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April 2025 – Volume Thirty-One, Number Four
Celebrating our 31th 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.
| | The 125-ft. R/V Robert Gray has a 5,000 nm range and 30-plus days endurance. | | |
CIRCUMNAVIGATION-NORTH AMERICAN MARINE MICROBE SURVEY PREPARES FOR JOURNEY THROUGH NORTHWEST PASSAGE
At press time, six explorers on the Circumnavigation-North American Marine Microbe Survey Expedition (cNAMMs) were 5,500 miles into their encirclement of North America in a 125-ft. oceanographic research vessel named R/V Robert Gray. Early last month, it sailed for nine hours nonstop through the Panama Canal.
The Explorers Club flag expedition left San Diego in January for the first leg of its journey. Currently, the vessel is berthed in Charleston, South Carolina, for repairs and upgrades. The second leg departs in July for the Northwest Passage, will round Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, then transit south to Oakland, California.
Thomas J. Dietz, Ph. D., Director/Field Scientist, of the GAC Research Institute, Novato, California, is the expedition leader. He originated and planned the expedition, solicited and enlisted global scientific collaborators, secured funding, and recruited the scientific team.
Previously, he led another Explorers Club flag project – the 2023 AirDNA Expedition – that resulted in new methods for studying atmospheric microbe biodiversity, isolating microbes from the atmosphere and identifying the presence of unique extremophile microbes.
| | Expedition maps study of marine microbes around North America. | |
“An annual circumnavigation of North America, through the Northwest Passage and the Panama Canal, will allow reproducible seasonal and annual collections of marine microbes and their categorization. This can potentially generate important information of the effects of a changing climate and the use of microbial populations as climate change biomarkers,” Dietz writes in his flag application.
The $150,000 first leg cost of the project is supported by private donors, Basecamp Research Institute, GAC Research Institute, The Voyagers Club, and pending grants.
For more information:
Thomas J. Dietz, Ph.D., GAC Research Institute, tjdietz415@gmail.com, gentadv.com, voyagersclub.org.
EXPEDITION UPDATE
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66 Million Years Later, New Jersey Fossil Park & Museum Opens
An event 66 million years in the making, one we mentioned in the April 2019 issue of EN, took place last month near Rowan University in New Jersey. The $75 million Edelman Fossil Park & Museum officially opened on the site of a prehistoric treasure trove of relics just 20 minutes from Philadelphia.
| | Paleontologist Dr. Ken Lacovara, the founding executive director of the museum. | | |
The dinosaur-themed museum is a 44,000-square-foot facility overlooking a four-acre, 41-foot-deep fossil-filled sand quarry. More than 100,000 fossils from over 100 species, including mosasaurs, marine crocodiles, sea turtles, and sharks, have been unearthed, underscoring the site’s significance, according to paleontologist Dr. Ken Lacovara, the founding executive director of the museum.
Visitors can dig for real fossils as part of the experience and keep them.
The museum showcases a collection of life-sized recreations of dinosaurs and other extinct creatures. It also features immersive galleries that bring the age of the dinosaur to life. One of the museum’s exhibits include a recreated Dryptosaurus, the first discovered tyrannosaur, which was found one mile from the fossil park site in 1866, and a 53-foot mosasaur, like one discovered at the fossil park site.
Look inside the museum courtesy of CBS News Philadelphia (March 20):
https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/edelman-fossil-park-museum-of-rowan-university/
For more information:
www.efm.org
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In 1961 John F. Kennedy was the first president to use the Resolute desk in the Oval Office.
Stanley Tretick's October 2, 1963, photo of John F. Kennedy Jr.
shows him playing in the desk's kneehole.
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Oval Office Resolute Desk has Strong Link to Exploration;
Removal is Apparently Snot Permanent
The Resolute desk, also known as the Hayes desk, is a nineteenth-century partners desk used by several U.S. presidents in the White House as the Oval Office desk, including the five most recent presidents. The desk was a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880 and was built from the oak timbers of the British Arctic exploration ship HMS Resolute.
HMS Resolute was abandoned in the Arctic in 1854 while searching for Sir John Franklin and his lost expedition. The ship was found in 1855 by the George Henry, an American whaling ship, then was repaired and returned to the United Kingdom in 1856 as a gesture of goodwill from the U.S. The ship was decommissioned in 1879, broken up, and had three desks constructed from its timbers.
In May 1845, Sir John Franklin, a British explorer, launched an expedition to find the Northwest Passage. Using two of the Royal Navy's best ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, stocked with enough provisions to last three years, he charted a course through Baffin Bay, located between Baffin Island and the west coast of Greenland. All 129 crew members perished.
Last February, President Donald Trump temporarily replaced the iconic Resolute desk in the Oval Office with the C&O desk, also known as the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway desk. This change occurred after Elon Musk's four-year-old son, X, was seen picking his nose and possibly wiping it on the historic desk during a White House visit.
President Trump, known for his germaphobia, ordered the Resolute desk to be sent for refurbishment, stating that the desk was being "lightly refinished" and would be returned to its place afterward, according to the New York Post (Feb. 20).
See the story here:
https://tinyurl.com/Resoluteremoved
| | Lifelong Nessie investigator Adrian Shine helped identify the camera once it was pulled to the surface. (Photo: National Oceanography Centre) | | |
Boaty McBoatface Rescues 55-Year-Old Nessie Camera
An underwater camera from 1970 that had been submerged to capture evidence of the Loch Ness Monster has been discovered by accident, according to CBS News (April 1).
The U.K.'s National Oceanography Centre was conducting a routine test of one of their autonomous underwater vehicles, named Boaty McBoatface, when it happened upon the camera system at a depth of around 590 feet.
The camera is thought to have been submerged 55 years ago as part of the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau's first attempt to use underwater photography in their search for Nessie in the Scottish Highlands. Once recovered, the Instamatic film did not reveal any evidence of the Loch Ness Monster.
| | Drawing of the Boaty AUV that discovered the long-lost Nessie camera. | | |
The Boaty nickname pays homage to a March 2016 #NameOurShip online poll to name the £200 million polar scientific research ship being constructed for the United Kingdom's Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). Not known for a sense of humor, the Minister for Universities and Science instead named the ship the RRS Sir David Attenborough, after the eminent English zoologist and broadcaster, who came fourth in the poll. Boaty was instead used to title the vessel’s six AUVs.
Observers of contemporary culture later coined the term "McBoatfacing," defined as "making the critical mistake of letting the internet decide things."
See the story here:
https://tinyurl.com/BoatyCamera
| | China has some of its best people working on this one. | | |
Forever May She Wave
For Apollo 11's moon landing, NASA used a standard 3-by-5-foot nylon flag attached to a telescoping flagpole with a horizontal crossbar. It was designed to appear "flying" even without wind, and the assembly was designed to be compact and lightweight.
Now China is planning to do it one better. Engineers on China's Chang'e-7 mission, a 2026 unmanned landing to the moon's south pole in search of traces of water ice, will make its collapsible flag flutter through the interaction of electromagnetic fields.
A notable aspect of the Deep Space Exploration Laboratory (DSEL) is the inclusion of an educational payload inspired by elementary school students from Changsha, central China's Hunan Province. The payload is designed to make a flag appear to wave on the moon's surface, despite the absence of an atmosphere.
Using electromagnetic interactions, closed-loop wires embedded within the flag will carry alternating currents, generating magnetic fields to create the waving motion.
Watch the video:
https://tinyurl.com/Chinesemoonflag
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Whether we fly over it, sail across it, or simply stand on a shore to stare at it, the ocean appears immense. We must remember that what we are seeing is not really the ocean, but merely the entrance to it.
“Beyond that entrance is a world hostile to humans, yet critical to our survival.”
– Australia non-fiction author Jeff Maynard in The Frontier Below: The Past, Present and Future of Our Quest to Go Deeper Underwater (William Collins, 2023)
EXPEDITION FOCUS
| | Artist’s conception of the steamboat Arabia before it sank in 1856. | | |
Time Capsule from the American West:
1841 Missouri River Steamboat Resurfaces in Farmer’s Cornfield
In 2016, David Hawley, a former Kansas City, Missouri, HVAC executive made a startling discovery in a Missouri farmer’s cornfield. It was the mud-encased buried wreck of the 140-ft. side wheeled steamboat USS Malta which sank in 1841. Seems that field was once beneath the Missouri river until the “Big Muddy” changed course.
Using old maps, newspaper archives, and a proton magnetometer, the Malta was found lying 53 feet down in silt and topsoil beneath a cornfield near Malta Bend, Missouri, 1,000 feet south of the present path of the Missouri river.
Working with his own drill rig, Hawley, 65, confirmed the location, hitting solid wood, and subsequently pulling up 150 gold buttons, fabric, well-preserved ceramics, and a large iron hook, indicating the presence of the ill-fated Malta and its cargo.
Now the amateur historian with a shock of Conan O’Brien red hair and a slight southern accent, wants to excavate the steamboat and put it on display, along with its thousands of restored artifacts.
| | The Arabia is excavated in the late 1980s. | |
If you’re wondering if he’s up to the multi-year, estimated $4-5 million recovery of Malta, look no further than his Arabia Steamboat Museum, in Kansas City, Missouri, located about 90 miles east of the Malta site.
Now a major tourist attraction, it houses a previous excavation dating to 1988, that of the USS Arabia, a 222-ton paddle-wheeler that sank in 1856 after hitting the trunk of a submerged walnut tree lying beneath the treacherous currents. Similar “snags” sank hundreds of steamboats from the 1820s to the 1870s; Hawley knows the location of 12.
The Arabia’s payload buried 45 feet down was protected from light and oxygen and was remarkably well preserved, according to Hawley.
Says Antique Roadshow appraiser Tim Gordon who visited the museum but has yet to set a price for the collection, "You pull back that curtain, and bang, you are in 1856. I've never had a reality check like examining these artifacts…truly, it's a time warp,"
| | Recovered items on display from the Arabia, a floating 1850s Walmart. | |
The Arabia exhibition, which opened in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1991, is considered a time capsule of life on the American frontier in the mid-19th century containing everyday objects that made life possible for pioneers in the 1800s.
Gordon, the appraiser, calls it the “King Tut’s Tomb” of the American West. It’s a 171-ft. long floating Walmart containing the largest single collection of pre-Civil War artifacts in the world – from fine China and carpentry tools to childrens toys, 4,000 shoes including one-of-a-kind buffalo-fur slippers, and the world’s oldest pickles –bright green sweet pickles that are still edible.
Restoration of sunken steamboats is now Hawley’s full-time mission. Not surprisingly, funding is a challenge. Excavation of the Malta is also delayed until he has a suitable location for display, possibly in an expanded Steamboat Arabia Museum called the National Steamboat Museum which could cost upwards of $50 million.
Meanwhile, he’s hoping a combination of fundraising, state grants, sponsorships, and a legacy fund will eventually help unlock more secrets of the mid-1850s American West.
View the Malta fundraising video here: https://www.1856.com/malta
Learn more about the Arabia Steamboat Museum at www.1856.com
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Drone Use Increases on Everest
Drones, those spidery flying spies that bedevil New Jersey residents, cause celebrities to erect nets to prevent them from whirring over their homes, and have added a new, deadly dimension to warfare, are growing in popularity on Everest.
• Drones Will Guide Sherpas Through the Deadly Khumbu Icefall on Everest – The Sherpa Ice Doctors who find the route through Everest’s dangerous Khumbu Icefall will no longer have to hunt for a safe way by trial and error, according to Angela Benavides writing on ExplorersWeb.com (March 18).
Cargo drones, being tested this season, will scout ahead of them, finding the safest line. The drones will also carry the ropes and aluminum ladders needed to prepare the route in the Icefall. They will also shuttle loads up to Camp 1. This minimizes the number of times the Sherpas will have to go back and forth through the deadly route, where giant pillars of ice can collapse unpredictably at any time.
This technology will not only save lives. Replacing noisy helicopter flights will make the Everest experience quieter and more environmentally friendly, according to ExplorersWeb.
“Carrying loads up and down the Khumbu Icefall is the shittiest job in the Himalaya,” Asian Trekking CEO Dawa Steven Sherpa told ExplorersWeb. “More and more Sherpas simply refuse. They’d rather work on Makalu, Manaslu, or any other peak than on the lower parts of Everest.”
| | (Photo: The Kathmandu Times) | | |
• Tests Continue on Garbage and Poop Removal – What goes up on drones, can also come down – especially garbage and human waste. Tests began in spring 2024 using the DJI FlyCart 30 Category-D model. It weighs 143 lbs. with two DB2000 batteries and has a maximum takeoff weight of 209 lbs. Its flight distance is 18.6 miles with 66 lbs. payload and operates in temperatures as low as minus 4 degrees F., according to The Himalayan Times (April 28, 2024).
The Khumbu Pasang Lhamu Rural Municipality’s Base Camp Management Procedure 2024 requires that climbers carry a poop bag or biodegradable bag to bring back their waste from higher altitudes of Nepali mountains. Presumably, drones will make this task less unpleasant.
• Besides Schlepping, Drones Are Actively Mapping Routes – Drones are also being used to map routes up the mountain. Watch this 4K drone footage by the DJI Mavic 3 Pro of the Mount Everest climbing route and prepare to be stunned (a word borrowed from nearly every clickbait spam we receive these days).
Take a look:
https://youtu.be/0pIyIMqwu0E?si=UDMXa-VrZuKODkZv
WEB WATCH
| | Team studies the Rwenzori mountains in Africa | | |
Short Film Documents Melting of Tropical Glaciers
The Rwenzori mountains in Africa border Uganda and Congo DRC. It’s home to some of the last tropical glaciers in the world. A new short film documents the 2024 Project Pressure Rwenzori Expedition that studied its last remaining ice.
Led by explorer and director Klaus Thymann, founder of climate-focused charity Project Pressure, and created in partnership with UNESCO and the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), the documentary was released on UN Glacier Day last March 21.
Rwenzori Mountains National Park was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994 due to its unique beauty, rare and endangered species, and abundance of flora and fauna.
The equatorial Rwenzori Mountains are the highest and most permanent sources of the River Nile. They constitute a vital water-catchment relied upon by five million people, including the Bakonzo communities who have long lived along the base of the mountains.
The mission of the Rwenzori Glacier Project team was to document the alarming glacier loss of the three highest mountains in the range – Mt. Stanley, Mt. Baker, and Mt. Speke – and create the first-ever 3D model of Mt. Stanley’s glaciers in the region.
The expedition revealed a shocking 29% loss in surface area on Mt. Stanley’s glacier between 2020 and 2024, while the glacier on Mt. Baker has already disappeared entirely. This loss is not just an environmental crisis but also a spiritual one for the local Bakonzo community, who regard the glaciers as sacred.
It was produced by UNIT, a London-based independent creative studio. Learn more and watch the 10-minute film here:
https://lbbonline.com/news/unit-film-and-tv-supports-project-pressures-landmark-rwenzori-glacier-expedition-documentary
BUZZ WORDS
| | (Photo: MapYourTravels.com) | | |
Extreme Travel
The effort to visit 193 member states of the United Nations (although the number was revised to 192 when the U.S. State Department banned travel to North Korea in 2017).
“People who claim to have visited all the countries in the world, or to have set any kind of record, may attract media attention, book deals, sponsors – along with disputes and controversy,” according to Kathleen Hughes reporting for the Wall Street Journal (March 29-30).
Among the most crazed are members of The Travelers’ Century Club, open to people who have visited 100 or more countries and territories on its list of 330, including remote islands without airports. The group NomadMania confirms just 382 travelers in the world have been to every U.N. member country.
DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS
| | Former Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space. | | |
Film About Pioneer Female Space Shuttle Commander
Honors Legacy of First Female in Space
In our March story about the new documentary Spacewoman, we picked up promotion material from the filmmaker and Boulder (Colorado) International Film Festival organizers. It credits Eileen Collins as the “first female spacecraft commander in history.”
Readers pointed out the achievements of former Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova (1937-) She was the first woman in space, having flown a solo mission on Vostok 6 on June 16, 1963. She orbited the Earth 48 times, spent almost three days commanding her spacecraft in space, is the only woman to have been on a solo space mission, and is the last surviving Vostok cosmonaut.
But could Tereshkova be considered a spacecraft commander? Technically, no.
We reached out to Keith Haviland, CEO of Haviland Digital based in London, and producer of Spacewoman.
He tells EN: “Our understanding is the first astronauts of solo spacecraft in those early moments of the space race were referred to as pilot astronauts or pilot cosmonauts. The term commander as a formal title came in with crews made up of multiple people.
"The term on Gemini was command-pilot, and commander for Apollo, Skylab, the Shuttle and other modern craft. The Russians had a similar scheme with Voskhod and then Soyuz.
“Eileen was the first woman to command a spacecraft of any kind with a crew, so (it was) more than just the Space Shuttle and a truly significant moment in space history. We want to celebrate that, but absolutely without distracting from Tereshkova’s achievement,” Haviland adds.
Watch the trailer here:
https://tinyurl.com/SpacewomanTrailer
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EDITOR’S NOTE
Listen to EN’s Digital Doppelgangers on the Run
New from those adventurous souls who bring you EN each month: thanks to Google NotebookLM you can now listen to us as you drive, run or bike. Each month we’ll take a 20-min. Deep Dive into the world of exploration and adventure, hosted by our two digital doppelgängers.
NotebookLM is an experimental AI-driven content generator developed by Google that will summarize and extract information from each issue.
Is it spooky, ooky, kooky and creepy? Yes, you might think that. We’ll be interested in your thoughts on its applicability for your project's own public outreach.
Hear the March issue:
https://tinyurl.com/ENDeepDiveMar2025
The April issue is available here:
https://tinyurl.com/ENDeepDiveApr2025
| | 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 | | |
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:
http://www.amazon.com/Get-Sponsored-Explorers-Adventurers-Travelers-ebook/dp/B00H12FLH2
Advertise in Expedition News – For more information: blumassoc@aol.com
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. ©2025 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.
Research past issues of Expedition News dating back to May 1995 courtesy of the Utah State University Outdoor Recreation Archive. Access is free at: https://tinyurl.com/ENArchivesUSU
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