200-Year-Old Shipwreck Found in Gulf of Mexico

A newly discovered shipwreck in the Gulf of Mexico may have originally gone down 200 years ago. The ship is full of glass bottles, ceramic plates and boxes of muskets.

The shipwreck was discovered 200 miles (321 kilometers) off the Gulf Coast in more than 4,000 feet (1,219 meters) of water by a Gulf of Mexico mission led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The wooden hull of the ship has nearly disintegrated, but a greenish copper shell that once protected the ship's wood remains behind.

"Artifacts in and around the wreck and the hull's copper sheathing may date the vessel to the early to mid-19th century," Jack Irion, a maritime archaeologist with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), said in a statement.

The first hint of the shipwreck came in 2011, when a sonar survey by Shell Oil Company turned up an unknown blip on the seafloor. BOEM requested that NOAA explore such unknown blips during a recent expedition by the ship Okeanos Explorer. The ship returned April 29 from its 56-day mission exploring unknown areas of the Gulf.

Along the way, the researchers imaged deep-sea corals near the Macondo well, the site of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. They explored a thick forest of corals at the West Florida Escarpment, an undersea cliff. And they installed a device on Okeanos' remotely operated vehicle to measure the rate that gas rises in the water column.

The research team also explored four shipwrecks on the ocean bottom. One, explored on April 19, was first discovered in the 1980s, but has only been investigated by deep-sea archaeologists twice. This wooden-hulled ship dates between the mid-19th and early-20th centuries, though its story is currently a mystery. An exploration of another wreck, this one near the mouth of the Mississippi River, revealed that what was once thought to be a ship cannon was actually a bilge pump.

But the most scientifically interesting ship explored was the copper-plated wreck found 200 miles off the coast, according to Frank Cantelas, a NOAA maritime archaeologist. The ship was full of interesting artifacts, a remotely operated vehicle exploration revealed.

"Some of the more datable objects include what appears to be a type of ceramic plate that was popular between 1800 and 1830, and a wide variety of glass bottles," said BOEM's Irion. "A rare ship's stove on the site is one of only a handful of surviving examples in the world and the second one found on a shipwreck in the Gulf of Mexico."

Thanks to LiveScience senior writer Stephanie Pappas


Kathy Dowsett

www.kirkscubagear.com

Shark Attack in Mexico My Story of Survival

My Story by Nicole Moore

Okay….I know everyone wants to know the real story since the media has made a debacle of the entire incident, AKA Nicole Ross. After waking up and hearing about the media reports, I now understand why so many people were freaking out after reading the media’s account of how the story unfolded. So here is the general scoop straight from “shark bait’s” mouth…

I was away in Cancun with a group of friends. On January 31st, I had just finished playing a game of beach volleyball when I went into the water to rinse off. A couple of Sea-Doers off in the distance were yelling at me in Spanish and waving me to shore. I was only waist high in the water so I couldn’t understand how I could be in their way or why they were so mad but turned to head into shore anyway. That is when I felt a bump and the sharks teeth sinking into my left leg. As my blood started to turn the water around me red, I knew what had happened the minute it happened. Everyone asks how I felt at that moment and the answer is scared sh*#less but what I thought was that sharks like blood and that I had to get out of the water so I continued heading to shore. Before I knew it, a shark, (same or a different one I don’t know) bit down on my left arm and it wouldn’t let me go. The shark was pulling me so with my right hand I grabbed it’s nose and pulled my left hand out. The Sea-Doers were close by but unable to grab hold of me, I just kept thinking of my children, and just kept inching towards shore. Eventually one of the Sea-Doers was able to grab my right hand and pulled me up onto the shore. People were buzzing around me, speaking only Spanish but unfortunately I don’t speak Spanish so I laid on the beach feeling completely helpless aware of injuries and the severity of them. Fortunately, two young nurses identified themselves asking me my name and telling me that they can help. I told them my name and that my leg needed a tourniquet. Selflessly a man applied pressure to my leg while someone else was able to place a tourniquet. I then told the nurse that my arm was bleeding badly and needed a tourniquet too. I believe that swimsuit strings were used to control the bleeding and that this was the single greatest contributor to me reaching the hospital alive. I lost a tremendous amount of blood and because so many people offered help to me, I am here to tell my story and grateful to so many people that I will never even know. Even though I was attacked by I shark I consider myself to be extremely lucky.

Follow Nicoles' Blog and keep abreast of her recovery

Kathy Dowsett

www.kirkscubagear.com

Related articles

• Shark Week Teaches You How To Survive a Shark Attack [Shark Week] (tv.gawker.com)
• Possible shark attack leaves Canadian in intensive care (nationalpost.com)
• Sharks (postsaboutanything.wordpress.com)

Deepsea Habitats

Image via Wikipedia

Scientific divers that use SCUBA diving to conduct their research do have limitations that can inhibit their productivity underwater. Limiting factors such as, diving depth, gas mixtures and supply, weather, and decompression obligations can have a significant impact on the amount of time a scientist will actually have to conduct their research underwater. Saturation diving, a technique developed by the U.S. Navy in the 1950s, has proven to be useful to several scientists to extend their work time. Saturation diving works on the premise that if a diver's tissues are in equilibrium with the surrounding water, then the decompression time will not change for the length of time spent underwater. This "saturation" process takes approximately 24 hours and means that the diver needs to remain at the same depth.

The revolutionary development of undersea habitats (also known as undersea laboratories) has made "saturation" diving a reality for scientific divers. An undersea habitat is a pressurized facility that provides a living space for small teams of divers on the ocean floor that extends the depth ranges and time at depth for the divers.Aquarius resides in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, at a depth of 63 feet Divers can either undergo compression and decompression at depth in the undersea habitat or in a surface chamber.

Undersea HabitatsNURP provides the ability to live and work beneath the waves in the Aquarius undersea laboratory (right), the only undersea habitat in the world devoted to science. The habitat, owned by NOAA and operated by the Southeastern & Gulf of Mexico center, is located three miles off Key Largo in 20 m (64 ft) at the base of a coral reef within the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, an ideal site for studying the health of sensitive coastal ecosystems. The habitat accommodates four scientists and two technicians for missions averaging ten days. Aquarius successfully supported 80 missions between 1993 and 2003.

Related articles

• Jules' Undersea Lodge: Key Largo Florida's Best Kept Secret (blippitt.com)
• Into the abyss: The diving suit that turns men into fish (independent.co.uk)
• Lionfish Brings Out the Hunters (online.wsj.com)

Thanks to Deep Sea Waters

Kathy Dowsett

www.kirkscubagear.com