Captains rescue diver in the Bahamas

Dorie Cox –

Three yacht captains used their nautical expertise to find an overdue scuba diver in the Bahamas on May 22.

Capt. Baron Rohl and Capt. Mike Galgana, of M/Y Texas Star II, were joined by Capt. Russ Grandinetti, of M/Y Jade Mary, in a search near Bimini in response to marine radio calls for assistance. Sara Cesbron had called for the U.S. Coast Guard about 4:30 p.m. in reference to her husband Jean Jacques’ failure to return from a dive.

“She was on the radio and calm, but you could tell she was getting frantic,” Grandinetti said.

Grandinetti said his crew on Jade Mary was monitoring the communication about the missing diver on the radio. When he heard a request for boats in the vicinity to join at a specified area to begin a search, Grandinetti jumped in the tender and headed toward the area requested by the voice on the radio.

When he arrived at the rendevouz spot, he found the organizer Capt. Rohl, a long-time friend. The two had known each other for more than 20 years.

Rohl and Galgana defined the search area using location and conditions. The calculations were made from the coordinates of the diver’s anchored vessel, the Jacques Angelo, between Turtle Rock and Gun Cay, about two miles off of Cat Cay.

To simulate in which direction the diver might have drifted, Rohl filled a water bottle filled with sea water and enough air to keep it above surface and tossed it in the water. Grandinetti used the same idea to verify the wind was pushing his tender south as the drift headed north. Rohl and Galgana determined the gulfstream was flowing about three knots to the north and organized the search at the south end of South Bimini.

Each of the searchers had many years at work at sea and on boats and they pooled their knowledge. Grandinetti said they had limited radio contact between the tenders because of technical issues, but that the three made the right decisions in how to proceed with the search.

“We all knew what had to be done,” Grandinetti said.

Rohl and Galgana ran their tender parallel to the beach a mile from shore and searched with binoculars while Grandinetti ran a zig-zag from shore to their tender and back to shore.

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Ocean currents’ effect on climate change

Noel Kirkpatrick –

Scientists may be closer to figuring out why the tropical forests that once covered the American Midwest more than 30 million years ago have now turned into cornfields.
 
And it all has to do with the temperature of the oceans.

According to a new study, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) is believed to be responsible for these shifts in the world’s climate, and for longer than was originally believed.
 
Oceans and global temperatures are connected as warm waters create warmer temperatures and vice versa.
 
As water temperatures cool, so did the climate around the world, resulting in changes to landscapes.
 
The ACC is often considered the “mixmaster” of the oceans, as it redirects warmer waters back to the northern Atlantic Ocean. This redirection of water over time is responsible for the four-layer ocean current and the heat distribution system.
 
“What we have found is that the evolution of the ACC influenced global ocean circulation much earlier than previous studies have shown,” said Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute scientist Miriam Katz, who led the study.
 
The debate among scientists has centered on when the global climate shifted and the extent of the role the ACC had in that.

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New group wants Amundsen ship to stay in Canada

CBC News –

A group of citizens in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, is fighting to keep the wreck of the Maud, a ship that once belonged to famed polar explorer Roald Amundsen, from being lifted out of Canadian waters and taken to Norway.

The Maud, also known as the Baymaud, has been sitting partially submerged in the shallow waters near Cambridge Bay, a remote community of about 1,500, for the past eight decades.

About 20 residents have recently joined the Keep the Baymaud Committee to fight a Norwegian’s group’s efforts to take the shipwreck back to Amundsen’s home country, where the explorer is a national legend.

Committee chair Vicki Aitaok said losing the Maud would be a huge loss for Cambridge Bay, since the wreck is a major tourist attraction there.

“We take 300 people or more every year there,” Aitaok told CBC News on Thursday.

Amundsen, who in the early 1900s led the first successful sailing expedition through the Northwest Passage, had sailed the Maud to the Arctic in the hopes of reaching the North Pole.

But Amundsen’s attempts were unsuccessful and the Maud was seized and eventually sold to the Hudson’s Bay Company. Renamed the Baymaud, the ship was used as a floating trading post before it sank around 1930.

Maud Returns Home, a Norwegian group that is backed by a development company, says it wants to salvage the wreck and move it back to the town in Norway where Amundsen had the Maud built a century ago.

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