Despite myths and legends of piracy, wrecking and alleged supernatural phenomena akin to those of the Bermuda Triangle, most disappearances . The Bass Strait oil and gas fields are primarily structural traps and occupy culminations along major anticlinal axes. Andrew McAuley was the first person to cross Bass Strait non-stop in a sea kayak in 2003. Records previously released to us demonstrated that DRAKE systems were deployed to several ships later in July 2019. The Australian Hydrographic Service does not consider it to be part of its expanded definition of the Southern Ocean, but rather states that it lies with the Tasman Sea. The submarine topography of Bass Strait. Forty miles into its Bass Strait nightmare, Midnight Rambler was confronted with a situation that could easily have ended its race. As he surveyed the area, a huge bronze disc came out of the clouds and settled alongside the plane for several moments before vanishing as quickly as it had appeared.[9]. While that has been covered here before, the first two points on our list share bizarre connections to the famous case, so thats where well start. They then reported that the humming sound had suddenly stopped. "Medically important" is the nice term for "you're going to . The Panama Canal: Interlinking the Atlantic Ocean with . This sea strait has a maximum length of 310 miles and a maximum width of 220 miles. Malikides, M., Harris, P. T., Jenkins, C. J., & Keene, J. Exactly as Lien has said. The Bosporus is different. 1993 (, South-east Commonwealth Marine Reserve Network, Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History, "Australia's First Offshore Wind Farm Proposed for Gippsland | Premier of Victoria", https://www.spiritoftasmania.com.au/geelong-terminal, "Apollo Bay Submarine Cable Repeater Station", "Nick Moloney sets new sailing speed record", "Blackburn's Bass Strait Laser Sailing Record", "Devil fundraising sailors Adrian Beswick and Josh Phillips", "Australian kitesurfers cross the Bass Strait for the first time", "Natalie Clarke kite crosses the Bass Strait in record time", "natalie-clarke-kite-crosses-the-bass-strait-in-record-time", "Australians cross Bass Strait on paddleboards in 'world first', "Andrew McAuley was not crazy or reckless but crossing the Tasman Sea in a kayak was a calculated, planned gamble he lost", Tasmanian Department of State Development - Redi Map, "Telstra plans second Bass Strait optical fibre cable", "History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bass_Strait&oldid=1138165071, Articles with incomplete citations from November 2012, All Wikipedia articles written in Australian English, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles using infobox body of water without image, Articles using infobox body of water without pushpin map alt, Articles using infobox body of water without alt bathymetry, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from November 2019, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, First telephone cable, failed after only six months, This page was last edited on 8 February 2023, at 10:49. There were also other, less fatal incidents. This ice age cause sea levels to drop so that at one point there was a continuous stretch of land . Subsequent release of video from the Navy makes it more likely that the small dark dots in the images of the Bass Strait are part of the structure of the ship than drones. The USS Russell in particular is known to have these systems onboard prior to the incident on July 30th. Current weather forecasts from the Bureau of Meteorology suggest light northeasterly winds tracking south for the first two days of the race, when the super maxis will travel through the strait. If you'd like some expert background on an issue or a news event, drop us a line at explainers@smh.com.au or explainers@theage.com.au. George Bass is important to Australia because he did a great deal to fill in the gaps in knowledge of Australia's southeastern coastline. However, after sailing for two hours westward towards the strait against the wind, he turned back east and noted in his journal that he was "doubtful whether they [i.e. During the height of the gale, crewman Chris Rockell was thrown . In 1920, while sailing into the Bass Strait, the SS Amelia J. disappeared without a trace shortly after entering the infamous stretch of water. Marcus Lowth is a writer with a passion for anything interesting, be it UFOs, the Ancient Astronaut Theory, the paranormal or conspiracies. NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The nation's most dangerous job, fishing for Alaskan . After a dash to Flinders Island, the crew of the 40-foot cutter Anastasia joined David for a nice hot "cuppa". normal font sizelarge font sizevery large text size Will Oxley expected the 1998 Sydney to Hobart yacht race to be rough. Australian Journal of Earth Science, 35, 303-311. However it started failing within a few weeks of completion, and by 1861 it failed completely. We now know that in several instances, the Navy had significant information about the potential origin of the drones deployed in some of the most serious incidents, although the specific operators remained unknown. This program is a FRONTLINE co-production with The New York Times and Granada Television. For example, on October 9, a husband and wife witnessed a bright light above them that actually came down to the level of their car, maintaining pace beside them as they drove. Flinders Island has the largest population. He says that while his father had gone inside his shed after taking the picture, Jason remained outside watching the sky. The Bass Strait is a sea strait separating Tasmania from the south of the Australian mainland, specifically the state of Victoria. Banks Strait (not Bass), which separates the Furneaux from northeast Tasmania, is only 14 miles wide. But we've already seen that Tasmanian canoe-rafts became unmaneuverable and sank after about 10 miles of travel in calm seas. lunchables pepperoni pizza The documents include unprecedentedly detailed briefing materials and photographs from more than a half dozen incidents. Perhaps the most famous of these incidents is the case of Fred Valentich. The War Zone has previously created an interactive database of drone incidents reported to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), accessible here. Battlefield commanders in Syria and Afghanistan have both had to constantly contend with drone threats. [16]:485. Though there are relatively few details, a briefing slide describes that multiple drones were observed, with some coming as close as 200 yards (closest point of approach; CPA) to the ships bow. In October 1934, while crossing the Bass Strait in perfect weather conditions for flying, the airliner Miss Hobart would vanish without a trace. Banks Strait is the southeastern opening to the Tasman Sea. [3] Perhaps most intriguing, however, was a small piece of the floor of the plane. Interestingly, in their absolute desperation for information, family members of the crew even visited a clairvoyant, who stated that the crew had come upon an island south of their last known location. Tasmania is currently connected to the mainland via two Telstra-operated fibre optic cables; since 2006, dark fibre capacity has also been available on the Basslink HVDC cable. King Island and the Indian Ocean lie at its western extremity, and the Furneaux Group is at its eastern end. "Purists occasionally spark up and say that . The Marlin reservoir, for example, has 300m of vertical closure covering an area of 137 sq km while to the southeast the smaller Halibut reservoir has a vertical closure of approximately 160m and an areal extent of 27 sq km. It also indicates that the UAS incident continued after the Bass Strait departed the area. The table below provides detailed information about the sea conditions for the next . In 1798, Bass explored along the southern coast of what . The western field, known as the Otway Basin, was discovered in the 1990s offshore near Port Campbell. The circumstances of these incidents vary widely. Public affairs officials in multiple agencies have been consistently tight-lipped on this matter, with most information coming strictly through the Freedom of Information Act. Why the Taiwan issue is so dangerous. There are now 23 offshore platforms and installations in Bass Strait, including the new Marlin B platform and Kipper subsea wells, which feed a network of 600km of underwater pipelines and keep the oil and gas flowing, 24 hours a day. Whether there is a connection or not is unclear, but in the immediate weeks before and following the Fred Valentich encounter, a wave of strange sightings broke out across the coastlines of Tasmania and Victoria.[7]. Finally, a photograph of one of the drones was included with the report: While our initial investigation focused on the cluster of drone events in July described above, these new records also indicate that at least two other significant drone swarm events occurred in the waters off Southern California earlier in 2019. There was enough time for coastal sand dunes to form, and in some cases theyve actually been preserved, Nichol says. Several days later, the USS Gabrielle Giffords (GBG), an Independence class Littoral Combat Ship, encountered a set of four drones in the same general vicinity. In congressional testimony, defense officials explained that "the triangular appearance is a result of light passing through the night vision goggles, and then being recorded by an SLR camera.". Found inside - Page 106So my years as a deep-water diver were filled with danger and excitement, . Arthur Lane, a Sydney to Hobart veteran who leads the race's organising committee, says the shallow water means "a bit of a twist on the stomach". But just as smaller boats get closer to Tasmania, those winds will adjust to be south-easterly on Wednesday, which will present them with challenges as they attempt to make it down the Tasmanian coast. The yachts fate, however, is still a mystery to this day. What can happen in Bass Strait continues to weigh on psyches and race plans even if it may technically not all be transpiring in Bass Strait. Theres no better example of this than at the eastern edge of the strait, right where the Sydney to Hobart adventurers pass: the Bass Canyon. It is about 80 mi (130 km) wide and has many reefs and shoals dangerous to navigation, and its larger islands are inhabited. To get a sense of how frequently drone swarms are occurring in recent years, we recently spoke with DroneSec, a drone cybersecurity firm based in Melbourne. The report referenced one notable incident that involved the simultaneous use of 15 drones to distract and overwhelm a prison facilitys security systems. Documents show that the Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Russell, also referred to by its hull number, DDG 59, and the abbreviation RSL), first reported an interaction with three unknown UAS on July 17th, 2019 approximately 62 nautical miles southwest of San Nicolas Island. A US Navy sailor training with a Northrop Grumman DRAKE electronic warfare system. The boat is a beautiful custom-fitted runabout built to commercial Survey, and its name - Longevity - is apt in many ways. In other words, what were once dune-lined areas of coast are now all underwater. In addition to the technical challenges posed by drones, the Department of Defense has also struggled to encourage aviators and service members to report what they see, even if they cant clearly identify it. The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of Bass Strait as follows:[1], Some authorities consider the strait to be part of the Pacific Ocean[2] as in the never-approved 2002 IHO Limits of Oceans and Seas draft. After the 1998 race, organisers made changes to . The flinders municipality covers four groups of Bass Strait islands off the north-eastern tip of Tasmania: the Furneaux, Kent, Hogan and Curtis groups. As in the other cases, a contemporaneous email report and draft public affairs statement provide further details. Hendrich, J.H., Palmer, I.D., and Schwebel, D.A., 1992, Fortescue Field, Gippsland Basin, Offshore Australia, In Giant Oil and Gas Fields of the Decade, 1978-1988, AAPG Memoir 54, Halbouty, M.T., editor, Tulsa: American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Jack Loney, Mysteries of the Bass Strait Triangle, Neptune Press, 1st ed. Bass Strait sea conditions and wind forecast. In 1901, 22 crew members vanished into thin air along with the SS Federal in the Bass Strait, and five years later in 1906, the Ferdinand Fischer, a German cargo ship, met a similar fate as it made its way to the coast of Tasmania. The realities of China today. If this was the case, its possible that the yacht could have drifted as far as islands to the south of New Zealand. Exactly a month later in Hobart, a taxi driver was suddenly forced to slam on his breaks due to a strange green glow in the middle of the road. What is now known as the Bass Strait used to be a giant plain that Aboriginal people lived and travelled on, until around 30,000 years ago when there was an ice age. Perhaps the most thorough list of losses and disappearances has been the oft reprinted book of Jack Loney[20] though it is possible that most losses can be adequately explained by extreme weather events.[21]. (The East Australian Current is the one from the movie Finding Nemo.) What makes his seemingly trivial detail all the more intriguing is that it comes up again in our next strange encounter, which, coincidentally or not, happened almost 44 years to the day previously. You can see the drop-off represented in the image below. Van Diemen's Land and New Holland] are one land or no",[8]. Addressing these particular security gaps has been a clear priority for the Navy in recent years, with a number of high-profile projects involving directed energy weapons. What makes Bass Strait a gnarly part of the Sydney to Hobart yacht race? Geoscience Australias Nichol is quick to add that this is not a constant; its actually the worst-case scenario with upwelling less likely during summer but the East Australian Current is always there. Read More: The actual whirlpool in the strait is only a danger to very small vessels, and even then only in extreme circumstances. Perhaps the strangest, however, is that of a young woman who went missing from Bruny Island. The two larger reserves, Flinders and Zeehan, extend mostly outside of the Bass Strait area. Two years earlier in 1942, an Australian fighter pilot took his plane over the Bass Strait after orders to investigate reports of strange lights made by fishermen. Notably, a night scope image of an apparently triangular object can be seen in the lower left corner. Some incidents were assessed to be collection operations while others were attributed to local fishermen operating personal quadcopters. Three small boats were identified nearby, with one identifying themselves as a small fishing vessel. Strong currents between the Antarctic-driven southeast portions of the Indian Ocean and the Tasman Sea's Pacific Ocean waters provide a strait of powerful, wild storm waves. Starting at Cape Otway, Victoria, it went via King Island and Three Hummock Island, made contact with the Tasmanian mainland at Stanley Head, and then continued on to George Town. Jennings' study of the submarine topography of Bass Strait[13] described the bathymetric Bass Basin, a shallow depression approximately 120km (70mi) wide and 400km (250mi) long (over 65,000km2[25,000sqmi] in area) in the centre of Bass Strait, a maximum depth is the channel between Inner Sister Island and Flinders Island, which navigation charts indicate reaches 155m (510ft). Known locally as The Paddock, the Bass Strait is the body of water separating mainland Australia and Tasmania. 6. CTO Jared Page added that definitely in the last two years there has been a marked increase in activity related to swarms. The companys threat intelligence database has registered approximately 151 swarm incidents in that time. Nothing of the boat or the people on board was ever discovered. Pirates here mainly target tankers . The purpose of the voyage was to raise funds for the treatment of the endangered Tasmanian Devil, an animal species suffering from a facial tumour disease and, if possible, break the dinghy sailing time record for the crossing. Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made. These included the previously mentioned DRAKE system, a man-portable backpack that allows sailors to jam the radio frequency signals used to control drones. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. CROSSING THE BASS STRAIT. The briefing slide states that the Navy assessed that the commercial cargo ship was likely conducting surveillance on Navy vessels using drones, or unidentified aerial vehicles (UAV). It is a natural strait like the Strait of Gibraltar, which is the route between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean. 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