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From BWW TV

There are modern day pirates patrolling the coast of southern Florida - and the bounty they're after is boats in distress. Salvage companies scan the waters day and night.

When trouble strikes they race into action, whether it's saving a sinking vessel, rescuing boats from dangerous hurricane storms or putting out a massive fire.

While their intentions are good, it doesn't mean it isn't a cutthroat business. With a fortune to be made, the competition is intense. The first crew on the scene is the one that gets the job - and the lucrative profits.

The rest of the companies get nothing and mustwait for the next call in hopes of securing a job and keeping their business afloat. Meet the men behind four of south Florida's fiercest salvage companies in Discovery's all-new series, premiering Monday, January 14th at 9PM ET/PT.

Arnold's Towing
Ricky Arnold, Sr., a fifth generation Key West resident, built his business from the ground up. He started his salvage company with five-gallon buckets and a boat, removing derelict vessels filled with all kinds of dangers - from parasites to sharks. Ricky, a headstrong and unapologetic man, does things his own way, even if that means all-out fights with his sons RJ and Shane, also in business with him. Together they are taking marine salvage to the next level, all whilepreserving their family roots in Key West.

Atlantis Marine Towing & Salvage
Stu Korpela is a salvage pioneer. After serving in the Air Force and later as an aircraft mechanic for a private company, Stu headed for Florida where in 1974 he made an even trade: his house on land for a 52' sailboat that he and his family call home. He runs one of the most accomplished and feared independent salvage businesses around. Stu's son Burt has been in the salvage business with his father his whole life and is just as ruthless as Stu. Also like his father, Burt is raising his family on the water, making a boat their home - a huge advantage in a business where timing is everything.

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By Dan Vergano -USA Today
 

Marine archaeologists report they have uncovered new secrets of an ancient Roman shipwreck famed for yielding an amazingly sophisticated astronomical calculator.

An international survey team says the ship is twice as long as originally thought and contains many more calcified objects amid the ship's lost cargo that hint at new discoveries.

At the Archaeological Institute of America meeting Friday in Seattle, marine archaeologist Brendan Foley of the Woods Hole (Mass.) Oceanographic Institution, will report on the first survey of Greece's famed Antikythera island shipwreck since 1976.

The ancient Roman shipwreck was lost off the Greek coast around 67 BC,filled with statues and the famed astronomical clock.

"The ship was huge for ancient times," Foley says. "Divers a century ago just couldn't conduct this kind of survey but we were surprised when we realized how big it was."

Completed in October by a small team of divers, the survey traversed the island and the wreck site, perched on a steep undersea slope some 150 to 230 feet deep in the Mediterranean Sea.

The October survey shows the ship was more than 160 feet long, twice as long as expected. Salvaged by the Greek navy and skin divers in 1901, its stern perched too deep for its original skin-diver discoverers to find.

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From RT

The four major Russian Navy fleets will hold a joint exercise in late January in the Mediterranean and Black seas. It will be the biggest such event in decades.

Commands for the Northern, Baltic, Black Sea and Pacific fleets have been preparing for the exercises since December of last year, the Russian Defense Ministry has announced.

Warships detached for the event are currently sailing to those regions.

“The primary goal of the exercise is to train issues regarding formation of a battle group consisting of troops of different branches outside of the Russian Federation, planning of its deployment and managing a coordinated action of a joint Navy group in accordance with a common plan,” the ministry’s information department explained.

The exercise will include several scenarios, including the loading of amphibious troops from an unprepared coast in the Northern Caucasus onto transport vessels.

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From Hydro International

JW Fishers, USA, has added a new high-frequency side scan system to their line.

The 1200kHz sonar produces detailed images of even small and soft targets such as old wooden wrecks, areas of scattered debris, or a drowning victim.

The new sonar is available as a single-frequency system or a dual-frequency side scan with two sets of transducers in one towfish.

Putting two sets in one fish provides versatility allowing the operator to switch between frequencies at any time during operation. The lower frequency is capable of scanning long ranges, but with less resolution.

When the 1200kHz was towed over a bicycle that had been disposed of in a waterway (inset), the bike’s frame and wheels were clearly visible, as well as the seat and other features.

The two frequencies available for coupling with the 1200kHz in a dual-frequency system are the 600kHz and the 100kHz.

The 600kHz provides a combination of range and resolution with a maximum scan of 200 feet per side (400 foot swath), yet with the capability of detecting small targets.

The 100kHz has the longest range, up to 2,000 feet per side (4,000 foot swath), making it ideal for scanning large areas when searching for big targets such as downed aircraft or sunken ships.

By Kimberly Blair - PNJ

An avid snorkeler all of his life, Robert Turpin dreamed of discovering one of the many shipwrecks sprinkled on the bottom of local bays and the Gulf of Mexico — the legacies of Pensacola’s rich maritime past.

“Our waters are filled with shipwrecks, most of them unknown or undiscovered,” said Turpin, Escambia County’s marine resources division manager.

“The possibility of discovering one is there anytime you go into the water, particularly after a storm.

Still, that possibility is rare for recreational snorkelers.

But thanks to $7,000 from the county and help from the Florida Public Archeology Network and University of West Florida’s marine archeology program, snorkelers will at the very least get to explore a replica of an ancient shipwreck.

Turpin is overseeing the installation of the replica at a snorkeling reef in Santa Rosa Sound off Park West at Pensacola Beach.

On Friday, Turpin and county contractors began constructing the replica to provide an opportunity for the public to see what it feels like to snorkel or scuba dive the remnants of a centuries-old sunken galleon.

The goal, beyond tugging at one’s imagination about finding pirate treasure, is to spark interest and appreciation in Pensacola’s rich nautical heritage and drum up eco-tourism, Turpin said.

From RT

Super-modern, powerful and almost noiseless Russian nuclear submarine Vladimir Monomakh has been put in water to become the third ship of the Borei project.

The cruiser is about to begin sea trials and mooring to become fully operational in 2013.

Vladimir Monomakh was laid down at Russia’s largest shipbuilding complex Sevmash, located on the shores of the White Sea in the town of Severodvinsk in northern Russia on March 19, 2006 – the 100th anniversary of the Russian submarine fleet.

It belongs to a class of missile strategic submarine cruisers with a new generation of nuclear reactor, which allows the submarine to dive to a depth of 480 meters.

It can spend up to three months in autonomous navigation and, thanks to the latest achievements in the reduction of noise, it is almost silent compared to previous generations of submarines.

The submarine is armed with the new missile system, which has from 16 to 20 solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missiles Bulava (SS-NX-30 by NATO classification).

The rocket is able to overcome any prospective missile defense system.

On August 27, 2011, the Russian Defense Ministry reported on a successful test of Bulava to investigate its maximum range.

The missile was launched from the White Sea, flew 9,300km in just 33 minutes, and then fell in the specified area in the Pacific Ocean.

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Photo James Delgado

By Kaimi Rose Lum - Province Town

For a tantalizing few hours, on a minus tide around the time of November’s new moon, the sandbars off Head of the Meadow Beach opened up to reveal a rusty secret. Maybe only a few seagulls were in on it.

Then Nancy Bloom came along.

A photographer, Bloom often looks to the water for subjects to shoot.

On this bright fall afternoon, as she and her husband were pulling into the Head of the Meadow parking lot, her gaze went straight to the metal hulk that was jutting out of the shallows — a ragged heap of iron, slimy with seaweed, 25 feet wide and about 20 feet from shore.

“I’ve been going to that beach for over 20 years and have never seen anything like it before,” said Bloom.

The ruin was the wreck of the Frances, a German ship that ran aground on the Truro shore 140 years ago.

On her way to Boston from the Far East, laden with tin and sugar, the 199-foot, three-masted bark sailed into a winter storm as she was rounding the Cape and sank on Dec. 27, 1872.

Her crew was rescued by the men from the newly established Highland Life-Saving Station. Salvagers removed as much of the cargo as they could and left the vessel to rot in the sand.

In the century and a half since then, the iron-hulled Frances has surfaced from time to time, exposed by a dead low tide or the scouring of a storm. Winds and tides cooperated in the wreck’s November unveiling.

“It was a [new] moon that night, it was a minus tide, and we had just had the two storms — Sandy and the nor’easter after that,” said Bloom, who discovered the shipwreck on Nov. 12, a clear day with hardly a ripple of a breeze to trouble the waters around it.

She photographed it that Monday and returned to the site on Tuesday, only to find the view of the wreck impaired by rain and wind.

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From The Daily Record

More than 20 of the country’s sunken relics of the sea have been mapped by a diver then turned into undersea landscapes by an artist.

Rod Macdonald, one of the country’s best known divers, says the sea is revealing more details of the sunken ships as they erode.

He has surveyed and researched 25 lying in Scottish waters for his new book, Great British Shipwrecks.

Rod provides a dramatic account of the ships’ time afloat and their eventual sinking, with each wreck being illustrated by marine artist Robert Ward, of Muchalls, Aberdeenshire.

His journey starts with the famous shipwrecks at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands – where the German fleet was scuttled in 1919.

Also included is the legendary WWI British cruiser HMS Hampshire, on which War Secretary Lord Kitchener perished on a voyage to Russia in 1916.

It rests in over 200 feet of water off Marwick Head to the north west of Orkney.

The famous West Coast shipwrecks ,such as the steamships Thesis, Hispania and Shuna, and cargo ship Rondo in the Sound of Mull are featured.

There are the renowned wrecks of the Dutch steamship SS Breda, lost near Oban in 1940, and the WWII minelayer HMS Port Napier off Skye.

Rod also reveals the haunting remains of HMS Pathfinder, the first Royal Navy warship to be sunk by a U-boat torpedo during WWI. It lies in the Forth.

Rod, 53 said: “The authorities at first attempted to cover up the true cause of the sinking.

“They feared the affect that knowledge of the loss of such a ship to a U-boat torpedo would have because it revealed just how vulnerable to torpedo attack British warships were.

“Pathfinder was thus reported, at first, to have been mined. The Admiralty came to an agreement with the Press Bureau, which allowed for the censoring of all reports.

But other newspapers soon published an eyewitness account from an Eyemouth fisherman who helped in the rescue and confirmed rumours a submarine had been responsible, rather than a mine.

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