400-Year-Old Shipwreck Discovered in Stockholm Archipelago

Swedish divers were surprised to discover a well-kept shipwreck from the 17th century outside the Värmdö municipality, in the archipelago of Stockholm.

“We were actually searching for a cargo ship that had sank in the 1940s, but then we found this instead,” Markus Hårde, one of the wreck divers told Svenska Dagbladet, a Swedish paper.

The shipwreck is probably a Dutch trading ship from early 17th century. Marcus Hårde discovered the wreck together with Anders Backström and Jonas Rydin in May.
The divers saw a lion figurine on the rudder and nicknamed the it “The Lion Wreck.”

The ship with three masts seems to be well kept, and has been under 141 feet (43 meters) of water for 400 years.

The divers contacted Johan Rännby, a researcher in marine ecology, at Södertörns University in Stockholm...[Link]

Scientists discover deepest coral reefs off Britain

The deepest coral reefs off the coast of Britain have been explored for the first time revealing ancient coral, colourful fish, deepwater sharks and even species that were previously unknown to science.

The five cold-water coral reefs were found by scientists monitoring an underwater mountain range 200 miles off the coast of North West Scotland last month.

The reefs are more than a mile under the ocean in dark, cold waters but boast a wealth of marine life. By sending hi-tech cameras thousands of feet under the water scientists were able to study coral similar to those that built Australia's Great Barrier Reef, star fish, sea urchins, sponges and strange deepwater fish...[Link]

Archeologists discover ancient Chinese artifacts under water

A group of archeologists from Yogyakarta have discovered ancient Chinese ceramic artifacts estimated to date from between the 13th and 16th century AD in the waters around Genting Island, off the coast of the Central Java town of Jepara.

Head of the team, Priyatno Hadi Sulistyarto, said Friday the findings indicated that the Java Sea was a busy international trade route.

“From the features of the artifacts, which depict animal and flower motifs, albeit not so detailed, we assume the commodities were manufactured as mass products. They have characteristics commonly found in the Ming Dynasty,” Priyatno said.

The 16 member team includes three underwater archeologists. A dive master from the Association of Indonesian Diving Sports was hired to lead the underwater search...[Link]

As waters recede, drought reveals lake relics

While waters receding because of the drought revealed this month whole vehicles submerged in Lake Travis, the episode was not the first time strange and sometimes grisly artifacts have poked their heads out of the banks of the Colorado River during severe dry spells.

The river was dammed in a series of massive projects in the first half of the last century to control flooding and provide steady water supplies for Central Texas. As a consequence, the lakes that formed swallowed up whole bits of history.

The drought "reveals things that haven't been seen in a long time," said Brian Block, executive director of Keep Austin Beautiful, which runs an annual cleanup of Lake Travis.

In August 2006, during the last drought that gripped Central Texas, an Austin man riding a watercraft on Lake Travis found a skeleton that archaeologists later estimated to be a female at least 700 years old...[Link]

Diver recounts close encounter with squid before earthquake

By at least one eyewitness account, the jumbo-size Humboldt squid rarely seen in La Jolla waters which have been turning up in large numbers recently are curious and aggressive with divers - but not threatening, at least not life-threatening.

When Cynthia Velazquez and her dive partner Roger Uzun of San Diego heard last week that large squid were being sighted, they decided to pay them a visit Friday night.

That was before people spotted the sea creatures on the beach Saturday, shortly after an offshore earthquake. Some speculated the squid might have been disoriented by the quake.

Armed with bright floodlights and a video camera, the pair went searching for squid about 8:30 p.m. in 30-foot-deep water off La Jolla Shores on July 10.

It didn't take long for them to find - or be found by - the object of their search...[Link]

Baltic Sea divers find wreck of Soviet submarine

After a decade-long search, a team of Baltic Sea divers has discovered the wreckage of a Soviet submarine that sank with dozens of sailors aboard during World War II, one of the divers said Tuesday.

They found the S-2 submarine near the Aland Islands between Sweden and Finland in February but only announced it Tuesday because they wanted to confirm the identity of the vessel, team member Marten Zetterstrom said.

He said all 50 crew members died when the vessel exploded in 1940, probably after hitting a mine. He declined to give the exact location.

"I think it's been 10 years since people started searching. I've been part of it for four-five years," Zetterstrom said.

Markus Lindholm, an Aland-based expert who studied pictures of the wreck, said the claim appeared to be true...[Link]

From the depths of Lake Carlos...

For Jeff Bosek of Alexandria, there’s nothing more fun than finding a fishing pole in the depths of one of Douglas County’s few hundred lakes, and then wondering how long the angler looked for it once he lost his grip and it went overboard.

As the owner of Divers Clubhouse in Alexandria, Bosek, a certified diver and instructor, loves imagining the stories that go along with the treasures he sometimes finds at the bottom of the area’s most pristine, yet muddy and murky lakes.

One particular find – a large set of antlers – made his imagination run wild – just like the animal that was once attached to them.

In a letter sent to the newspaper, Bosek tells the story of the elk rack he found at the bottom of Lake Carlos...[Link]

Capitan Del Lago: Diver searches out treasures, monsters of the deep

If anyone knows the underworld of the Lake of the Ozarks - it’s Terry Hart.

For 37 years, Hart has been diving to find the treasures lost by hundreds of boaters and Lake lovers. From false teeth to sunken boats, he has found it all.

Hart with his wife Sue, and their daughter Corrin, own and operate Hart Diving and Salvage on the Lake of the Ozarks.

“We can do pretty much anything under water,” Terry said. “We understand that anything can happen at the Lake of the Ozarks and we’ll look for whatever our customers ask us to look for.”

Hart’s underwater adventures started with a two-week vacation at the Lake in 1972. Having been a frequent visitor since he was a young child, Hart said it was a natural disaster that led him to stay.

“Several boats sunk that weekend,” he said. “My wife and I helped raise a few boats and we discovered there wasn’t a service here for that kind of thing and we’ve been here since.”

Without disclosing his technique, Hart said keeping off the bottom of the Lake is the secret...[LakeExpo]

Diving into Atlantis

Apparently, we know more about the moon’s surface than what lies beneath the Earth’s waters. Yet one thing we know for sure: hidden peacefully under the 576sqm Qingdao Lake is the dormant city of Shi Cheng.

This 1,800-year-old town was uncovered last August by Big Blue’s scuba diving company. The city was accidentally flooded 50 years ago when a reservoir was being built. The whole city was evacuated but the historical architecture remains almost intact deep below the lake’s surface.

Big Blue divers are the only people who know the secret location of this underwater city, which contains eerie derelict buildings, some fully erect and many still intact. “Other dive centers don’t just want to take people to dive there; they want to collect artifacts under the water; but not us,” says our instructor, Paul Adams. Eager for a new adventure, we learned how to scuba dive in order to explore this sunken city...[Urbanatomy.com]

WWII German bomb found at Munxar Reef

Army divers recently raised a German Luftwaffe bomb from the Munxar Reef off Marsascala at a depth of 12 metres, after information was provided by some civilian divers.

An EOD diving team from the AFM's Ammunition and Explosives Company of 3 Regiment was sent to investigate. The munition was a Sprengbombe Cylindrich (SC) 1000 general demolition bomb.

The bomb weighed one ton and was 100 inches long with its tail attachment. It was among one of the largest bombs in the Luftwaffe's arsenal, used to great effect in all theatres of conflict during WWII.

In the recovery operation, the bomb was slung and attached to a gradual-release air-lifting bag. Once the bag surfaced, it was replaced by four 45-gallon drums, and after the bomb was rendered safe it was towed further out to sea by an AFM Maritime Squadron patrol-boat for disposal...[TimesofMalta]

First-Ever Viking Shipwreck Discovered in Sweden?

A team of divers from the Swedish coast guard have discovered what could be the first-ever Viking shipwreck found in the country. The wreck is 20 metres long and is lying at the bottom of the lake.
Sweden’s English language newspaper, The Local, said some Viking ships had been discovered on land in the country, but none under water — until now. The possible Viking shipwreck is in Lake Vänern, the country’s largest lake and the third largest in Europe, covering 5,648 square kilometres.

Roland Peterson of the Vänern Museum told the newspaper: "Never before has a Viking shipwreck been found in Swedish waters"

A rib from the ship was found sticking out of the bottom of the lake, while the rest of the vessel was filled with sediment a metre thick. Six other wrecked ships were discovered within a 100-metre radius of the initial find, with three lying almost on top of each other. “It's too early to say whether these date from the same era," the museum spokesman said...[DigitalJournal]

Underwater treasures

Diver Ron Bakken has never discovered a steamboat, ferris wheel or other artifacts rumored to be at rest on the bottom of White Bear Lake. But he has unearthed a relic from long before pleasure-seekers made White Bear a resort destination.

The lifelong diver and White Bear Lake resident found a bison skull thousands of years old off the coast of Manitou Island. The skull was mostly buried in muck — only the teeth were protruding. “It looked like neat lines of pebbles at first,” he said. Dozens of crayfish dodged out of orifices when he pulled the skull out.

Bakken said an expert from the Science Museum of Minnesota dated the skull at roughly 16,000 years old. The bison reportedly was as big as a full-size van and had horns nearly six feet long. He’s also discovered another bison skull, albeit much smaller, as well as a number of bones...[VadnaisHeightsPress]

Psychedelic Fish Found Off Ambon

A rather trippy-looking fish discovered by scuba-diving operators in Ambon has been classified as an entirely new species by scientists, it was reported on Wednesday.

After DNA testing, the fish, named “psychedelica,” was declared a new species but not a new genus, as some had hoped, Science Daily said in a statement.

Quoting University of Washington’s Ted Pietsch, the first to describe the new species in scientific literature and thus the one to select the name, Science Daily said “psychedelica” was the perfect name for the uniquely colored fish that is “a swirl of tan and peach zebra stripes and behaves in ways contrary to its brethren.”

“Psychedelica was perhaps even more apt given the cockamamie way the fish swim, some with so little control they look intoxicated and should be cited for DUI [driving under the influence],” the Web site added.

Maluku Divers said on its Web site that a specimen was first found by dive guide Toby Fadirsyair some 15 years ago, but since then further examples of the species had remained elusive. In January 2008, an adult fish was spotted by two of the diving operator’s co-owners, and Pietsch was eventually called in to help them identify the fish.

The coloring led David Hall, a wildlife photographer, to speculate that the fish was mimicking corals. Hall produced photos for the new scientific paper showing corals the animals may be mimicking, Science Daily reported...[JakartaGlobe.com]

Google quashes rumours of Atlantis discovery

In an effort to stamp out the sudden furore thrown up by recent claims suggesting Google Earth has uncovered the mythical Lost City of Atlantis, online search giant Google has said the apparent ruins on the ocean floor are nothing more than data tracks left by sonar boats collecting information off the African continent’s Atlantic coast.

Rumours of the possible find began circulating late last week when Google Earth observers fortuitously focused in on a Google Ocean image showing what appeared to be a series of underwater streets and walls in a uniformed grid system around 960 kilometres (600 miles) off the coast of Morocco.

However, despite Atlantis experts and searchers hoping for something tangible, Google has said users are actually seeing “an artefact of the data collection process.”

“Bathymetric (or sea floor terrain) data is often collected from boats using sonar to take measurements of the sea floor,” explained Google in a statement. “The lines reflect the path of the boat as it gathers the data.”

“The fact there are blank spots between each of these lines is a sign of how little we really know about the world’s oceans,” the search expert added...[TheTechHerald]

The Underwater Archaeologist

Naval history buffs would find much to interest them in Guam, but unless they are divers, they rarely make the trip. Getting there requires a 6,000-mile flight from San Francisco, and most of the attractions are resting on the bottom of Apra Harbor.

But if, like Wayne Abrahamson, you once served on a Navy supply ship berthed at Apra, then you too might have had an underwater epiphany like the one he had there in the early 1980s, when he entered the harbor a mere diver and emerged a future maritime archeologist.

Abrahamson grew up in tiny Elroy, Wis., which is about as far from the ocean as an American can get. "I joined the Navy straight out of high school in 1978, pretty much to get out of Wisconsin and see the world," he says.

That included the parts of the world that are underwater. While serving in the Pacific, Abrahamson qualified as master diver and visited many wreck sites. But it was in Apra Harbor that he came across the wreck that really fired his imagination. Actually it was two wrecks, the Cormoran II and the Tokai Maru, which share the same watery grave...[Forbes.com]

Underwater stones puzzle archeologists

Forty feet below the surface of Lake Michigan in Grand Traverse Bay, a mysterious pattern of stones can be seen rising from an otherwise sandy half-mile of lake floor.

Likely the stones are a natural feature. But the possibility they are not has piqued the interest of archeologists, native tribes and state officials since underwater archeologist Mark Holley found the site in 2007 during a survey of the lake bottom.

The site recently has become something of an Internet sensation, thanks to a blogger who noticed an archeological paper on the topic and described the stones as "underwater Stonehenge."

Though the stones could signal an ancient shoreline or a glacial formation, their striking geometric alignment raises the possibility of human involvement. The submerged site was tundra when humans of the hunter-gatherer era roamed it 6,000 to 9,000 years ago. Could the stones have come from a massive fishing weir laid across a long-gone river? Could they mark a ceremonial site?

Adding to the intrigue, one dishwasher-size rock seems to bear an etching of a mastodon...[HartfordCourant]

Learn about underwater marvels of the Marianas

The Office of the Governor and the Pacific Islands Club are partnering to host a public forum on “Minerals Mining in the Marianas.” The forum will be conducted by Dr. James R. Hein, a marine geologist from the U.S. Geological Survey, and it will be held at the Charley's Cabaret at PIC on Sunday, Feb. 8, from 10am to 12pm.

Dr. Hein will talk about the abundant marine minerals (gold, manganese, cobalt, etc) of the Marianas Archipelago and about the soon to be completed Feb. 2-7, 2009 R/V Natsushima cruise traveling from Guam to Saipan. He is a member of an international scientific team from Japan and the United States that is aboard the RV Natsushima. The research team is headed by Dr. Yoshihiku Tamura from JAMSTEC and Dr. Robert Stern from the University of Texas at Dallas.

These modern-day ocean explorers will use a remotely operated marine vehicle (Hyper-dolphin) to gather rock samples and conduct oceanographic studies of the submarine volcanoes in Rota.

Come to the forum and learn more about the most volcanically active Ring of Fire in the world, the magnificent Marianas Trench, and be amazed at seeing liquid carbon dioxide bubbles streaming out of the Champagne Vent at more than a mile deep. Come and listen to Dr. Hein describe the wonder of what happened when the Pacific Plate met the Philippine plate to form the Mariana Islands. Enjoy the beautiful colors of unique marine animals such as shrimps and crabs that live near and within the hydrothermal vents where water temperatures reach 217 degrees Fahrenheit. These rare animals are now protected forever under the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument, which was declared by President Bush on Jan. 6, 2009...[SaipanTribune]

Wreck of renowned British warship found in Channel

Florida deep-sea explorers who found $500 million in sunken treasure two years ago say they have discovered another prized shipwreck: A legendary British man-of-war that sank in the English Channel 264 years ago.

Odyssey Marine Exploration hasn't found any gold this time, but it's looking for an even bigger jackpot. The company's research indicates the HMS Victory was carrying 4 tons of gold coins that could be worth considerably more than the treasure that Odyssey raised from a sunken Spanish galleon in 2007, co-founder Greg Stemm said ahead of a news conference set for Monday in London.

So far, Odyssey has recovered two brass cannons from the wreck of the Victory and continues to examine and map the debris field, which lies about 330 feet beneath the surface, Stemm said. The company said it is negotiating with the British government over collaborating on the project.

"This is a big one, just because of the history," Stemm said. "Very rarely do you solve an age-old mystery like this."...[WashingtonPost]

Pamela Anderson finds love in unlikely place

Actress Pamela Anderson has found love in an unlikely place - she's dating scuba diver Jamie Padgett after meeting him in a California trailer park.

The former Baywatch beauty was forced to temporarily move into a mobile home in Malibu in November 2008 while her luxury Los Angeles mansion was being refurbished.

And that's where she met her latest love.

A close pal tells Us Weekly magazine, "She is more in love than I have ever seen her before."

The insider claims Anderson was most attracted to Padgett's personality - because he is so different from her rocker ex-husbands Tommy Lee and Kid Rock.

The source adds, "He's a totally moral, nice, normal guy. She is completely head over heels."...[KJRH.com]

Stonehenge in Lake Michigan?

The iconic Stonehenge in the UK is one of the most famous prehistoric monuments in the world, but it is not the only stone formation of its kind. Similar stone alignments have been found throughout England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales… and now, it seems, in Lake Michigan.

According to BLDGBLOG, in 2007, Mark Holley, professor of underwater archeology at Northwestern Michigan College, discovered a series of stones arranged in a circle 40 feet below the surface of Lake Michigan. One stone outside the circle seems to have carvings that resemble a mastodon—an elephant-like animal that went extinct about 10,000 years ago.

Archaeologists had been hired to survey the Lake's floor near Traverse City, Michigan, and examine old boat wrecks with a sonar device. They discovered sunken boats and cars and even a Civil War-era pier. But among these expected finds was a potentially-prehistoric surprise.

"When you see it in the water, you're tempted to say this is absolutely real," Holley told reporters at the time. "But that's what we need the experts to come in and verify."

Specialists involved in the case are skeptical and want to gather more info before making a judgment. The problem? "They want to actually see it," said Holley. "Experts in petroglyphs generally don't dive, so we're running into a bit of a stumbling block there."...[NBC-Chicago]