Nautical Oddities

[GordMay]

Giant endangered freshwater stingray rescued by scientists
4-metre, 180-kilogram stingray accidentally caught by fishermen in Mekong River in Cambodia
More ➥ https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/gian...gray-1.6450498

Video ➥ https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2032346179513/

[GordMay]

THE ODD BEAUTY OF EELS

Capturing underwater beauty is routine for David Doubilet and Jennifer Hayes, who have explored some of the most spectacular reefs on the planet. Yet, a colony of garden eels they encountered off the Philippines coast brought back memories. “I began my career at National Geographic in 1971 with a story on garden eels in the Red Sea,” said Doubilet, a Nat Geo Explorer. Taking these images, he said, “was like coming home.”

Garden eels are both social and shy. They live in individual burrows, yet form colonies, and rise together out of their burrows, to feed on plankton, carried by the current. (Pictured below, a two-spot wrasse and a cornerfish, unthreatening to the eels, swim through a colony.)

“It’s mesmerizing to watch hundreds of eels waving and undulating in an ancient exotic dance,” says Doubilet. Yet “that ends abruptly when the eels detect the slightest movement of an unwelcome intruder. The vast colony vanishes back into the sand as if it never existed.”

To capture the scene below, the photographers had to, quite literally,—disappear.

“Jennifer settled on the Trojan Horse strategy,” Doubilet explains. Hayes placed a rock the same size and color of their camera housing, near the edge of the colony, and left it for a day. The eels apparently accepted the rock, and rose from their burrows. The next morning, she put the camera housing there, left, and then filmed.

See their full story and images.
Subscription required ➥ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/m...raphy_20220514

[BilgeRat]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Scientists Follow a 'Yellow Brick Road' in a Never-Before-Seen Spot of The Pacific Ocean

An expedition, to a deep-sea ridge [more than 3,000 meters deep], just north of the Hawaiian Islands, has revealed an ancient dried-out lake bed, paved with what looks like a yellow brick road.
The eerie scene was chanced upon by the exploration vessel “Nautilus” [1], which is currently surveying the Liliʻuokalani ridge within Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument (PMNM)[2].

Follow the 'Yellow Brick Road' to Geologic Features of Liliʻuokalani Ridge Seamounts
➥ https://youtu.be/TID2kc8yb9Q

More ➥ https://nautiluslive.org/video/2022/...idge-seamounts


[1a] More about the 2022 E/V Nautilus expedition ➥ https://nautiluslive.org/cruise/na138
[1b] EV ‘Nautilus’ Live Streams ➥ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1K...bQVXH2kZue3_xA

[2a] Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument
PMNM ➥ https://www.papahanaumokuakea.gov/
[2b] PMNM ➥ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papah%...ional_Monument

YouTube ➥

I would think this would be in OZ somewhere...

[ChrisJHC]

Originally Posted by BilgeRat

I would think this would be in OZ somewhere...

Nah, this is what you get in OZ:



(Pity it’s a composite of two photos, but you get the idea!)

[GordMay]

Yonaguni Monument, Pacific Ocean
Between the East China Sea, and the Pacific Ocean, these ‘Iseki’ stones were discovered around 1986, off the remote Japanese island of Yonaguni. The rock structures lurk 82 feet (25m) below the surface, and include tall monoliths, stacked slabs, and a pyramid, which is the largest shape.
Mystery, and plenty of debate, shrouds the structures’ origins. Some claim they are naturally occurring geological formations, shaped by tectonic activity, and others are convinced they are the remains of an ancient city, saying they are the ruins of man-made buildings, including a castle, and a stadium, that [they say] once formed a Japanese Atlantis.

➥ https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/2...nderwater-city

[CaptTom]

Gord, I've seen articles about that before, but I couldn't find anything which links the photo you posted to the actual place. It looks photoshopped to me. Obviously if it were a real photo there would be no debate about the origin of those structures. But I'm not finding that.

The image you linked came from a WordPress site called Mysterious Trip, which gives no photo credit and doesn't seem very long on scientific evidence. There are other versions of that image at equally questionable sites. A little farther along the credibility scale, the BBC did a documentary on the Yonaguni Monument, which has some great shots of the formations but nothing nearly as elaborate as the one you posted.

While I'm not ready to call BS on the possibility that the formation is man-made, I don't think there's a real pyramid under water there.

[GordMay]

"ZIPPER"
Yasuhiro Suzuki originally came up with the Zipper Motorboat in 2004, but it didn't shove off until 2010. Like many great and extremely weird things, it was art project and not a meant as a practical means of conveyance. No passengers were on this voyage as the vessel hadn't been tested for rollover risk. You can't exactly go skiing behind it, but maybe you can do some really slow-speed tubing.
More about ➥ Motorboat Zipper Illustrates Art On The Fly

Video ➥ https://youtu.be/TvcvIVexmos

[GordMay]

"Marjata"
Bulbous radome for protecting radar dishes. Helicopter landing pad. The shape of a clothes iron. The Marjata has it all. The Norwegian spy ship wades in Arctic waters to keep tabs on the Russians. The model you see below first set sail in 1992, though subsequent variants have gotten bigger, and less interesting in shape.
More about ➥ Marjata Intelligence Collection Ship | Military-Today.com


[IMG]https://hips.hearstapps.com/pop.h-cdn.co/assets/17/11/1600x723/gallery-1489730014-tlbekouysxmwahracbky.jpg?resize=480:*[/IMG]

[Adelie]

Originally Posted by GordMay

"ZIPPER"
Yasuhiro Suzuki originally came up with the Zipper Motorboat in 2004, but it didn't shove off until 2010. Like many great and extremely weird things, it was art project and not a meant as a practical means of conveyance. No passengers were on this voyage as the vessel hadn't been tested for rollover risk. You can't exactly go skiing behind it, but maybe you can do some really slow-speed tubing.
More about ➥ Motorboat Zipper Illustrates Art On The Fly

Video ➥ https://youtu.be/TvcvIVexmos

Makes sense in a way. YKK zippers in based in Japan and they supply in excess of 50% of all zippers in the world.

[GordMay]

“Ironbound”, an adult white shark who measures 12 feet 4 inches, and 998 pounds, is now swimming around Canadian waters, just south of the southwestern part of Nova Scotia.

"This mature male white shark provides a great example of site fidelity, returning to the same region in Nova Scotia year after year," shark research organization OCEARCH said in a tweet* on May 26.

Great white sharks generally leave Southern waters, from mid to late May, and then arrive in Northern waters at the beginning of June, and congregate in Atlantic Canada, during the summer and fall months, before heading back down south for the winter.

Ironbound Tracker ➥ https://www.ocearch.org/tracker/detail/ironbound

All Great White Tracker ➥ https://www.ocearch.org/tracker/

* OCEARCH Tweet ➥ https://twitter.com/OCEARCH/status/1529880345788592128

Previous report [May 9] ➥ https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...ml#post3620042

[BilgeRat]

Originally Posted by ChrisJHC

Nah, this is what you get in OZ:

Attachment 258016

(Pity it’s a composite of two photos, but you get the idea!)

I was thinking the Wizard of Oz with a pun thrown in.
(Yellow brick road)

[GordMay]

Described by worldatlas.com as “the most remote points in the world. Poles of inaccessibility are challenging to reach and are often defined as the furthest location from the coastlines of a continent.”

The oceanic pole of inaccessibility is in the Pacific Ocean, at 48°52.6'S 123°23.6'W, about halfway between New Zealand and Chile; it's 1,670 miles (2,688 kilometres) from the nearest land.

The closest landmasses to the pole are one of the Pitcairn Islands, to the north, Motu Nui, one of the Easter Islands, to the northeast, and one island off of the coast of Antarctica, to the south.

Geographers have nicknamed the pole “Point Nemo”, after the captain, in ‘20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’, by Jules Verne.

The nearest people [aside from occasional sailors] to this location are astronauts, aboard the International Space Station when they fly over, about 258 miles above. It is very possible no human has ever passed through Point Nemo’s exact coordinates.
In 2031, when the International Space Station comes crashing down, it will do so here — as far away from any humans as geographically possible.

[GordMay]

The Law of Unintended Consequences & the SS “Eastland”

Many laws and actions are taken with the purest of motives in mind, but then they run into the most unreliable of animals - humans. Through greed, cunning, inventiveness, and, sometimes, sheer stupidity, people have an amazing ability to make the most carefully laid plans fail. At the same time, some planners are the architects of their own collapses.

The loss of the SS Titanic prompted the passage of laws*, mandating enough lifeboats aboard ships, to accommodate every passenger.

The addition of lifeboats, to the poorly designed SS "Eastland", made the vessel unstable. She rolled over in the Chicago River, killing 844 people.

For the SS Eastland, the “LaFollette Seaman’s Act”* [requiring lifeboats to accommodate 75 percent of a vessel’s passengers] meant adding five lifeboats, three dozen life rafts, and 2,500 life jackets. These were mostly stowed on upper decks adding several tons of weight to the already unstable vessel.

Experts warned that adding this poundage to shallow-draft Great Lakes ships was likely to cause some to “turn turtle.”

But, who wants to listen to experts, whose advice, if followed, might cut into profits? Again, it was not deemed necessary to run tests, to determine whether, or not, the Eastland was safe.

“The SS Eastland Disaster” ➥ https://owlcation.com/humanities/The...tland-Disaster

➥

[ahun]

https://allthatsinteresting.com/seapod-floating-home

[IslandHopper]

Not an oddity but a beautifully hand-stitched sail cringle, the sail being made of hemp, a work of art from yesteryear.....