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From gCaptain

A 54-year-old man had to be rescued Friday from the waters off Port Allen, Kauai after a battle with a 230 lb tuna ended with his boat capsizing, him in the water, and one amazing story to tell.

The US Coast Guard reports that Coast Guard Sector Honolulu received a distress call at 7:41 a.m. Friday from a woman saying that her husband’s 14-foot Livingston boat had capsized about 10 miles south of Port Allen.

The man, identified as Anthony Wichman of Koloa, Kauai, was apparently fishing in the area when he hooked a massive 230 lb Ahi tuna.

Things took a turn for the worse when the fierce battle with the fish capsized his boat, catching his leg in the fishing line in the process and dragged him underwater. Luckily, Wichman was able to free himself, climb on top of the capsized boat and call his wife for help.

The Coast Guard, after establishing communication with Wichman via cell phone, launched a 47-foot Motor Life Boat crew from Kauai and a MH-65 Dolphin helicopter crew to the scene.

Once on scene, the Dolphin crew found Wichman sitting on the hull of his partially submerged vessel and airlifted him to safety.

Meanwhile, the MLB crew stayed on scene with the capsized boat until Jordon Ornellas and Abraham Apilado, two friends of Wichman, arrived on scene to help salvage his boat.

While trying to right the capsized vessel, Ornellas and Apilado realized that the Ahi was still hooked on the fishing line attached the vessel.

Full story...

By Adam Lindhardt - Keys News

Who is the real Mike Cunningham ?

That's the question at the heart of a bitter multimillion-dollar legal fight that has pitted an amateur treasure salvor against Key West's most famous treasure family.

Cunningham is a high school dropout cum South Florida laborer and diver who purportedly sold Jay Miscovich a treasure map for $500 four years ago at the Bull Whistle Bar, 224 Duval St., according to Miscovich.

That map would lead Miscovich -- a former Pennsylvania real estate investor, volunteer firefighter, and Mel Fisher investor -- to a 154-pound cache of green emeralds in January 2010 scattered across the Gulf of Mexico seafloor in international waters some 40 miles off Key West, he said.

Miscovich testified that after the emerald discovery, he bought Cunningham off for $50,000 on April 20, 2010, at the Eagle's Club bar in Latrobe, Pa., and that Cunningham had since vanished.

But Kim Fisher -- son of storied Key West salvor Mel Fisher -- and his lawyer say they found Cunningham, and that he says he's never been in Key West nor sold a treasure map.

Fisher had earlier claimed the gems were worthless and that Miscovich made up the Cunningham story to sell junk emeralds as "treasure" at an inflated price. Fisher called Miscovich a fraud and took him to court.

"The basis of our claim is that these emeralds were planted," said Fisher's lawyer, Hugh Morgan.

In January this year, U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King ruled that Miscovich and his company, JTR Enterprises -- as well as his business partner, Steve Elchlepp -- failed to prove that they found the gemstones on the seafloor.

Although JTR can keep the gemstones, King's ruling means neither Miscovich nor Elchlepp can legally claim the gemstones are "court-validated" sunken treasure, and that hurts their value.

Miscovich has appealed King's ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta, Ga.

Nonetheless, Fisher's lawyers now want Miscovich to pay their legal fees, called sanctions in legal parlance. They're using the fraud allegation via the Cunningham treasure map story in that effort.

"Since the trial, (the Mel Fisher company) found the Mike Cunningham that worked as Miscovich's handyman in Latrobe, Pa., that perfectly fits Miscovich's description," Morgan wrote in a recent court filing.

"In direct contradiction to Miscovich's sworn testimony at trial, Mike testified that he did not sell the treasure map to Miscovich, that he has never been a treasure diver, that he has never even been to Key West and furthermore, that he could not have signed the agreement on April 20, 2010 for the reason that he was in jail on April 20, 2010."

 
Photo Helen Kristmanson

From CBC News

P.E.I.'s provincial archeologist is starting an excavation of the remains of a ship found near Poxy Island, near Georgetown.

The ship was found on the beach last week by a Georgetown couple.

Most of it is buried in the sand. Archeologist Helen Kristmanson has been examining it, and sent pictures to Maritime ship expert Marvin Moore.

"He's seen a lot of these ships. Based on the photographs, he gave a very preliminary interpretation of the wreck as a 19th century vessel," said Kristmanson.

"The ship has collapsed, so the sides have collapsed down, so it's flat on the ground.

There's a lot of wooden planks and some metal hardware. Really, what we'll be looking at is trying to get a feel for what the dimensions of the timbers were, types of fastener, the species of wood."

Kristmanson said the vessel could be P.E.I.-made. It could have wrecked and drifted into the beach, but it is also possible it was simply tied up and left to rot.

The excavation will begin Monday with a crew of students and volunteers, and will last a few days

By Daniel Miller - Mail Online

A US deep-sea exploration company says it has recovered about 48 tons of silver from a British cargo ship that was sunk by a torpedo during World War II.

The haul comes from the SS Gairsoppa, which was hit by a torpedo from a German U-boat about 300 miles off Ireland's coast in 1941. It now sits 15,420ft deep.

Salvage firm Odyssey Marine Exploration said it is the heaviest and deepest recovery of precious metals from a shipwreck ever made.

So far, workers have brought up more than 1,200 silver bars, or about 1.4 million troy ounces, worth about £23.7 million (about $37 million). 

The company is under contract with the British Government and will get to keep 80 per cent of the haul after expenses. The remaining 20 per cent will go to the Treasury.

SS Gairsoppa was steaming home from India in 1941 while in the service of the Ministry of War Transport when she was torpedoed by a Nazi U-boat.

She sank in British waters about 300 miles off the south west coast of Ireland. Only one of her 84 crew members survived.

The 412-ft steamship has remained sitting upright on the seabed with its holds open, nearly three miles under water.

The ship, recognisable by the red-and-black paintwork of the British-India Steam Navigation Company and the torpedo hole in its side, was sailing in a convoy from Calcutta in 1941.

Buffeted by high winds and running low on coal, the captain decided he would not make it to Liverpool and broke from the convoy to head for Galway.

A single torpedo from U-101 sank her in 20 minutes, on February 17, 1941.

Three lifeboats were launched, but only Second Officer Richard Ayres made it to land, reaching the Cornish coast after 13 days.

Full article and photos...

From BBC News

The site of a shipwreck whose crew was rescued by Grace Darling is one of 88 lost wrecks in the seas around England to be investigated by archaeologists.

Nine people were rescued by her and her father when SS Forfarshire sank off the Northumberland coast in 1838.

Now divers are to explore dozens of wrecks lost before 1840 in a bid to find the most important historic sites.

The project, which begins late August, includes vessels which sank off the Isles of Scilly and the Cumbrian coast.

The aim of the project, being carried out by English Heritage on the 40th anniversary of the Protection of Wrecks Act, is to give the most important sites protected status.

Maritime designation adviser Mark Dunkley, said: "Watercraft tell a fascinating story of England's military, industrial and social history, but very little is known about those that existed before 1840.

"That's why we are taking the initiative to investigate pre-1840 ships and boats, from wooden sailing vessels to the very start of iron hulled steam ships.

Full story...

By Leslie Holland - CNN

"Constantly searching for a needle in a haystack" is what Brent Brisben says he does for a living, and on days like Saturday, the payoff makes the work worthwhile.

Brisben owns the 1715 Treasure Fleet Queen's Jewels salvage company.

This weekend, he and his crew of three found quite a few "needles" in their oceanic "haystack" -- 48 gold coins that date back 300 years, to be exact.

The coins, called escudos, were part of the treasure aboard a fleet of 11 Spanish galleons wrecked by a hurricane off the Florida coast on July 31, 1715. It was this famous shipwreck that gave this part of Florida its nickname, The Treasure Coast.

The coins appear to be in good condition, and still have some legible dates and markings. The oldest bears the date 1697; the youngest is dated 1714.

The 48 coins have an estimated value of $200,000 to $250,000, said Brisben.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the expedition is that the coins were found just 100 feet from the shoreline, in only six feet of water.

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Fulll article...

From Shangai Daily

Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday dived to the bottom of the Baltic Sea aboard a submersible to explore the wreck of a ship that sank in 1869.

State television pictures showed Putin climbing aboard the Sea Explorer 5 underwater research vessel for the half-hour dive to the wreck of a frigate that sank in the Gulf of Finland.

"It is lying on its right side," Putin said in televised reports afterwards, saying the vessel was well-preserved.

"Indeed, it's in perfect state, the name of the ship can be clearly read.

"It's not scary, it's very interesting," he added, referring to the experience.

Television broadcast green-tinted footage showing the Russian strongman carefully inspecting the shipwreck from inside the submersible.

He said he was not at the controls himself, noting he was not skilled enough. "You have to have lots of experience to operate this machine," he was quoted as saying.

The naval frigate Oleg was discovered by Russian divers in 2003 and is now being studied by scientists.

It lies at a depth of 60 meters between the islands of Gogland and Sommers.

The 60-year-old sports-mad president, who returned to the Kremlin for a third term last year, prides himself on keeping in peak physical condition and has raised eyebrows with a series of media friendly stunts in recent years.

From Hydro International

The sinking of the ocean liner Titanic in the night of 14 April 1912 is perhaps the most famous--and most studied--disaster of the 20th century.

A team of astronomers from Texas State University-San Marcos, USA, has applied its celestial sleuthing to the disaster to examine how a rare lunar event stacked the deck against the Titanic.

Their results shed new light on the hazardous sea ice conditions the ship boldly steamed into that fateful night.

Inspired by the visionary work of the late oceanographer Fergus J. Wood of San Diego who suggested that an unusually close approach by the moon on 4 January 1912 may have caused abnormally high tides, the Texas State research team investigated how pronounced this effect may have been.

What they found was that a once-in-many-lifetimes event occurred.

The moon and sun had lined up in such a way their gravitational pulls enhanced each other, an effect well-known as a “spring tide“.

The moon’s perigee—closest approach to Earth—proved to be its closest in 1,400 years, and came within six minutes of a full moon.

On top of that, the Earth’s perihelion—closest approach to the sun—happened the day before, the closest approach in 1,400 years.

Full article...