HOT NEWS !

By Michael Theodoulou

Two years ago, a Cypriot diver was stunned by a chance find: hundreds of ancient ceramic wine jars, rising from a featureless expanse of flat, desert-like seabed off Cyprus's southern coast.

Together they formed the shape of a ghostly ship, still submerged beneath the sands.

It now appears that what the diver discovered was a supertanker of its time, and the biggest and probably oldest wreck ever found in the island's waters.

From Public Technology

An European funded project to survey the seabed off the northern coast of Ireland, parts of which have not been surveyed since Victorian times, has started to provide some spectacular results showing underwater cliffs, reefs, caves and what may have been a lagoon.

The wreck of a ship which sank in 1918 has also been discovered. Survey operations started in November last year and vessels using modern multi-beam echo sounding technology have been surveying a 3 nautical mile coastal strip westward from Country Antrim, around Rathlin Island to Inishtrahull Island off Donegal.

Those results have now been collated into a graphical display.

The data gained will be used to provide more accurate navigational charts and to study the topography of the sea floor.

The Joint Irish Bathymetric Survey (JIBS) Project is being led by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency in partnership with the Marine Institute of Ireland. This E2.1m joint venture is being entirely funded by the EU from their INTERREG Programme, which is co-ordinated by the Department of the Environment for Northern Ireland.

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By Meira Faratci

The University of Haifa has inaugurated the Leon Charney School of Marine Sciences, the first in the world to integrate research in marine biology, marine geophysics, marine and coastal history, and marine civilization.

The establishment of the school on Tuesday was made possible by an $8 million donation from the chairman of the university's board of governors, Leon Charney. Marine biology studies at the school will include research on micro-organisms, algae, and marine animal behavior conducted in the bodies of water surrounding Israel.

The marine geophysics department will investigate how to best utilize the country's 300 kilometers of coastline.

An exploration of the archaeological and geological aspects of Israel's oceans and rivers will be conducted by the department of marine and coastal history.

Most unique to the university, the department of marine civilization will focus on the sociological influences of marine environments on the societies which they surround.

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From Typically Spanish

A schooner carrying the sarcophagus is thought to have sunk in waters off Cartagena in 1838.

Egypt wants to search for the sarcophagus of the Pharaoh Menkaure in Spanish waters off Cartagena, and finance is already being assembled for the project.

The EFE news agency quotes sources in the Egyptian government, with the General Secretary of the Supreme Council for Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, said that the National Geographic channel had been asked to help in funding the search.

They wanted to employ Robert Ballard, the man who found the Titanic, to lead the search.

The sarcophagus went down when the schooner Beatrice went down when it was being taken with other pieces to the British Museum in London in 1838.

The sarcophagus had been found in 1837 by the British archaeologist Howard Vyse.

From Perth Now

Two men are facing possible jail terms over an unregistered scheme to fund hunts for shipwrecked treasure, which cost Australian investors more than $600,000.

Christopher Paul Woolgrove, 44, and James Lawrence Phillips, 38, pleaded guilty in Brisbane District Court earlier this year to one count each of operating an unregistered investment scheme.

At a sentencing hearing today the same court was told the pair established a scheme entitled the Hatcher Unit Trust (HUT) to raise more than $US2 million ($A2.1 million) to help fund a series of operations to find shipwrecks across the globe and salvage them.

In an information memoranda distributed to would be investors in 2001 and 2002, the HUT makes a series of baseless claims, including that "15 per cent of all gold found by man over the past 6,000 years is lying at the bottom of the ocean."

"It also claimed it has been calculated that if all the lost treasure and items of value could be recovered from the ocean and its wealth evenly distributed, every man, woman and child on earth could live comfortably for the rest of their lives."

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By Ofri Ilani

At the bottom of the sea, some 300 meters west of the Atlit fortress, lies one of the greatest archaeological mysteries of the Mediterranean basin.

About 20 years ago, archaeologists discovered a complex of ancient buildings and ancient graves with dozens of skeletons at the underwater site of Atlit-Yam.

The team of marine archaeologists that excavated the site, headed by Dr. Ehud Galili of the Israel Antiquities Authority, came to the conclusion that an ancient settlement once existed there, but sank beneath the surface of the sea some 8,000 years ago.

The finds at the site, including goat and pig bones and wheat seeds, indicate that it was a well-established community whose residents supported themselves by agriculture, hunting, fishing and animal husbandry.

Over the past few months, a major argument has erupted among researchers over what caused the village and the surrounding region to flood.

A few months ago, a team of geologists from Pisa, Italy published a paper that offers a dramatic theory about how the ancient settlement met its end.

They claim that the settlement was submerged all at once by a tsunami in the Mediterranean, causing the death of dozens of its inhabitants.

This theory attributes the tsunami to something that happened thousands of kilometers away.

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By Philip Ewig


On the brink of retirement, the Navy’s only nuclear-powered research submarine will join the hunt this summer for the wreck of one of the most famous U.S. Navy warships in history — the frigate Bonhomme Richard, from which Capt. John Paul Jones had not yet begun to fight.

The Ocean Technology Foundation of Groton, Conn., will work with the submarine NR-1 starting in June to search the North Sea for the wreck of the Bonhomme Richard, which dueled off the English coast for almost four hours in 1779 with the British frigate Serapis.

At one point, when the American frigate had taken heavy damage, Capt. Richard Pearson of the Serapis is said to have shouted a question to Jones about whether he had lowered, or “struck” his flag, showing surrender.
Jones’ apocryphal reply: “I may sink, but I’ll be damned if I strike !”

Jones and his crew won the battle, taking the Serapis as their prize, but the Bonhomme Richard was so badly damaged that it drifted for about 36 hours and then sank.
 

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By Philip Ewig


Mensun Bound, the Oxford archaeologist dubbed by colleagues Indiana Jones of the Deep, is gunning for the Tower of London on his latest sea-faring expedition.

The Oxford researcher is returning to investigate an Elizabethan ship that sank off the Channel Islands, which has given up an array of treasures including muskets, swords and body armour from the age of Drake.

But now he is aiming to deliver one of the great cannons from the wreck to the Tower of London, along with other finds and artefacts.

The ship sank off Alderney in 1592 and is considered to be the most important Tudor find since the Mary Rose.

It was carrying munitions and dispatches from Elizabeth I's greatest minister, Lord Burghley, to an English army in France.

Many of the finds from the wreck are on display at the museum in Alderney. But one of the great cannons and other pieces are to go on temporary exhibition in the Tower of London, once England's greatest arsenal and manufacturer of military equipment.
 

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