Re:We Need to Map the Ocean Floor
by FillardMillmore on Friday November 08, 2019 @08:44AM
(#21482058)
I hadn't thought about the possibility of sunken ships and sea wrecks until you mentioned it. I wonder how many mysteries this sea-floor mapping endeavor will put to rest? If they can put even one big mystery (something like finding Malaysia Airlines Flight 370) to bed, they'd get a lot of great publicity.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Imagine finding a Roman galley out in the Atlantic, or even more than one. I'm always amazed Madeira and the Azores weren't colonized before the Portuguese arrived in the early 1400's, even though there are possible Roman, Viking, and Genovese references or evidence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Madeira
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Azores
Another thing that fascinates me are seamounts: volcanoes that either didn't reach the surface or that did but later eroded and subsided. With sea levels 100-150 ft lower in the last ice age, many eroded to that level, leaving a flat-topped mountain that far beneath the surface. It's too deep for normal scuba, but amateur underwater drones could easily explore them.
They mapped a pretty large area of the ocean floor looking for that wreckage
Yeah on the one hand it's cool possibility for historians and stuff, on the other it kind of ruins the adventurous scuba diver studying old maps and stuff searching for lost treasure.
Re:We Need to Map the Ocean Floor
by mynameisvlad on Friday November 08, 2019 @10:30AM
(#21483061)
Firstly, who still does this? Nobody I know in the scuba diving community "[studies] old maps and stuff searching for lost treasure". That'd be a good way to not have a dive plan and end up in trouble.
Secondly, no scuba diver is about to dive on the ocean floor. Maybe you're thinking of deep sea divers, who dive in a submarine or other deep sea vessel?