

The fire department's water rescue team, with help from an archeologist, is diving each day this week to try to recover lost century-old artifacts from the S.S. City of Medicine Hat. The luxury ship crashed into a Saskatoon bridge and sank in 1908.

"This is an archaeological reconnaissance, not an excavation," said Butch Amundson, a senior archaeologist with Stantec Consulting Ltd.

"I'll feel like the project is a success if we find one artifact that we can undeniably say is from the S.S. City of Medicine Hat."

The divers, using metal detectors designed to work underwater, have only about a half-meter visibility.

From CCTV


An underwater museum is giving divers a glimpse into life during the Roman Empire along the Israeli Mediterranean coast.

The Caesarea port sunk unexpectedly, and memory of it vanished until 60 years ago, when archaeologists started to uncover it.

The divers can admire wonders buried under the sea for more than two millennia.

It's not close-encounters with fish that attract divers here from all over the world. Rather, it is a unique opportunity to study Roman ruins.


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By James Randerson


Archaeologists are creating a permanent digital record of shipwrecks around European coasts.

By recording the precise 3D arrangement of timbers and cargo from the wrecks the researchers aim to preserve the information they contain about past civilizations even if the wrecks are damaged or destroyed.

Scientists and members of the general public would in future be able to float over the wrecks in a virtual submarine from the comfort of their own desks. For researchers, this would allow them to explore the wreck and make decisions about future excavations without spending large amounts of money going out to sea.

So far the €2.2m Venus (Virtual Exploration of Underwater Sites) project, which involves 11 different institutions across Europe, has created a digital representation of two shipwrecks; one a Roman ship dating from around AD200 off the island of Pianosa near the Tuscan coast and the other, the Barco da Telha, a pre-18th century vessel that sank off the Portuguese coast near Sessimbra.

There are already plans to begin mapping another Roman wreck off Marseilles.

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By Tim Younkman


Another piece of Bay City's shipbuilding history will be sent to the bottom of Lake Michigan this fall but it won't be an accident.

The 83-year-old USS Dexter, now known as the Buccaneer, built by Defoe Boat and Motor Works of Bay City in 1925 will be scuttled in late October for divers to examine and explore off the Chicago shoreline, says Joan Forsberg, president of the Underwater Archeological Society of Chicago.

The 100-foot-long ship was one of 13 patrol boats constructed for the U.S. Coast Guard by Defoe in 1925-26 to be used against rum runners both on the Great Lakes and in the Gulf of Mexico.

The ship had been used in recent years as an excursion party boat by the Wagner Charter Co., of Chicago, before being purchased for use by the Underwater Archeological Society of Chicago, Forsberg said.


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By Terry Tomalin

When Michael Barnette moved to the Tampa Bay area 10 years ago, he had heard about a popular wreck dive in 65 feet of water.

"Everybody dove and fished it," he said. "But nobody knew what it was. They just called it the South Jack Wreck because of all the amberjack on it."

Over the years, Barnette, an accomplished underwater explorer from St. Petersburg, thought often about the mysterious shipwreck. "It was one of those things that just kept nagging at me," he said.

"Even after I went out and looked at it, I still had no idea what it could be."

In 1901, in the German port city of Kiel, the Grand Duke Friedrich August von Oldenburg, commissioned a steel-hulled yacht to be built that would be the envy of all who saw her.

The shipwrights used the finest hardwoods in the staterooms, and the vessel was outfitted with, what were at the time, state-of-the-art high-performance engines.
 

By Frank Pope
 

Thirty years ago off the coast of Kent, beneath some 50ft of water, the prow of the 17th-century warship Stirling Castle emerged from a sandbank.

It had been entombed by the Goodwin Sands for 300 years until the current changed.

Soon, enough sand had been scoured away to reveal the entire hull.

When she was discovered in 1979 her timbers looked as strong as the day they were hewn.

Now she lies disintegrating.

The Stirling Castle is one of ten wrecks identified in English Heritage's new Heritage at Risk initiative, but lack of funds has meant that archaeologists can only watch as the sea reclaims the past.

Britain's ships made her great. We honour them by letting them rot, and pat ourselves on the back for doing so.

Britain's navies pushed back the frontiers of the map, shaped world trade and fought epic sea battles.

We are proud of our maritime past - except when it comes to looking after the shipwrecks that embody it.

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