November 2022 – Volume Twenty-Eight, Number Eleven
Celebrating our 28th year!
EXPEDITION NEWS, founded in 1994, is the monthly review of significant expeditions, research projects and newsworthy adventures. It is distributed online to media representatives, corporate sponsors, educators, research librarians, explorers, environmentalists, and outdoor enthusiasts. This forum on exploration covers projects that stimulate, motivate and educate.
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SEARCH FOR THE COLOSSAL SQUID
An international expedition is heading to Antarctica in December to find and film the world's largest squid in the deep sea for the first time. This collaborative effort spearheaded by ocean non-profit KOLOSSAL is organized between a polar tourism vessel, underwater technologists, and marine biologists, to repeatedly deploy deep sea cameras into the Southern Ocean to try and uncover the biological mysteries of the colossal squid.
The goal is to find and study the colossal squid before 2025, the hundred-year anniversary of the first discovery of the species. The groups have launched a crowdfunding campaign to support the expedition until Nov. 17 with the Experiment Foundation, and so far exceeded their $9,611 fundraising goal.
The colossal squid is the largest invertebrate in the world, and one of the largest ocean predators. It has the largest eye in the animal kingdom, about the size of a dinner plate. It could weigh as much as 750 kg (1,650 lb.) or more, and the total length is approximately 10-12 meters (~30-40 ft.). It is believed to live primarily in the deep sea in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica. Only a few whole specimens have been found, and it's never been observed in its natural habitat, the deep sea.
"The colossal squid is an oversized poster species for how little we know about the ocean," said Matt Mulrennan, marine scientist, an organizer of the expedition and founder/CEO of KOLOSSAL.
"It's the largest invertebrate on our planet, with the world's biggest eye, hooked tentacles, and likely glows in the dark, does it get any cooler than that?"
The team is surveying locations in the Antarctic Peninsula onboard the tourism vessel Ocean Endeavour operated by Intrepid Travel to observe the colossal squid's behavior and raise awareness about conservation priorities for the Southern Ocean.
For more information:
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Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 |
EXPEDITION NOTES
Andes Rugby Team Crash Recalled 50 Years Later
The Andes crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 happened a little over 50 years ago on October 13, 1972. A rugby team heading to Chile crashed straight into an Andean peak at 14,200 feet. Sixteen of the 45 passengers survived 72 days trapped on a glacier, isolated from civilization and having to resort to eating the bodies of the dead to survive, drying human flesh on the fuselage in the high altitude sun. (See EN, March 2019).
In those 72 days, they endured extreme cold temperatures, avalanches, starvation and dehydration and ultimately two of them climbed out of the Andes to bring helicopters to rescue the other survivors, some of whom by then were afraid of flying.
The high altitude nightmare – an incredible and grisly story of survival against all odds – spawned books, movies and documentaries. It also changed the life of Broomfield, Colorado, musician and explorer Ricardo Pena.
On February 12, 2005, Pena discovered the jacket, passport and wallet of survivor Eduardo Strauch high in an unexplored gully above the glacier where the passengers, dressed minimally for warm spring weather, experienced their epic survival story.
“When I first saw the jacket, I thought I was in an Indiana Jones movie,” he said.
In December 2005, with a grant from National Geographic, Ricardo lead the first expedition to cross the Andes by the historic escape route completed by survivors Roberto Canessa and Nando Parrado in 1972. This was done in the same month as the survivors did to experience the challenge of similar snow conditions. This story was featured on the cover of the April 2006 National Geographic Adventure magazine.
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Ricardo Pena (right) shows the armrest from the ill-fated aircraft to author and mountaineer Gerry Roach, an Everest summiteer in 1983, and the second person to climb the highest peak on each of the seven continents in 1985.
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Exactly 50 years after the date of the crash, Pena told members of The Explorers Club last month that due to climate change, more and more of the aircraft is being revealed. “It’s such a dramatic reminder visiting the site that people were really there,” he said during his presentation.
This December, Pena plans to return to the crash site, for the first time during the time of the year that coincides with the dates they were there: December 6-11, 2022.
To become part of Pena’s next expedition to the site, see:
https://alpineexpeditions.net/andes-survivors/, info@alpineexpeditions.net
Watch his October 2022 presentation here:
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On the right, UF Professor Tracie Baker, DVM, PhD, the lead scientist,
works in the field with colleagues and students
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Expedition Team Studies Everglades,
the “Environmental Kidneys” of Florida
A team of five that included a female University of Florida professor as its lead scientist has completed a 130-mile canoe expedition across the Florida Everglades to assess the impact of humans on the world’s largest subtropical wilderness. The group retraced an 1897 canoe journey that was first completed by explorer and scientist Hugh de Laussat Willoughby (1856 - 1939).
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Hugh L. Willoughby in his canoe he named Hissee.
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The team of experienced explorers and guides sampled and tested for the same water constituents that Willoughby did more than a century ago. Willoughby’s charts aided in creating the first accurate maps of the region, and his water sampling provided the baseline water chemistry for the Everglades.
The expedition across the largest remaining subtropical wilderness in America was primarily focused on applying modern scientific investigations to one of the planet’s most important watersheds.
To gauge humanity’s impact on the Florida Everglades, a UNESCO Wetland Area of Global Importance, the 2022 Willoughby Expedition team looked for water pollutants that Willoughby couldn’t have foreseen, including microplastics, perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), pesticides, pharmaceuticals and antibiotic-resistant genes, all of which are adversely affecting plant and animal species globally.
The coast-to-coast expedition commemorated the 75th anniversary of Everglades National Park. It traversed the saltwater of the Gulf of Mexico, the brackish water of inland rivers, pristine freshwater sawgrass, canals in suburban Miami, and ultimately, through a maze of skyscrapers to Biscayne Bay.
The Florida Everglades is one of the world’s best-known and most visited watersheds, serving as the “environmental kidneys” of Florida by filtering and cleaning water from the central and southern part of the state. Its water quality directly impacts more than 12 million people and thousands of plant and animal species.
Today, the Everglades has been reduced to approximately one-third its original size to make way for the modern cities of South Florida and their millions of residents.
The team used both SPOT and Garmin InReach to allow students to follow along.
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Bradford Washburn’s “Lost Cache” Found after 85 Years
Outdoor exploration media company Teton Gravity Research (TGR) announced late last month that a recent expedition, led by professional mountaineer Griffin Post, has discovered a historic cache of camera equipment and mountaineering gear abandoned by legendary mountaineers Bradford Washburn, one of the most legendary aerial photographers in history, and Robert Bates in 1937. Washburn and Bates were forced to abandon the gear while attempting to escape the mountains with their lives.
Now, 85 years later, the TGR team has discovered the Washburn-Bates cache of gear on the remote Walsh Glacier in Kluane National Park and Reserve, on the Traditional Territory of the Kluane First Nation, located in Canada’s Yukon Territory.
Among the relics discovered was a significant portion of Washburn’s Fairchild F-8 aerial camera, an item that was successfully extracted from the ice. This camera is believed to be Bradford Washburn’s first-ever aerial photography camera – a format in which he gained worldwide notoriety. In addition to the Fairchild F-8, the team retrieved two motion picture cameras: a DeVry “Lunchbox” model and a Bell & Howell Eyemo 71A, with film still loaded in both motion cameras, along with several pieces of mountaineering equipment.
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Griffin Post and Dr. Dora Medrzycka on the glacier. (Photo courtesy TGR) |
Griffin was joined by glaciologist Dorota (Dora) Medrzycka, who leveraged innovative glacial mapping processes to determine where the cache may have moved over decades on the glacier. Her team at The University of Ottawa supported Dora remotely, led by Dr. Luke Copland. Upon finding the cache, the expedition team meticulously documented its location and then reported the find to Parks Canada, the agency that oversees national parks in Canada.
The discovery of the Washburn-Bates cache unlocks never-before-known glacial movement data. Until now, scientists only had data on the glacier's movements dating back to the 1960s. This new find enables scientists to better understand how the velocity and thickness of Walsh Glacier have changed over a longer period than is available from almost any other data source.
They will be working with a team of scientists and digital experts to find and save any images on the cameras, according to a TGR spokesperson.
Teton Gravity’s expedition was made possible by Sierra Nevada Brewing Company and by Protect Our Winters.
Read an interview with Griffin Post here:
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Erick Cedeno follows the route of the famed Bicycle Corps. |
Bicycle Nomad Retraces the Route of the Legendary All-Black Bicycle Corps
Erick Cedeño, 48, an adventurer from Santa Monica, California, successfully retraced the route of the 25th Infantry “Buffalo Soldier” Bicycle Corps from Missoula, Montana, to St. Louis, Missouri this summer. He cycled almost 2,000 miles over 40-days to recreate the trip by 20 Black soldiers in 1897.
This had been a dream of his for years, and the finish in St. Louis on the 125th anniversary of the original trip garnered national attention and moved Cedeño to tears. The mayor of St. Louis decried that July 24th shall now be known as “Iron Riders Day,” as Cedeno arrived at the Missouri History Museum to the applause of 50 well-wishers.
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The All-Black Bicycle Corps (photo: University of Montana) |
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In 1897, the U.S. Army’s all-Black 25th Infantry Regiment Bicycle Corps embarked on an epic bicycle ride of more than 1,900 miles from Fort Missoula, Montana, to St. Louis, Missouri, as part of an experiment by the U.S. Army to determine the effectiveness of moving troops by bicycle.
Called “The Great Experiment” in national newspapers, the journey took 41 days to complete.
The route for the experiment closely followed the Northern Pacific and Burlington railroads through Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska and Missouri, and was chosen specifically to experience as many different conditions, climates and landscape formations as possible.
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“The beauty of traveling by bicycle through history is doing the research. No one handed me a book for this trip and said, ‘This is the route. This is where they stayed.’ So we had to recreate that, and we had to figure it out. And then when you're out there, it just tastes different. It’s a sweeter place,” Cedeño tells the Blackburndesign.com website, one of the bikepacker’s sponsors. He was also sponsored by Niner Bikes.
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Learn more about the Bicycle Corps here:
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Victor Vescovo with Dr. Kathy Sullivan, the first woman to the bottom of Challenger Deep. |
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Explorer Victor Vescovo Sells to
American Billionaire Gabe Newell’s Inkfish
Deep ocean explorer and retired U.S. Navy veteran CDR Victor L. Vescovo, USN (Ret.) has closed a transaction to sell his deep ocean exploration system, also referred to as Triton Submarines’ Hadal Exploration System (HES), including the research ship DSSV Pressure Drop and ultra-deep diving submersible DSV Limiting Factor, to the marine research organization Inkfish.
Inkfish will dedicate the system to a multi-year scientific mission to continue
explorations of the world’s deepest, unexplored areas of the oceans. Terms of the
transaction were not disclosed.
Vescovo’s explorations over the past five years have included the Five Deeps
Expedition of 2018-2019 which saw the first human descent to the deepest points in all five of the world’s oceans.
“After managing and personally diving the system for more than four years, I’ll be looking forward to taking a bit of a break and re-focusing on my private equity and venture capital investments which allowed me to personally fund this entire set of expeditions in the first place,” he said.
Some of the technologies that Vescovo suggested need further development
include improved visibility through “virtual windows,” better manipulator systems, improved ultra-deep sonar and navigation systems, as well as further improvements in full ocean depth-capable remotely operated and autonomous vehicles.
The new owner of the HES will be Inkfish, a marine research organization. In
purchasing the system, Inkfish will continue to explore the most remote regions of the ocean and bring new scientific information to the world.
Learn more here:
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“The forest of the Amazons is not merely trees and shrubs. It is not land. It is another element. Its inhabitants are arborean; they have been fashioned for life in that medium as fishes to the seas and birds to the air. Its green apparition is persistent, as the sky is and the ocean. In months of travel it is the horizon which the traveler cannot reach.’’
– H.M. Tomlinson, English, (1873 - 1958), a British writer and journalist who traveled along 2,000 miles of the Amazonian rivers in the early 1900s. (Source: The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey by Candice Millard (Anchor Books, 2005).
MEDIA MATTERS
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The team expects to encounter a range of marine wildlife including the fearsome common fangtooth, which was identified on previous trips. (Photo courtesy CEFAS) |
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UK Research Ship Leaves for Saint Helena and Ascension
A research ship has left from Southampton in southern England, on a 9,000-mile expedition to the South Atlantic Ocean. The Royal Research Ship (RRS) Discovery is making the six-week voyage to survey the seabed off Ascension Island and St Helena. During the trip, the team of scientists onboard will use underwater cameras to explore hydrothermal vents on the 4000m deep (13,123ft) seabed. They hope to gather and analyze samples and find previously unknown species.
The ship is sailing as part of the UK Government's Blue Belt Programme - an international maritime conservation scheme. Saint Helena and Ascension have been chosen as they are home to two of the world's largest Marine Protected Areas and host a variety of species, such as whale sharks, yellowfin tuna, humpback whales, and green turtles.
The ship is expected to arrive in early December.
Read the full story here:
Learn more about the ship here:
EXPEDITION FUNDING
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Fly Me to the Moon: Space For Humanity Sponsors Citizen Astronauts
We could all benefit from exposure to the Overview Effect – a cognitive shift reported by some astronauts while looking down on the Earth from space. Researchers have characterized the effect as "a state of awe with self-transcendent qualities, precipitated by a particularly striking visual stimulus.”
As space travel becomes more privatized, one nonprofit based in Denver wants to send ordinary citizens into the cosmos, expanding access to space for all of humanity.
And they’re willing to pay for it.
Space for Humanity, founded in 2017 by space exploration industry pioneer, investor, futurist, and philanthropist Dylan Taylor, is sponsoring a group of exceptional leaders to join the world’s first Citizen Astronaut Sponsorship Program.
On December 11, 2021, Taylor flew aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket on NS-19 and became the 606th human to enter space and the 592th human to cross the Karman Line.
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Executive director Rachel Lyons wants to democratize space travel and help more people reach for the stars. (Photo courtesy: katdamin.com)
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Each year, a new crew is selected from a diverse group of leaders from around the globe.
To date, over 8,000 applications from 120 countries have been received; so far they’ve sponsored two citizen astronauts on space flights. Now both lucky space travelers are expected to share their Overview-informed worldview far and wide, creating a ripple effect, according to executive director Rachel Lyons who has experienced weightlessness on the Vomit Comet.
Under her leadership, Space For Humanity has received public support from some of the space industry's most prominent and influential leaders including Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, NASA astronauts and others.
“We’re committed to exploring and expanding perspectives to solve our greatest problems on earth,” she tells EN.
More sponsored passengers will be selected as both Virgin Galactic and Blue Origins ramp up. The current deadline for applications is Nov. 15, 2022.
Says Alan Stern, principal investigator of the NASA New Horizon Mission, “The opportunity for space exploration is the next step in humanity’s journey to expanding our perspective and using that experience to foster a culture of interconnectedness here on Earth.”
To apply, see:
EXPEDITION MARKETING
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Get Snapping
Two upcoming solar eclipses are bringing out entrepreneurs. University of Colorado professor Dr. Douglas Duncan, a former Hubble Space Telescope astronomer and former director of the school’s Fiske Planetarium, has developed Solar Snaps in time for the big annular solar eclipse on Oct. 14, 2023, visible in the U.S. West; and the April 8, 2024, total solar eclipse that will cross Mexico, the central and eastern United States, and portions of Canada offering over four minutes of totality in places.
“At several recent eclipses, I noticed people trying to take photos of the partially-eclipsed sun with their phones. And, being a professor, I notice younger people especially really love their phones and documenting what they experience. But phones were not designed to take pictures of a bright orange circle on a black background,” he tells EN.
“What’s more, sunlight is strong enough to damage a phone camera just like it can damage your eye if it is not protected.”
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The solution was Solar Snap, a set of filters for mobile phones attached by Velcro, and a set of eclipse glasses. Once attached, photograph and share the solar phenomena through the included app. It sells online for $12.99.
WEB WATCH
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A big dinosaur needs a big toy. |
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Greatest Unboxing Video of All Time
Kids love opening presents, playing with toys, birthdays, and holidays. Adults get in the act as well creating untold number of unboxing videos online.
Yes, unboxing videos are a thing.
As the name suggests, an unboxing video shows someone taking a product out of its box. They usually feature the product in its original packaging from the manufacturer, so viewers can see exactly what is included if they also decide to purchase the product.
The greatest unboxing video of all time has got to be American paleontologist and geologist Kenneth Lacovara unboxing a toy Mattel dinosaur. What makes this noteworthy is that the dinosaur is the one he discovered and the one he named, and one featured in the recent theatrical film Jurassic World Dominion (2022).
In September 2014, Lacovara's 2005 discovery of the giant titanosaur,
Dreadnoughtus schrani, was published by the journal Scientific Reports, making international headlines. It is the most complete skeleton of a giant titanosaur discovered to date.
Dreadnoughtus (“fears nothing”), at 85 feet and 65 tons, is the largest dinosaur ever found.
Lacovara is the founding director of the Edelman Fossil Park of Rowan University, a 65-acre property in southern New Jersey, soon home to the Edelman Fossil Park Museum set for completion in May 2023.
Watch the unboxing video here, just in time for the holidays:
It’s a big dinosaur that comes at a big price. Order it for $70 from www.target.com.
ON THE HORIZON
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Shipwreck explorer Joe Fiorentino is a featured speaker at Sea Stories, Nov. 12, 2022. |
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Sea Stories, Explorers Club Headquarters,
46 E. 70, New York, Nov. 12, 2022
On Saturday, November 12, 2022, the Explorers Club will host its annual Sea Stories, a day focused on ocean exploration, scuba diving and marine life at its headquarters in Manhattan. Speakers include Jennifer Idol on sharks; Alexandra Rose, polar exploration; Martin Broen, underwater cave systems; Victor Vescovo, the Pacific’s Mariana Trench; and Joe Fiorentino, the HMS Feversham shipwreck, among others.
For more information:
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Travel With Purpose, A Field Guide to Voluntourism (Rowman & Littlefield) by Jeff Blumenfeld – Travel has come roaring back and so has voluntourism. Be ready to lend a hand wherever you go. How to travel and make a difference while you see the world. Read excerpts and “Look Inside” at: tinyurl.com/voluntourismbook
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Get Sponsored! – Need money for your next project? Read about proven techniques that will help you find both cash and in-kind sponsors. If the trip is bigger than you, and is designed to help others, well, that’s half the game right there. Read Jeff Blumenfeld’s "Get Sponsored: A Funding Guide for Explorers, Adventurers and Would Be World Travelers." (Skyhorse Publishing).
Buy it here:
EXPEDITION NEWS is published by Blumenfeld and Associates, LLC, 290 Laramie Blvd., Boulder, CO 80304 USA. Tel. 203 326 1200, editor@expeditionnews.com. Editor/publisher: Jeff Blumenfeld. Research editor: Lee Kovel. ©2022 Blumenfeld and Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN: 1526-8977. Subscriptions: US$36/yr. available by e-mail only. Credit card payments accepted through www.paypal.com. Read EXPEDITION NEWS at www.expeditionnews.com.
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