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Barbary Coast Divers News and Events p2 |
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Lake Vostok, Antarctica (January 30, 2006) Lying beneath more than two miles of Antarctic ice, Lake Vostok may be the best-known and largest subglacial lake in the world, but it is not alone down there. Scientists have identified more than 145 other lakes trapped under the ice. Until now, however, none have approached Vostok's size or depth. Bell and Studinger, along with colleagues from the University of New Hampshire and NASA, report that the 90ºE Lake has a surface area of 2,000km2, which is about the size of Rhode Island, and is second only to Lake Vostok's 14,000km2 surface area. Sovetskaya Lake was calculated to be about 1,600 km2. Both are sealed beneath more than two miles of ice. Their depth, along with the fact that they are parallel to each other and Lake Vostok, indicate that the lake system is tectonic in origin, the authors conclude. The combination of heat from below and a thick layer of insulating ice above keeps the water temperature at the top of 90ºE and Sovetskaya at a balmy –2 degrees Celsius, despite temperatures on the surface that can drop to –80 degrees Celsius in winter. Since the lakes are bounded by faults, Bell said it is likely the lakes receive flows of nutrients that could support unique ecosystems. Moreover, laser mapping of the ice sheet surface by NASA's Ice Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) revealed that this water-ice boundary, or ceiling, is tilted. This, along with the tectonic origin of the lakes, supports the idea that despite climate changes on the surface over the last 10 million to 35 million years, the volume of the lakes have remained remarkably constant, providing a stable, if inhospitable, environment that may harbor an ancient and alien ecosystem adapted to life beneath the ice sheet. However, just how, when or even whether scientists will risk the possibility of contaminating the lakes to confirm their suspicions remains the subject of an ongoing international debate. The study was supported by the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, the Palisades Geophysical Institute, NASA, and the National Science Foundation.
Legendary diver has a whale of a tale
to tell MIAMI -- In more than 50 years of recreational and professional scuba diving, Ray McAllister has had more than a few extreme aquatic adventures. The 82-year-old retired oceanography professor at Florida Atlantic University recently recounted a few of his underwater escapades at a Deerfield Beach dinner honoring him and several other South Florida diving luminaries. It was in Bermuda around 1960 when McAllister had what some might consider his most excellent (or outrageous) adventure. Aboard the Sir Horace Lamb, he saw a humpback whale laying tight against the ship, apparently rubbing her skin. For some reason, he got the idea to jump on the whale's back and try to ride it standing up alongside the boat. "I decided to do a 'look ma -- no hands' on her back," McAllister wrote in his as-yet unpublished memoirs. "I leaped onto her back and went down through a fetid, fishy spout as she blew. My left foot went into her left blowhole (there were two set side-by-side in a 'V') about six inches beyond the ankle joint. She did what any intelligent beast would do if someone stuck a foot in her nostril: she started to roll away from Sir Horace and dive." McAllister barely had enough time to push with his right foot and yank his left foot out of the blowhole, leaving his open-top Air Force boot in her nostril. After the adrenaline wore off, McAllister realized his left ankle was badly sprained and asked someone to take him to a nearby Air Force hospital. But before he could go, he had to fill out a workman's compensation form. "Where it asked how the accident happened, I wrote 'I jumped on the back of a humpback whale and got my foot caught in her blowhole,'" McAllister recalled. 'Where it asked what steps were being taken to prevent a recurrence of the accident, I wrote, 'I won't jump on any more whales!'" After one of the base commanders read the form and got through laughing, he made McAllister change it to say that he had jumped onto a dock and next time would use a gangplank. Then McAllister was taken to the hospital. But the whale tale had an epilogue: a couple of months later, McAllister was perusing a publication called The Norwegian Whaling Gazette when he read about a 35-foot female humpback whale that had been taken off Bermuda with a shoe in her left blowhole. He ran around the base, showing his colleagues the news item and later was invited to recount the tale at the Kindley Air Force Base Fishing Club. McAllister's was voted best in a contest of fishing stories, and he was supposed to win a Boston Whaler and fishing tackle. But the commanding officer, who was president of the club, disqualified his entry because "I was not a member of the club and it was a mammal story -- not a fish story." Reef to mimic the `lost city' Gary Levine's Atlantis Reef Project received final approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Miami-Dade's Department of Environmental Resources Management earlier this month to construct the sprawling network of cement and bronze statues in 50 feet of water. Levine says construction should begin in March, with the first phase ready to receive divers at the end of April. Levine said the reef will take three to five years to complete at a cost of between $3 million and $5 million. ''It will be five concentric circles, 900 feet in diameter, as big as three football fields,'' Levine said. ``You can see it from the air as a compass pointing due north. There will be 40 specific themed sculptures incorporating the elements you'd have in any city -- arts, government, the military, theater.'' While most of the structures will be made of concrete, utilizing up to 10,000 cubic yards of material, there will also be some bronze statues sculpted by Kim Brandell, who is famous for the stainless steel globe at Donald Trump's headquarters in New York. Graphic illustrations are done by Joey Burns, who designed the interior of the Sultan of Brunei's private jet, Levine said. Levine envisions Atlantis Reef as an attraction for divers; haven for fish, lobster and other marine creatures; coral nursery; underwater laboratory -- and memorial reef. Since Miami-Dade County is not financing the project, Levine proposes to raise money through donors who pay to have their cremated remains incorporated into Atlantis' columns and balustrades. ''Instead of getting sprinkled in the ocean, you're inside a three-foot column,'' Levine said. ``You can be memorialized in this underwater city.'' At this point, he said, there are about a dozen people who have signed up for the underwater memorials |
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