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Cousteau's son hunts monster of the deep
Tom Rhodes, New York
Voyage to the deep: the submersibles that will be used on Cousteau's expedition
SINCE the days of the ancient Greeks, the kraken has been spoken of with awe - but never tracked to its lair. Now a team of international adventurers, led by the son of Jacques Cousteau, the underwater explorer, is preparing an expedition to search for the legendary giant squid more than 2,000 feet below the ocean waves.
Using two new British- designed submersibles, Jean-Michel Cousteau, 61, will set off next January on a quest for the ferocious creature which is believed to be the size of a railway carriage. The search will concentrate on the Kaikoura Canyon off New Zealand's South Island where Architeuthis dux is thought to live.
With unblinking eyes the size of footballs, two whip-like tentacles and a vast gnashing beak, the giant squid, weighing more than a ton and growing as long as 75ft, is the largest invertebrate in the animal kingdom.
Although parts of its body have been found in fishermen's nets and the stomachs of sperm whales, or washed up on shores, no human has seen it in its natural habitat.
The deep-sea canyon is a recognised hunting ground for sperm whale, the only known predator of a creature that Cousteau's team jokingly refers to as "giant calamari".
Sailors have long described epic battles between the two behemoths - Herman Melville included one such encounter in his classic seafaring novel, Moby Dick - and the whales are often found with sucker marks the size of plates on their skin.
Such signs have failed to dissuade the explorers who will set off in the two bubble-shaped submarines which have been built in California by Graham Hawkes, a British designer. They are capable of diving 3,300ft into the cold and dark waters.
Hunter and hunted: Cousteau is going
in search of the kraken, a creature
said to be the size of a railway carriages
Once there the vehicles, called Deep Rovers and each containing a pilot and passenger, will switch off their engines, searchlights and cameras and lie in wait, their robotic arms filled with succulent tuna with which they hope to lure their quarry.
It will be the concluding moment to a five-part mission created by Deep Ocean Odyssey, a company part-founded by Cousteau and launched in New York last week.
Cousteau's team - which also includes Clyde Roper, a recognised authority on the giant squid from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, and Peter Foges, a former BBC producer - hopes to bring stories of the uncharted deep, impossible before the invention of the rovers, to a global audience via high-definition film, books and the internet.
For Cousteau, first thrown into the water by his father at the age of seven, the expedition is the culmination of a lifetime spent exploring the world's underwater wonders.
"It's all about going to paradise," the Frenchman said last week. "Trying to see these incredible creatures which we know are there will be the ultimate in excitement."
The thrill is clearly tinged with fear. While Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote in his poem, The Kraken, of the creature's "ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep", earlier reports described a far less somnolent beast.
According to some, it could reach as high as a sailing ship's main mast and would attack and capsize boats at will, drowning and even eating the crew.
Before trying to encounter the giant squid, Cousteau and his team will explore underwater volcanoes, endangered ecosystems and search for the megalodon, predecessor to the great white shark and long thought to be extinct.
They will also search the Pacific near Papua New Guinea for the wreck of a Japanese warship believed to have gone down during the second world war with billions of pounds worth of gold in its ammunition locker.
Cousteau will use the submersibles to dive to depths far greater than those reached by his father, who died in 1997. He hopes his experiences, transmitted live, will help people to understand the importance of marine life to the future of the ecosystem.
In tests, his team has already discovered a deep-water octopus with ears and is expected soon to find fish with elephant-like trunks. "We're going to learn and discover new species and understand better how the ocean operates," Cousteau said.
Yet as he sat in his office in Manhattan last week, it was the prospect of seeing the giant squid that brought the brightest glint to Cousteau's eyes as he described how the scientists would try to locate it half a mile below the surface.
Working in six-hour shifts, members of the team will lie at different depths with one submersible ready to rescue the other, should the squid decide to clasp it in a huge tentacle.
While it would make fascinating viewing, the veteran diver admitted he was scared that the craft might be taken for a glossy plaything never to be surrendered. "I'm not sure I want to be in a sub if he takes it and decides to keep it as a toy," Cousteau said. "We can only survive in the sub for a maximum of 72 hours."
Dan Taylor's life is a yellow submarine
Hilton Head man is determined to prove the Loch Ness Monster exists, and he's built the sub to do it.
By Rob Dewig Carolina Morning News
HILTON HEAD -- Looking more like a massive yellow jigsaw puzzle than a Loch Ness Monster-hunting submarine, Dan Scott Taylor's undersea adventure-in-the-making is just about finished.
The sub's nose lies outside the Hardeeville Industrial Park warehouse where the Hilton Head Islander has spent the last four years welding, bolting, sanding and painting his prized creation.
The huge ballast tanks intended to cover the engine and battery rooms fore and aft of the crew's quarters are detached, making the 42-foot-long craft look something like the monster Taylor aims to hunt. Taylor thinks the world's most famous sea monster is a 60-foot-long eel, and he thinks there are at least 20 of them in Loch Ness.
For more information, visit:
www.nessa-project.com
When the two-man submersible is completed by early next year, Taylor hopes to take it to the 24-mile-long Scottish lake and chase the monster down. When he catches it (or one of them, if Taylor's predictions of many "Nessies" are accurate), he plans to ram it with a specially designed mini-harpoon, extracting enough skin and flesh from the critter for scientists to positively identify what it is.
Taylor doesn't believe the monster will be harmed by his ram-force "shot," but he expects it to be mad.
"It'll be like giving it a shot. Of course, I didn't like shots as a kid," Taylor said, a grin splitting his white-bearded face, making him look more like Santa Claus than an experienced sub-builder.
Nonetheless, that's what he is. Taylor, 57, has built a submarine from scratch before. He even used that first sub -- the Viperfish -- to do the same thing: hunt the Loch Ness Monster. That earlier attempt, in 1969, failed because the Viperfish was too slow and lacked battery power enough to give a swift, nimble eel a run for its money.
Taylor really believes the Loch Ness Monster(s) exists, mind you. First, he says, there have been too many sightings to all be hoaxes. Second, there's the tiny matter of what he saw last time he visited the lake.
Cruising the lake's surface in a "sub tender" ship, Taylor and famous Nessie-hunter Roy Mackal saw the ship's sonar light up when it detected something big -- several somethings big, in fact -- moving under the boat.
"We got several sonar contacts from the surface, but we never got on the screen (in the sub) at the same time," he said. It took too long to launch the sub; by the time he was underway, the contacts, whatever they were, were long gone.
Try, try again.
This time, Taylor's sub is bigger, meaner and faster. Made of 1-inch-thick steel and propelled by massive electric engines Taylor has yet to buy, the sub should go 20 knots underwater -- an unusually high speed for a private sub.
Like the last time, Taylor has given his sub a fittingly menacing name -- Nessa, the Gaelic goddess of water.
Like last time, he has secured Mackal's involvement in the hunt, lending a big name to the "Nessa Project."
Like last time, the Dukane Corp. has agreed to loan Taylor the sonar he needs for his sub. They've even upped the ante, giving him an expensive side-sonar to see what, if anything, is parallel to his sub in the murky Loch Ness.
But unlike the last time, Taylor has yet to find the sponsors he needs to afford the trip. So far, he's spent $300,000 of his own money -- including much of the inheritance from his late father -- building the sub. He figures he needs another $500,000 to take it to Scotland and bag himself a Nessie.
The Discovery Channel originally expressed interest in underwriting his hunt, Taylor said, but has not returned phone calls lately. He thinks that has something to do with Mackal's involvement; the retired University of Chicago molecular biologist had a falling out with the cable channel over a planned expedition for a suspected African dinosaur a few years ago.
Right now, the lack of a sponsor is Taylor's biggest stumbling block. A few more months of work on the sub -- and enough money to buy the engines he needs -- and he'll be finished with probably the fastest underwater craft to chase Nessie. But without a sponsor, his sub will be dead in the water before it reaches the lake.
Taylor expects to succeed and he expects to find Nessie. But, most importantly, he expects to prove to himself that he can do it in a sub he built by himself.
"Retirement isn't all it's cracked up to be," he said. "I had to do something. You can't just quit, you know. Quitting is not an option for me."
In a couple months, after everything has been put together, Taylor plans to test his sub's underwater capabilities in a water-filled Bluffton sand pit. Then he needs to fix whatever problems the tests show. After that, all that's left is finding sponsors and arranging the trip with Scottish customs.
"Some things you've just got to do," Taylor said. "Some jobs you've got to finish."
Wanted: Canada's Loch Ness monster British Columbia's mysterious "Ogopogo" has a price on its slippery head.
By J.A. Getzlaff
May 16, 2000 | Loch Ness, eat your heart out -- Canada has its very own, equally elusive lake beast.
"Ogopogo" is the creature's name, and it is rumored to live in Okanagan Lake, in southern British Columbia. For decades, residents of the area have reported sightings of the giant water monster; the area's original Native American inhabitants, according to a Reuters report, called it N'Ha-a-itk, or "The Lake Demon."
Unfortunately, nobody has been able to prove that the mythical lake dweller exists. Okanagan Lake is 97 miles long and 1,800 feet deep, providing Ogopogo with plenty of places to hide. Several years ago, Japanese researchers attempted to locate the beast using radar, but their funding ran out before they could spot a ridged back, red eyes or spiked tail.
Now, however, everybody has a chance to prove there really is an Ogopogo. The Penticton Chamber of Commerce has put a Can$2 million (about U.S.$1.3 million) price on the monster's head. Anyone who can come up with scientific proof that the monster exists -- and is not just an oversized sturgeon -- will take home the money.
"There has to be something out there," said Chamber of Commerce manager John Singleton to the Canadian Press. "There's too many people who have seen something."
May 21 2000 SCOTLAND Nessie's family secrets rise to surface
FORGET the terror of the deep. Nessie could be from the shallower end of the gene pool. A team of Swedish scientists has revealed that the Loch Ness monster may be a distant relative of the walrus, writes Stephen McGinty. While theories abound that the fabled inhabitant of Scotland's most famous loch may be a trapped dinosaur, a giant sturgeon or even an aquatic ghost, new scientific research has suggested a more mundane solution. A sonic survey carried out by the Scandinavian Global Underwater Search Team found that a series of unidentifiable sounds fell into a frequency matched only by the elephant seal, the walrus or the killer whale. The sounds, which were described like a pig grunting or a person snoring, were recorded by highly sensitive hydrophones lowered to a depth of 65ft in two spots where sightings have been recorded. The Swedish team, which carried out the research in March on the Loch's west side, said the sounds were similar to those found in Swedish and Norwegian lakes also rumoured to be populated by water monsters. Jan Sundeberg, the expedition leader, said the sounds had been analysed by both marine laboratories and the Swedish defence intelligence agency, known as FOA65. "Most of the noises we picked up in the loch we can identify as eels, pike or trout, but this noise was a sort of grunting, very like sounds we recorded in Lake Seljordsvatnet [in Norway], although shorter and sharper." The analysis revealed that the noises were in a frequency range 747-751Hz and only the elephant seal, walrus or killer whale make sounds that fall into that category. "Let's say these sounds were from Nessie - she could be a relative, a sub-species," said Sundeberg. The expedition, called Nessie 2000, was organised by the Official Loch Ness Monster Fan Club, based in Inverness. Gary Campbell, an accountant who launched the Official Loch Ness Monster Fan Club, believes the research may prove correct. "I think Nessie is unlikely to be a dinosaur but I do think something got into Loch Ness 10,000 years ago and has evolved." Sundeberg's expedition has also included a trip to Ireland, where the scientists surveyed Sraheens Loch, also rumoured to contain a mythical beast. The team expects to continue studying Loch Ness in October.
