Just hot off the press--the New Scientist has posted an article about te oil leaking from the shipwrecks in Chuuk Lagoon.
http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn14645-oil-bubbles-point-to-eco-disaster-in-paradise-.html?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=news1_head_dn14645
I will follow this up with some further discussion.
Bill Jeffery
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Thursday, August 21, 2008
More news from Micronesia
From PI, Bill Jeffery
Following the project in Chuuk, I attended the annual consultation meeting between USA National Park Service and all the Micronesian Historic Preservation Offices in Pohnpei, FSM from August 11 to August 16.
I gave a presentation on the Chuuk Lagoon shipwrecks and some of the problems in their current management, which included how Chuukese value and use the wrecks in context with their social and economic situation. I also included a brief summary of the work we have carried out during the Earthwatch projects. This included details on the oil /diesel we found coming from the Hoyo Maru (see illustration--I estimated the leak to be around the kingpost in the middle of the ship). The Hoyo Maru is one of three oil tankers in Chuuk Lagoon and it had the capacity to carry 3,990,000 gallons of oil. The location of the leaking does look as if its related to this!!!!
I compiled a brief report and together with copies of the DVD, disseminated them as widely as possible in the hope something will be done.
Further news is that EW Team 3 starting October 20 has been cancelled and Team 4 may or may not go ahead. I am hoping we can do Team 4 to consolidate the work, particularly looking more at the oil pollution issue.
Pohnpei is a great place to visit if you get back to Micronesia, great sunsets, and Nan Madol, the 1500 year old canal city is incredible and worth coming to Pohnpei, just to see it.
Following the project in Chuuk, I attended the annual consultation meeting between USA National Park Service and all the Micronesian Historic Preservation Offices in Pohnpei, FSM from August 11 to August 16.
I gave a presentation on the Chuuk Lagoon shipwrecks and some of the problems in their current management, which included how Chuukese value and use the wrecks in context with their social and economic situation. I also included a brief summary of the work we have carried out during the Earthwatch projects. This included details on the oil /diesel we found coming from the Hoyo Maru (see illustration--I estimated the leak to be around the kingpost in the middle of the ship). The Hoyo Maru is one of three oil tankers in Chuuk Lagoon and it had the capacity to carry 3,990,000 gallons of oil. The location of the leaking does look as if its related to this!!!!
Hoyo Maru
I compiled a brief report and together with copies of the DVD, disseminated them as widely as possible in the hope something will be done.
Further news is that EW Team 3 starting October 20 has been cancelled and Team 4 may or may not go ahead. I am hoping we can do Team 4 to consolidate the work, particularly looking more at the oil pollution issue.
Pohnpei is a great place to visit if you get back to Micronesia, great sunsets, and Nan Madol, the 1500 year old canal city is incredible and worth coming to Pohnpei, just to see it.
On of the many structures (but most intact) at Nan Madol
(yours truly with Dr Rufino Mauricio)
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Post-trip flying home
'Shipwrecked in Chuuk'
by PI, Dr Ian Macleod
Returning volunteers seemingly hover o’er the Pacific Ocean, miles beneath the plane
Mirrored in calmest water, the morning mustered cumulous clouds penetrate dreams,
While magic rainbows glide in wraith-like form across the outstretched metal alloys
Which guide the tempestuous air and provide the needed lift to carry us swiftly home,
Bonded by experience of corroding wrecks and sublimely exquisite creatures marine.
From the highest mountains of Colorado and the beauteous terrain of open Montana
Earthwatch volunteers came from afar to Kurassa to bed and feed by the White House,
While geckos gorged to bursting when still nights over the dinner table gently came,
As a relief to the wind and the refreshing squalling rain, that turned roughened roads
To puddles of unfathomable depth and trepidation for Bill and a truck full of gear.
With youngest and brightest Harvard star young Jimmy came symbolic renewal,
The hope eternal in the heart of good and the wizened Gordon from London and Skye
Symbolised the bonding of experience and energy so they formed the quadrate team,
Which scored high in efficacy so that there was time for all the holes to be recorded,
For while Anarit drilled, Warren filmed and Matt plugged and tagged Ian’s holes.
Sylph-like Mandy of Canada, wild and free, laughed and the shooting stars respond
With night time glorious displays over clearest northern skies and widest Milky Way,
Biological notes from courses taught by Bill of Omaha blend with marine instructions
And the Reef Check team is briefed and the counts are made while Alex shoots gigs
Of images of divers and organisms at work from the wrecks to deepest ocean edges.
Diver safety locked down sets Tammy free to work with Bill on photogrammetry,
Mapping with Ann and Ed the length, depth and height of the Fujikawa and TDBee
With the sublime accuracy which shows up increasing decay, while dynamite danger
To the health of the sites is ever present our leader finds the needed tensioned balance,
As the bleeding heart of Hoyo Maru heralds a future of contaminated reefs and bays.
by PI, Dr Ian Macleod
Returning volunteers seemingly hover o’er the Pacific Ocean, miles beneath the plane
Mirrored in calmest water, the morning mustered cumulous clouds penetrate dreams,
While magic rainbows glide in wraith-like form across the outstretched metal alloys
Which guide the tempestuous air and provide the needed lift to carry us swiftly home,
Bonded by experience of corroding wrecks and sublimely exquisite creatures marine.
From the highest mountains of Colorado and the beauteous terrain of open Montana
Earthwatch volunteers came from afar to Kurassa to bed and feed by the White House,
While geckos gorged to bursting when still nights over the dinner table gently came,
As a relief to the wind and the refreshing squalling rain, that turned roughened roads
To puddles of unfathomable depth and trepidation for Bill and a truck full of gear.
With youngest and brightest Harvard star young Jimmy came symbolic renewal,
The hope eternal in the heart of good and the wizened Gordon from London and Skye
Symbolised the bonding of experience and energy so they formed the quadrate team,
Which scored high in efficacy so that there was time for all the holes to be recorded,
For while Anarit drilled, Warren filmed and Matt plugged and tagged Ian’s holes.
Sylph-like Mandy of Canada, wild and free, laughed and the shooting stars respond
With night time glorious displays over clearest northern skies and widest Milky Way,
Biological notes from courses taught by Bill of Omaha blend with marine instructions
And the Reef Check team is briefed and the counts are made while Alex shoots gigs
Of images of divers and organisms at work from the wrecks to deepest ocean edges.
Diver safety locked down sets Tammy free to work with Bill on photogrammetry,
Mapping with Ann and Ed the length, depth and height of the Fujikawa and TDBee
With the sublime accuracy which shows up increasing decay, while dynamite danger
To the health of the sites is ever present our leader finds the needed tensioned balance,
As the bleeding heart of Hoyo Maru heralds a future of contaminated reefs and bays.
Clouds in Chuuk Lagoon (Photograph by Bill Jeffery)
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Thank you, Killisou Chapur
The Principal Investigators (Mandy, Ian and Bill) and the Dive Master (Tammy) would like to thank the eight Earthwatch volunteers who made this project possible and implemented the work so capably. Everyone worked, ate, and laughed together as one very happy team.
We would also like to thank the Mori Family and staff of the Kurassa Hotel for again making us feel very welcome.
Gradvin Aisek and the staff of the Blue Lagoon Dive Shop again gave us great service with dive gear.
The staff of the Chuuk Historic Preservation Office (particularly Anerit Mailo, who dived with us) and Tracy Meter and Doropio Marar gave us great support, as did Romio Osiena (Director, Depratment of Marine Resources) and his boat operators. We also thank Romio for the use of a Department boat.
Some of us will be back in late October for Teams 3 and 4. We will keep this blog live until and after then with more photographs, as well as the results of our research as it is written up.
Bill Jeffery
Truk Earthwatch Project Team 1 2008
Marine Biology Summary, Earthwatch Team 1 2008
Summary of Marine Biology work carried out
by Mandy Hengeveld (Acting Marine Biology PI)
Reef Check surveys:
Wreck only:
Gosei
Kiyosumi
Reef Check surveys:
Wreck only:
Gosei
Kiyosumi
Grouper on Kiyosumi Maru (Photograph by Mandy Hengeveld)
Wreck and adjacent reef:
Upside Down Zero
Emily Flying Boat
Myrt aircraft
Yamamoto Gun Boat
Coral growth rate monitoring:
Gosei
Yamamoto Gun Boat
Marine Biology and Corrosion Surveys:
Fujikawa Maru
Shinkoku Maru
Tonoas Dock Boat
Yamamoto Gun Boat
Preliminary findings show a number of Crown of Thorns on the Fujikawa Maru, as well as evidence of dynamite fishing.
Reefs adjacent to the Emily Flying Boat, the Myrt aircraft and the Upside Down Zero have suffered from a fair amount of damage also, possibly due to storm damage or fishing impacts.
Fish populations around the Gosei Maru, Fujikawa Maru and Kiyosumi Maru appear healthy, however several of the other sites are missing many of the larger predatory/food fish populations such as Grouper and Snapper.
Lionfish on Kiyosumi Maru (Photograph by Mandy Hengeveld)
7th of August, 2008
Earthwatch Volunteer, Alex Cohen
Today was the last official dive for a team of individuals who came together from various and sundry environments around our increasingly small globe all to work on a project of documenting the values and health of the submerged military sites in Chuuk Lagoon.
From my own experience traveling solo and having to find diving buddies wherever I went, I can honestly say that I have never come across such a group of individuals as these that to a man or women I wouldn't trust my life with on a tough dive. While I've had many a buddy elsewhere without whom I'd have been far safer, you couldn't find a finer crew than these divers.
That attests certainly to the fact that your average diver probably wouldn't be going work diving while shacking up with a bunch of strangers for nearly two weeks in dorm style living all the while on a diet that varied about as much as the color does from place to place over the lunar surface, and let alone in in one of the most beautiful South Pacific Atolls on the planet.
But even with the Earthwatch expedition requirements as a strainer, I don't think you'd come across a crew such as this but a few times in your life.
During this expedition we conducted observations and took measurements that Charles Darwin himself couldn't hardly have fathomed. He was limited to sounding the bottom point by point with a bell-shaped lead called an "arming." Filled with tallow, that probe would pick up the shape of the coral it rested upon. On the deeper outer soundings it would bring up bits of sand in the event that was what it had found. With the data he obtained in this manner Darwin did a remarkable job of explaining the origins and mechanisms that created atolls such as the Chuuk Lagoon in his book 'Coral Reefs."
Dr. Jeffery instead had a mob of divers who descended upon the encrusted wrecks of the lagoon, measured and transected the vessels with their reef building invertebrates, algaes and fish.
On today's menu was the 'Dockboat' on the first dive and the 'Gunboat' on the second. We split the team and also dived an unnamed new wreck that was discovered by Tammy and Bill on the last Gunboat dive.
Today was the last official dive for a team of individuals who came together from various and sundry environments around our increasingly small globe all to work on a project of documenting the values and health of the submerged military sites in Chuuk Lagoon.
From my own experience traveling solo and having to find diving buddies wherever I went, I can honestly say that I have never come across such a group of individuals as these that to a man or women I wouldn't trust my life with on a tough dive. While I've had many a buddy elsewhere without whom I'd have been far safer, you couldn't find a finer crew than these divers.
That attests certainly to the fact that your average diver probably wouldn't be going work diving while shacking up with a bunch of strangers for nearly two weeks in dorm style living all the while on a diet that varied about as much as the color does from place to place over the lunar surface, and let alone in in one of the most beautiful South Pacific Atolls on the planet.
But even with the Earthwatch expedition requirements as a strainer, I don't think you'd come across a crew such as this but a few times in your life.
During this expedition we conducted observations and took measurements that Charles Darwin himself couldn't hardly have fathomed. He was limited to sounding the bottom point by point with a bell-shaped lead called an "arming." Filled with tallow, that probe would pick up the shape of the coral it rested upon. On the deeper outer soundings it would bring up bits of sand in the event that was what it had found. With the data he obtained in this manner Darwin did a remarkable job of explaining the origins and mechanisms that created atolls such as the Chuuk Lagoon in his book 'Coral Reefs."
Dr. Jeffery instead had a mob of divers who descended upon the encrusted wrecks of the lagoon, measured and transected the vessels with their reef building invertebrates, algaes and fish.
On today's menu was the 'Dockboat' on the first dive and the 'Gunboat' on the second. We split the team and also dived an unnamed new wreck that was discovered by Tammy and Bill on the last Gunboat dive.
Earthwatch Volunteer Ann Schile with the propellor from the new shipwreck discovery
(Photograph by Bill Jeffery)
Ian and crew managed to drill numerous holes, all of which were dutifully filled with underwater epoxy and tagged for the quandrant measurements of Mandy and her own team of bipedal pelagics.
Both dives were shallow enough that our dives times exceeded an hour for most divers and even Ed, the rapid breather of our bunch found himself with nearly 500 lbs of air left in his tank.
Tragedy and love in war: The Myrt
From Earthwatch Volunteer, Ed Talbot who has written a few times in the blog and obviously has a flair for writing stories.
February 17, 1944
A fictional tale of a Japanese pilot over Truk and a plane now at rest in the lagoon:
The handsome crew cut American Hellcat pilot looked down at the smoking Japanese plane below with a puzzled expression.
“Hey Dan, it looks like that last pass on the Myrt, you really nailed him.”
Dan involuntarily shook his head at the comment by his wingman.
“Yea, what the hell are the Japanese doing sending up a recon plane like that Nakajima (Myrt) to engage us? That C6N is no match for a hellcat.”
“Yea, but you nailed him anyway. I think you may have hit the pilot when those rounds wacked the cockpit!”
There was no pity felt by Dan. It was their job to reduce Truk to a smoking ruin of sunken ships and destroyed aircraft. And he had just done his job when he had dove on the Myrt landing round after round into the old plane.
The young 20 year old Japanese pilot, his hands shaking with a combination of fear and fatigue, guided his shuttering aircraft on its slow descent toward the lagoon below. The shattering experience of engaging the swarm of American hellcat fighters had left him drained and relieved that he had escaped alive. The rays of the setting sun reflected off the darkening waves below and turned the oily smoke trailing from his sputtering engine to a surprising shade of burgundy as it caught the fading sun’s rays behind him. The shuddering impact of the massive 50 caliber machine guns of the Hellcats had torn and ripped the aluminum wings that encased him but still provided the lift that would see him home – Home with the promise he would still be with his first true love. Home.
The excruciating pain where the white hot 50 caliber slug had burrowed in his side was constant and called for attention but his first need was to find the air strip on Etten. Squinting through the torn Plexiglas of the cockpit his mind went back to visions not of the approaching waves below but of the first delicious day he had set eyes on his first true love. Her beauty of line and curve and sensuous form had gripped him – gripped him with a passion he had not known in his quick brief life. Their courtship evolved quickly and they had rolled together in an unfamiliar ecstasy – intertwined as one under the clouds of the day and the moon of the night. He had developed a trust, a confidence and sense of security that surpassed even that of his parents when he and his first true love were together. It was a love that left him disturbingly ill at ease when he was away from her. It was a love that few, other than his fellow young men in the air wing, had fallen into so deeply.
The high pierced roar of the engine grew rough and then - abruptly quit leaving only the air rushing through the holes in the canopy. Despair gripped him. Could he glide back to Etten before a fatal stall? Or would his plane stall and send him spiraling into the grey darkening waters below? Fighting the stick and its increasing shudder required reserves of strength in his weakened condition he feared he did not have. And then his despair gave way to a sad recognition. It was too far. He would not make it.
And then as if in a dream he watched his hands in slow motion give up their grip on the stick and the nose dipped toward the welcoming waves below. He would not be able to relive those days of joy with his first true love – locked in her complete embrace under the clouds they had so enjoyed before.
And with a surprising skid the shattered plane hit the water and after a series of skips settled into the waves. At first he struggled to unbuckle the seat harness but the pain was too much. It was also the wrenching pain of knowing he would not survive this day.
As the plane settled below the waves and began its drifting descent to the coral bottom 30 feet below the young Japanese pilot did not resist the insistent demand of the ocean’s grip. He gazed through his goggles at the darkening light and the pending end of his time with his first true love.
The alarmed reef fish below were the only witnesses as the Myrt settled onto the bottom. They alone saw the pilot in his last moments of conscious thought as he gently caressed the instrument panel of the old Myrt – As he gently caressed what had been for him his first love – the love of a plane that had carried him through the clouds in the ecstasy of flight and the terror of battle – his first and now last true love.
February 17, 1944
A fictional tale of a Japanese pilot over Truk and a plane now at rest in the lagoon:
The handsome crew cut American Hellcat pilot looked down at the smoking Japanese plane below with a puzzled expression.
“Hey Dan, it looks like that last pass on the Myrt, you really nailed him.”
Dan involuntarily shook his head at the comment by his wingman.
“Yea, what the hell are the Japanese doing sending up a recon plane like that Nakajima (Myrt) to engage us? That C6N is no match for a hellcat.”
“Yea, but you nailed him anyway. I think you may have hit the pilot when those rounds wacked the cockpit!”
There was no pity felt by Dan. It was their job to reduce Truk to a smoking ruin of sunken ships and destroyed aircraft. And he had just done his job when he had dove on the Myrt landing round after round into the old plane.
The young 20 year old Japanese pilot, his hands shaking with a combination of fear and fatigue, guided his shuttering aircraft on its slow descent toward the lagoon below. The shattering experience of engaging the swarm of American hellcat fighters had left him drained and relieved that he had escaped alive. The rays of the setting sun reflected off the darkening waves below and turned the oily smoke trailing from his sputtering engine to a surprising shade of burgundy as it caught the fading sun’s rays behind him. The shuddering impact of the massive 50 caliber machine guns of the Hellcats had torn and ripped the aluminum wings that encased him but still provided the lift that would see him home – Home with the promise he would still be with his first true love. Home.
The excruciating pain where the white hot 50 caliber slug had burrowed in his side was constant and called for attention but his first need was to find the air strip on Etten. Squinting through the torn Plexiglas of the cockpit his mind went back to visions not of the approaching waves below but of the first delicious day he had set eyes on his first true love. Her beauty of line and curve and sensuous form had gripped him – gripped him with a passion he had not known in his quick brief life. Their courtship evolved quickly and they had rolled together in an unfamiliar ecstasy – intertwined as one under the clouds of the day and the moon of the night. He had developed a trust, a confidence and sense of security that surpassed even that of his parents when he and his first true love were together. It was a love that left him disturbingly ill at ease when he was away from her. It was a love that few, other than his fellow young men in the air wing, had fallen into so deeply.
The high pierced roar of the engine grew rough and then - abruptly quit leaving only the air rushing through the holes in the canopy. Despair gripped him. Could he glide back to Etten before a fatal stall? Or would his plane stall and send him spiraling into the grey darkening waters below? Fighting the stick and its increasing shudder required reserves of strength in his weakened condition he feared he did not have. And then his despair gave way to a sad recognition. It was too far. He would not make it.
And then as if in a dream he watched his hands in slow motion give up their grip on the stick and the nose dipped toward the welcoming waves below. He would not be able to relive those days of joy with his first true love – locked in her complete embrace under the clouds they had so enjoyed before.
And with a surprising skid the shattered plane hit the water and after a series of skips settled into the waves. At first he struggled to unbuckle the seat harness but the pain was too much. It was also the wrenching pain of knowing he would not survive this day.
As the plane settled below the waves and began its drifting descent to the coral bottom 30 feet below the young Japanese pilot did not resist the insistent demand of the ocean’s grip. He gazed through his goggles at the darkening light and the pending end of his time with his first true love.
The alarmed reef fish below were the only witnesses as the Myrt settled onto the bottom. They alone saw the pilot in his last moments of conscious thought as he gently caressed the instrument panel of the old Myrt – As he gently caressed what had been for him his first love – the love of a plane that had carried him through the clouds in the ecstasy of flight and the terror of battle – his first and now last true love.
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