Black Sea Adventures and Underwater Volcanoes

Robert Ballard has wrapped up another season exploring in the Black Sea. He's most famous for discovering the wreck of the Titanic, but he's done plenty of other work as well. Now he's testing a system that will allow a vessel equipped with cameras, sensors, and other technological doodads to go, literally, where no man has gone before. Not in space, but under the seas.

According to this new story, Ballard is "testing a system planned for use aboard NOAA's new vessel Okeanos Explorer, scheduled to go to sea next year as the first U.S. government vessel dedicated to exploring unknown parts of the ocean. . . . The ship will be in high-speed communications with a center at the University of Rhode Island, and from there via Internet2 to universities and science centers across the country, calling on whatever expertise is needed."

The article likens the system's setup to a hospital emergency room, or to NASA overseeing a space project. Everyone's ready, the links are set up-but no one knows what will be found.

For the last few years, Ballard has been studying ancient beaches and shipwrecks in the the Black Sea, a salt water sea 630 miles (1,014 km) across. The Black Sea borders Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, and Georgia.From the time of Jason and the Argonauts, it's been part of major trade routes connecting Asia to Europe.

OK, geography lesson over.

The reason the Black Sea is so great for explorers and archaeologists is that it's the deepest salt-water body in the world (over 7200 feet, or 2200 meters). Below 660 feet, there is no oxygen--which means, no worms or sea life to eat away at shipwrecks. Ballard has explored Byzantine ships a thousand years old, sitting on the bottom of the Black Sea with all the wood intact, including the masts.

NOAA--the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (part of the US Dept. of Commerce)--maintains an Ocean Explorer site with pictures and videos of its projects since 2001, including the return to the Titanic in 2004, a recent trip to coral reefs near the Cayman Islands, and an exploration of the deepest waters around Greece in 2006.

The 2006 Black Sea mission, with pages of videos and photos, was combined with an Aegean Sea trip mapping underwater volcanoes.

The Thera volcano erupted in 1630 B.C, with enough force to destroy the advanced Minoan civilization--at least, that's what scientists and archaeologists suspect. The Greek isle Santorini is what's left of Thera. The submerged volcanic crater Kolumbo (right) is one of about 20 undersea volcanoes lining up northeast of the island.

NOAA has a page on their explorations of this area as well.

And to end as I started, the NOAA page describing Okeanos and Ballard's latest work is here. Scroll down to find updates throughout the month of August.