In this map, sand dunes under Bass Strait reveal evidence of the Bassian Plain.Credit:Geoscience Australia. The great English navigator, Captain James Cook first explored the strait in 1770, thinking that it might be a large harbour in the great southern continent that he had been sent to find. A month later, the USS Zumwalt, the Navy's most advanced surface combatant, encountered a set of six drones on April 24, 2019. so a higher than normal number of incidents can only to be expected. 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. The two larger reserves, Flinders and Zeehan, extend mostly outside of the Bass Strait area. Bass Strait was once not a body of water. Yes, largemouth bass are getting harder to catch. Bass Strait is shallow. Read More: Perhaps strangest about the incident are the reports of strange lights being in the skies over the Bass Strait. [10], When news of the 1798 discovery of Bass Strait reached Europe, the French government despatched a reconnaissance expedition commanded by Nicolas Baudin. What makes Bass Strait a gnarly part of the Sydney to Hobart yacht race? Unless the reasons for the absolute bounty of ships, planes, and even people that have gone missing over the years in the Bass Strait Triangle is uncovered, more mysterious incidents are likely to continue to happen for many more years into the future. Despite being in the Roaring 40s, we had good . Frederick Valentich was flying a small aeroplane over the strait when he reported to personnel at a local airport that a strange object was buzzing his plane. 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. Victoria has several marine national parks in Bass Strait, and are all adjacent to the mainland coastline: A number of oil and gas fields exist in the eastern portion of Bass Strait, in what is known as the Gippsland Basin. These incidents have come to be woven into an ongoing discussion about unidentified aerial phenomena, traditionally known as UFOs. The Panama Canal: Interlinking the Atlantic Ocean with . And they all affect what happens on its surface. The issue of planes, ships and people having been lost in the strait over time has spawned a number of theories. The project, which could have 250 wind turbines within a 574km2 (222sqmi) area, is projected to deliver around 8,000GWh of electricity, representing some 18 per cent of Victoria's power usage and replacing a large part of the output of Hazelwood Power Station, which was closed in early 2017. Unclear images of the drones are also attached to the report, though few details can be made out: Based on these documents, the U.S. Navy had at least eight distinct encounters with groups of multiple drones in the waters off California in 2019. On 5 December, Tasman was following the east coast northward to see how far it went. Youve got waves colliding with your currents, says Nichol, and thats where you get very steep, very dangerous waves forming. "Purists occasionally spark up and say that . 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). Strong tides flow through the relatively narrow and shallow Strait and timing is critical to avoid meeting huge, washing machine seas or being flushed out of the Strait in the . There are seemingly certain parts of the world where strange things are seen and even stranger things happen. 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. Ive seen it pretty gnarly, he says. Sometimes then, youll have the westerlies and southerlies interacting in and around Bass Strait in ways that can be quite tricky to predict exactly, he says. Ever since Bass Strait was charted by George Bass and Matthew Flinders in 1798, many ship's captains have decided to risk the dangerous passage to shorten the time needed to reach Sydney. Meaning of place name. 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. The widest opening is about 350km (220mi) between Cape Portland on the northeastern tip of Tasmania and Point Hicks on the Australian mainland. 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. The first windsurfer crossing was in 1982 by Mark Paul and Les Tokolyi. The timeline also indicates that Bunker Hill's AN/SPY-1 radar system held "valid tracks" of the drones, including up to an altitude of 21,000 feet. Sea strait between the Australian mainland and Tasmania, Map of Australia with Bass Strait marked in light blue. It also indicates that the UAS incident continued after the Bass Strait departed the area. After a dash to Flinders Island, the crew of the 40-foot cutter Anastasia joined David for a nice hot "cuppa". The veteran sailor, who had completed the race many times before, had seen the forecasts for strong winds on the journey south. The winds get funnelled through Bass Straight & can cause seriously rough seas. The second thing to know is that this very spot is where the East Australian Current stops. A reference to both the drones and the RF data can be seen below: In addition to the USS Russell, the USS Paul Hamilton also reported observing multiple drones on July 30th. These concerns are shared broadly throughout the military and United States government. Thus, when a southwesterly sea storm, blowing at 80 - 160 km/hr collides, head-on, with a northesasterly katabatic wind blowing at similar strength, the result is a kind of atmospheric hammer-and-anvil effect. These events were significantly less clear than the earlier incidents. Bass boats are made to float on the water. It is not man-made like the canals. The Ticonderoga class cruiser USS Bunker Hill (BKH) noted as many as 11 drones operating nearby. Notably, the public affairs statement characterizes the behavior of the drones as dangerous, and not in accordance with the rules of the road or internationally recognized maritime customs.. Half of the world's attacks now take place in the waters off Indonesia, Singapore and . It should be noted that in this time period, records show that some ships appear to have deployed and trained with a variety of counter drone technologies and techniques. Last year Marine General Kenneth McKenzie Jr. said that drones are "the most concerning tactical development since the rise of the improvised explosive device in Iraq." Bass Strait is shallow. 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. The War Zone previously laid out this reality and its implications in great detail in this feature. He then claimed that the object had moved directly in front of his plane; the airport personnel then heard a metallic "scraping" sound, followed by silence. Blom, W. M., & Alsop, D. B. It conjures images of strength, stability, safety and . It is part of the Australia-New Zealand border and is a major shipping route. You can see evidence of old sand dunes that should be on the coastline that are now 50 or 60 metres underwater, he says. 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]. Why is the Cook Strait so dangerous? Arguably, the year-long confusion surrounding the leaked footage from the USS Russell attests to this problem. Monnik noted that in recent years it has become more common for criminals to use one or more drones as a canary to assess the defenses of a target. The Basslink HVDC electrical cable has been in service since 2006. Pipelines from the Otway Basin gas fields lead to several processing facilities in the vicinity of Port Campbell (Iona Gas Plant and Otway Gas Plant). Perhaps best known by many voyagers as a dangerous corridor of storm-force winds and breaking seas, the eastern end of Bass Strait was the scene of disaster in the 1998 Sydney-Hobart Race when six sailors lost their lives. The team at DroneSec also spoke to the complexity of comprehensively defending against drone threats, emphasizing that no single technical solution exists yet. 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". It is still one of Australias most well-known UFO cases on record. 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. As this heat map below from CSIRO shows, it moves vast amounts of warm water from the Coral Sea south down the coast. The circumstances of these incidents vary widely. WEIGHING 10,000lbs, this colossal Monster Truck is not for the faint-hearted. To date, more than four billion barrels of crude oil and around eight trillion cubic feet of gas have been . Will Oxley expected the 1998 Sydney to Hobart yacht race to be a rough one. Jamie founded Listverse due to an insatiable desire to share fascinating, obscure, and bizarre facts. East Coast of the United States this year. Owing to the various currents and weather systems that move through it, and also due to its shallow depth (varying around 50 . The smaller airports in the north of the state and on the islands in the strait are served either by Regional Express Airlines, QantasLink or King Island Airlines. The Russell has attracted particular attention in the last year as the vessel that captured the leaked flying triangle footage. Why the Taiwan issue is so dangerous. Whether the object in the picture is connected to Valentichs disappearance or not is open to debate, but it is considered to be a genuine picture (in that there has been no manipulation of the image).[1]. The existence of the strait had been suggested in 1797 by the master of Sydney Cove when he reached Sydney after deliberately grounding his foundering ship and being stranded on Preservation Island (at the eastern end of the strait). The strait was named after George Bass, after he and Matthew Flinders sailed across it while circumnavigating Van Diemen's Land (now named Tasmania) in the Norfolk in 179899. 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. It doesnt take a geoscientist to work out what might happen here, when tonnes and tonnes of water, sometimes flowing at 90 centimetres a second, hit kilometre-high walls: a lot of movement - or, in technical parlance, upwelling - where deep water is forced up the canyon walls and meets the surface. Almost a year following the disappearance of the Miss Hobart airliner, another plane, the Loina, would vanish while traveling from Melbourne to Tasmania. Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made. DroneSec CEO Mike Monnik told us that incidents involving multiple drones have increased significantly worldwide since 2019. Bering, Gibraltar, Bab-el-Mandeb, Bosporus and Torres, etc. [23], In terms of dinghy sailing many crossings have been made but in March 2005 Australian Olympic medallist Michael Blackburn set a record when he crossed the strait in just over 13 hours in a Laser sailing dinghy. Like the Tasman Sea, the Bass Strait is heavily influenced by weather patterns and at the same time, the severity of the waves varies depending on which side of the Strait you are on. lunchables pepperoni pizza [6] Tasman was on a mission to find the Southern Continent, not more islands, so he abruptly turned away to the east and continued his continent hunting. It is bounded in the north by the state of Victoria and in the south by Tasmania. Perhaps more intriguing were several reports from other witnesses, who stated that the larger craft was trailed by five other independent craft, either giving chase or acting as a guide unit, depending on which report you listen to. Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray took pains to emphasize in a recent congressional hearing that the military "train as they would fight." [3] The strait between the Furneaux Islands and Tasmania is Banks Strait, a subdivision of Bass Strait. Then, without warning, it shot upward at an amazing pace and vanished. He has noticed that as the water becomes more shallow, the waves tend to stand up quite a lot. According to Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray, the video was definitively identified as an unmanned aerial system (UAS) following a second swarm event that occurred off the East Coast of the United States this year. Although many questions remain about these incidents, one thing is clear. This occurred during the last glacial maximum (18,000BP) when the basin was completely isolated. If the wave height above 1,5 meter (4 ft 9 in) swimming is forbidden. [16]:484 Large gas fields include the Whiptail field, the Barracouta Field, the Snapper Field, and the Marlin Field. The USS Russell in particular is known to have these systems onboard prior to the incident on July 30th. An email dated July 14, 2019, sent while the incident was in progress, stated that there was a pause between periods of UAS activity. He made two more crossings of Bass Strait before he died attempting to cross the Tasman Sea in February 2007. Updated June 16, 2022. Among the new documents released to us is this briefing slide, which depicts the course of the Bass Strait relative to the Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Paul Hamilton, also abbreviated here as PHM, as it transited to a scheduled port call in Long Beach, California. By Les Christie @CNNMoney July 27, 2012: 5:47 AM ET. And the most dangerous fishing ground is the Northeast Coast, where fishermen go after groundfish the bottom-dwelling species like flounder, sole and cod. In the coming days the sea will remain rough. A note on the slide states that the cruiser unsuccessfully attempted to contact the Bass Strait. His crew named the passage Cook Strait in his honour. 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. It is 22 kilometres (14 mi) wide at its narrowest point, and is considered one of the most dangerous and unpredictable waters in the world. He has been a guest speaker on numerous national radio and television stations and is a five time published author. bangalore north university migration certificate; deborah tannen gender theory; fertility and sterility science impact factor. 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. The actual whirlpool in the strait is only a danger to very small vessels, and even then only in extreme circumstances. Fovex Strait. Cutting through Tasmania and the Australian mainland, more than fifty small islands also reside within the Bass Strait. DroneSec cited a 2020 Department of Justice audit focused on the use of drones in delivering prison contraband as an example of how swarm technology is increasingly used in practice. The ominous reputation of the Bass Strait goes back to its very discovery in 1797, when the vessel Sydney Cove, . Spiders fill the jungles of the Darin Gap, but one of the most "medically important" is the Brazilian Wandering spider. [31], Rod Harris, Ian and Peter Richards are credited with the first kayak crossing in 1971. 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. The . Any crossing of Bass Strait inevitably involves big swell and wild weather. A timeline of events shows that the surveillance lasted for just under four hours. The terseness of the deck logs and limitations in AIS data left several unanswered questions, such as the origin of the drones and the specifics of their flight behavior. 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). 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]. These systems can move very quickly and are notoriously difficult to predict. 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