After going missing on Christmas Day five years ago, deep ocean measuring equipment belonging to the UK's National Oceanography Centre (NOC) has just been found on a beach in Tasmania by a local resident after making an incredible 14,000 km journey across the ocean.
In 2011, this deep-ocean lander instrument was deployed by NOC scientists in the northern Drake Passage, which is a narrow section of the ocean between South America and Antarctica. Measuring ocean bottom pressure here helps provide information on the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which is the largest ocean current in the world. The instrument was due to spend two years collecting data at a depth of 1100 metres, before being recovered on Christmas Day in 2013 by a research expedition on the Royal Research Ship (RRS) James Clark Ross, operated by British Antarctic Survey. However it did not return to the surface as planned for reasons that are not clear, possibly due to something getting tangled up with the release mechanism.
After being presumed lost, the deep ocean instrument frame was discovered washed up on a beach on the western tip of Tasmania. After being made aware of the find, the manufacturers were able to use the serial numbers on two of the sensors on the frame to trace the NOC as the owners and contact them.
The image in the article serves up robust testimony to the differential ability of the probe's materials to resist marine fouling.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Runaway1956 on Saturday December 15 2018, @06:13PM (1 child)
is Gilligan's Island?
Odd, Google Earth shows it to be in Madison, Wisconsin, not far from Squaw Bay, and Upper Mud Lake. So, now we know where Gilligan was all those years, now we need to explain how tidal forces would move something from Gilligan's Island to Tasmania.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 17 2018, @12:41AM
Continental Drip Theory.