Bass Straight is exposed to the Roaring 40s that blow across the southern coastline of Australia. However the alternative, using Drake's. 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. However it started failing within a few weeks of completion, and by 1861 it failed completely. Although the following incident isnt immediately linked to the Bass Strait, given the fact that it happened near the northern coast of the Bass Strait Triangle and that descriptions of the object match other accounts of UFOs over the stretch of water in question, it would be perhaps a little shortsighted to not include this (and our next entry) on our list.[5]. Here are some theories on why. 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. The Bosporus allows access from the Black Sea to the Aegean, onward to the Mediterranean, and through the Strait of Gibraltar, finally to the Atlantic. Also, the strait has international commercial shipping traffic, as well as fishing ferries of both private and public organizations. While most of the bizarre accounts on our list are connected to the Bass Strait itself, several times, these encounters have seemingly wandered onto the mainlands. Our previous analysis of deck logs indicated that other events occurred several weeks after the initial events of July 14th and 15th. Whether or not there is a connection to Bruny Island womans disappearance in open to debate. A contemporaneous email from the USS Russell confirms these details, and further indicates that the DRAKE team was activated. B. The flinders municipality covers four groups of Bass Strait islands off the north-eastern tip of Tasmania: the Furneaux, Kent, Hogan and Curtis groups. The treacherous waters of Bass Strait have claimed hundreds of ships and more than a thousand lives. 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. In 1978, one of the most famous UFO incidents in Australian history occurred over Bass Strait. There are two things to know about this body of water. Funding for FRONTLINE is provided . Spend enough time at any boat ramp from Sam Rayburn Reservoir in Texas to Mille Lacs Lake in Minnesota and you'll hear a common complaint: "Man, it's getting harder and harder to catch a bass.". These events were significantly less clear than the earlier incidents. Answer (1 of 6): Location, climate and sea bed morphology. On 5 December, Tasman was following the east coast northward to see how far it went. The Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race passes generally east of the strait but is affected by its weather conditions. Does Bass Strait still produce oil? 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. But having sailed through the passage, he confirmed it separated the two large islands of New Zealand. [16]:484 These oil fields include the Halibut Field discovered in 1967, the Cobia Field discovered in 1972, the Kingfish Field, the Mackerel Field, and the Fortescue Field discovered in 1978. The team at DroneSec also spoke to the complexity of comprehensively defending against drone threats, emphasizing that no single technical solution exists yet. Marcus Lowth is a writer with a passion for anything interesting, be it UFOs, the Ancient Astronaut Theory, the paranormal or conspiracies. The documents include unprecedentedly detailed briefing materials and photographs from more than a half dozen incidents. In the case of the naval incidents, some ships indicated that they did not yet have any operational C-UAS technologies. While drone overflights of Navy vessels are not new, the use of multiple drones simultenously is an emerging phenomenon. The images from the incident include these photographs of what appears to be the Bass Strait. It also indicates that the UAS incident continued after the Bass Strait departed the area. Perhaps strangest about the incident are the reports of strange lights being in the skies over the Bass Strait. So, a year ago, after cruising from New Zealand through the islands of Vanuatu and on to Australia, we sailed Sahula, David's Van de Stadt 40, south to Hobart, Tasmania. The USS Kidd, another Arleigh Burke class destroyer, was also nearby, but did not report a visual sighting of the drones. 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. The western field, known as the Otway Basin, was discovered in the 1990s offshore near Port Campbell. Entrants in the annual Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race regularly say Bass Strait is the hardest part of the entire race, which is now in its 77th year. During the height of the gale, crewman Chris Rockell was thrown . Wild weather on Sunday afternoon exacerbated massive swells along the already treacherous Bass Straight. Almost a year following the disappearance of the Miss Hobart airliner, another plane, the Loina, would vanish while traveling from Melbourne to Tasmania. Aviation experts, both at the time and today, believe the loss of the Miss Hobart to be a genuine mystery, not least due to the de Havilland DH86 aircraft (example pictured above) being one of the most advanced of its era. Further analysis suggested that the area had been in flames, and other material appeared to show someone had tried to intensely stamp it out. "Medically important" is the nice term for "you're going to . Though some of these incidents involved things like attempts to hack civilian light displays, many fall in the realm of more nefarious activities. King Island and the Indian Ocean lie at its western extremity, and the Furneaux Group is at its eastern end. Neither they nor even the smallest amount of wreckage was ever discovered despite extensive searches by military aircraft and vessels. This program is a FRONTLINE co-production with The New York Times and Granada Television. The U.S. They then reported that the humming sound had suddenly stopped. In Mori it has the name Raukawa or Raukawa Moana. This mysterious part of the world runs from the southern coast of Victoria in Australia over the stretch of water that is the Bass Strait and into the mysterious regions of Tasmania. [4] After the glacial period ended, sea levels rose and flooded the Bassian Plain to form Bass Strait at around 8,000 years ago, leaving them isolated from the Australian mainland. The second thing to know is that this very spot is where the East Australian Current stops. 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. The Bass Canyon the largest undersea canyon in Australian waters plunges to depths of 3.5 kilometres yet within a really short distance, Nichol says, the seafloor rises to be only 120 metres below sea level. This occurred during the last glacial maximum (18,000BP) when the basin was completely isolated. Forty miles into its Bass Strait nightmare, Midnight Rambler was confronted with a situation that could easily have ended its 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. Technology, performance and design delivered to your inbox. [10], When news of the 1798 discovery of Bass Strait reached Europe, the French government despatched a reconnaissance expedition commanded by Nicolas Baudin. Read More: 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. The ships travel daily in opposite directions between Devonport and Spirit of Tasmania Quay in Geelong as overnight trips, with additional daytime trips during the peak summer season.[18]. Espionage collected in these areas is of extreme value to potential adversaries and poses a serious and ongoing national security threat. And the most dangerous fishing ground is the Northeast Coast, where fishermen go after groundfish the bottom-dwelling species like flounder, sole and cod. Notably, a night scope image of an apparently triangular object can be seen in the lower left corner. Meaning of place name. It can be a preferential area for them to develop and intensify, Louis says. Its average depth is 200 feet and its maximum depth is 509 feet. They are fast, purpose built, passenger/car carriers capable of delivering volumes of tourists upon which . While this data offers some perspective on the scope of incidents, it suffers from a number of limitations inherent in ad hoc reports. Manifold believes what he heard was connected to the disappearance of Valentich. This is in part because traditional deck logs were not available from Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) due to their use of digital records. "Purists occasionally spark up and say that, strictly speaking, we don't actually cross the strait, as we are still in the Tasman Sea," wrote Oxley, a veteran round-the-world racer who is also a marine biologist. The major airports in Tasmania are Hobart International Airport and Launceston Airport, where the main airlines are Jetstar and Virgin Australia. There is also the question of the sheer amount of people who go missingseemingly vanishing into thin air. 7. Two underwater plateaus, the Bassian Rise and King Island Rise located on the eastern and western margins of Bass Strait, respectively, are composed of a basement of Paleozoic granite. 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. And all of them seemingly have strange stories to tell. The body of water between Tasmania and mainland Australia is called Bass Strait.. It's about 300kms or so from the Surf Coast on the Great Ocean Road in Victoria (the mainland) to get over to Tasmania, so it's a fair distance and a bit too far for a casual swim, although some people have kayaked across (hopping from island to island along the way, the biggest gap is about 60kms). However, the newly released documents contain several clarifying details. Prior to 1991, piracy off the Horn of Africa was more or less unknown, with far more incidents occurring in the Strait of Malacca or the Gulf of Guinea.In the 1980s the Somali government resettled . But when he and his crew were traveling to Tasmania and started getting But we've already seen that Tasmanian canoe-rafts became unmaneuverable and sank after about 10 miles of travel in calm seas. Alinta owns a submarine gas pipeline, delivering natural gas to large industrial customers near George Town, as well as the Powerco gas network in Tasmania. Malikides, M., Harris, P. T., Jenkins, C. J., & Keene, J. The realities of China today. Bass Straight oil production still amounts to between 17% - 19% of Australia's oil and 42% of LPG. Associated with the less than 50m (160ft)-deep Bassian Rise is the Furneaux Islands, the largest of which is Flinders Island (maximum elevation 760m[2,490ft]). Similar briefings were prepared by other Navy vessels involved in the incidents. The conflict has caused extensive damage to the nation's infrastructure, killed more than 10,000 people, and displaced millions, adding to the global toll of an increasing number of refugees worldwide. Briefing slides can now fill some of these gaps. Instead of gradually fading off into the distance, however, the engine suddenly came to a stop as if someone had turned a radio off. Then, there was nothing but silence. 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. Arthur Lane, a Sydney to Hobart veteran who leads the races organising committee, says the shallow water means a bit of a twist on the stomach. On the popular Australian soap Neighbours, one of its most dramatic storylines unfolded when a 1940s themed joy flight to Tasmania was sabotaged by a bomb. If you'd like some expert background on an issue or a news event, drop us a line at [email protected] or [email protected]. (Yes, thats a bit before the 19th century.) Why is the Cook Strait so dangerous? 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). As this heat map below from CSIRO shows, it moves vast amounts of warm water from the Coral Sea south down the coast. 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. An email dated July 14, 2019, sent while the incident was in progress, stated that there was a pause between periods of UAS activity. We had eight people inside [the hull of the boat] with water up to our knees discussing what the next plan would be, he said. Jennings, J. N. (1958). The Biden administration issued a new directive to address data collection, among other provisions, regarding drone incidents earlier this year. On July 21st, the USS Paul Hamilton again reported seeing a group of drones. There are very likely hundreds of other examples that havent been recorded. The Russell has attracted particular attention in the last year as the vessel that captured the leaked flying triangle footage. A tranche of deck logs from Navy vessels indicated that several ships had encountered drones over an extended period of time. 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. 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. Even more dangerous may be when the system is being pushed too hard; clipped signals are more damaging than "clean" signals, because they contain more high frequency content in the dangerous frequency range. The War Zone has received a highly significant new set of documents from the U.S. Navy via the Freedom of Information Act about a series of enigmatic drone swarm events that occurred in the waters off Southern California in 2019. These systems can move very quickly and are notoriously difficult to predict. Our previous coverage began with a series of drone incidents that occurred on July 15th, 2019 approximately seventy nautical miles off the east coast of San Clemente Island. It is a natural strait like the Strait of Gibraltar, which is the route between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean. He made two more crossings of Bass Strait before he died attempting to cross the Tasman Sea in February 2007. The Basslink HVDC electrical cable has been in service since 2006. These incidents have come to be woven into an ongoing discussion about unidentified aerial phenomena, traditionally known as UFOs. 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