This prompted Governor King to send two vessels from Sydney to the island to establish a garrison at Hobart.[11]. Documents show that the Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Russell, also referred to by its hull number, DDG 59, and the abbreviation RSL), first reported an interaction with three unknown UAS on July 17th, 2019 approximately 62 nautical miles southwest of San Nicolas Island. The realities of China today. Bass Strait was once not a body of water. A contemporaneous email from the USS Russell confirms these details, and further indicates that the DRAKE team was activated. Your buddies will want to blame fishing pressure. While the Department of Defense spokesperson acknowledged our questions, they have not provided a comment at the time of writing. . (The East Australian Current is the one from the movie Finding Nemo.) 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]). Meanwhile, America's adversaries, especially China, are investing massively into drone swarm capabilities, especially for use in the maritime environment, for wartime use and for dual-role applications. The western field, known as the Otway Basin, was discovered in the 1990s offshore near Port Campbell. Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray took pains to emphasize in a recent congressional hearing that the military "train as they would fight." On 5 December, Tasman was following the east coast northward to see how far it went. The first incident occurred on March 30, 2019. 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. Forty miles into its Bass Strait nightmare, Midnight Rambler was confronted with a situation that could easily have ended its race. 2022Recurrent Ventures. Nothing more was heard from the Miss Hobart after that. The incident occurred over a period of approximately one hour. A lighthouse was erected on Deal Island in 1848 to assist ships navigating in the eastern part of the Straits, but there were no guides to the western entrance until the Cape Otway Lighthouse was first lit in 1848, followed by another at Cape Wickham at the northern end of King Island in 1861. 8 The Loina Incident. The second question is easier to answer. Exactly a month later in Hobart, a taxi driver was suddenly forced to slam on his breaks due to a strange green glow in the middle of the road. 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. Yes, largemouth bass are getting harder to catch. The unusual commingling of the longstanding UFO issue with drones has arguably created a potent cultural blindspot that can be exploited by adversaries. Natural gas production from Bass Strait currently supplies approximately 40% of Australian east coast domestic gas demand and is the largest supplier into the Eastern . Why is Bass Strait so rough? Bass boats are made to float on the water. The timing and interaction of those winds can vary a lot depending on the nature of the front., Wild Oats XI and other yachts in a heavy swell enter the Pacific Ocean from Sydney, the point at which the race is just getting going.Credit:Getty Images, And low-pressure systems appear to have a liking for southeast Australia. However, when it is considered that there were no official reports of any enemy fighters even entering the strait, perhaps it is a little strange that 17 military planes were lost in this stretch of water during the war years alone. Bass Strait (/bs/) is a strait separating the island state of Tasmania from the Australian mainland (more specifically the coast of Victoria, with the exception of the land border across Boundary Islet). Records previously released to us demonstrated that DRAKE systems were deployed to several ships later in July 2019. In other words, what were once dune-lined areas of coast are now all underwater. As a result, ferry sailings are often disrupted and Cook Strait is regarded as one of the most dangerous and unpredictable waters in the world. Torres Strait, passage between the Coral Sea, on the east, and the Arafura Sea, in the western Pacific Ocean. The last transmission from the Miss Hobart spookily shares a detail with that of the Jason Manifold account. 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. A draft public affairs statement further added that the drones were thought to be conducting collection operations on the ship. A lengthier description states that a total of five unknown drones approached the USS Russell in the course of the incident. This is why concerts and parties are so dangerous because of the high noise levels and because people tend to listen to them for hours on end. Scott Nichol, the director of national seabed mapping at Geoscience Australia, has spent years exploring what lies beneath the surface of Bass Strait. To get a sense of how frequently drone swarms are occurring in recent years, we recently spoke with DroneSec, a drone cybersecurity firm based in Melbourne. Meet 'Fluffy' - the stunt-performing powerhouse that boasts more than 1,400hp. A month later, the USS Zumwalt, the Navy's most advanced surface combatant, encountered a set of six drones on April 24, 2019. The Bass Strait oil and gas fields are primarily structural traps and occupy culminations along major anticlinal axes. There are two things to know about this body of water. Some suggested that, due to an increase in wind around the time the ship disappeared, it was possible that damage could have been inflicted upon the mast, or perhaps a loose container from the many ships passing through the area had damaged the rudder. Also, the strait has international commercial shipping traffic, as well as fishing ferries of both private and public organizations. It is a natural strait like the Strait of Gibraltar, which is the route between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean. Within the western hemisphere, drones have been used by non-state criminal actors in Mexico both as means of smuggling and as weapons of war. 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]. Among these new incidents are previously unknown events that occurred in the early months of 2019 and were assessed by the Navy to involve intelligence collection operations. However, two of the military aircraft involved in the search also vanished. 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. Bering, Gibraltar, Bab-el-Mandeb, Bosporus and Torres, etc. 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. The Bosporus is different. If you'd like some expert background on an issue or a news event, drop us a line at explainers@smh.com.au or explainers@theage.com.au. [8] The yacht was scheduled to arrive in Sydney for New Years Eve. 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. There is also the question of the sheer amount of people who go missingseemingly vanishing into thin air. You have corrected this article This article has been corrected by You and other Voluntroves This article has been corrected by Voluntroves Briefing slides can now fill some of these gaps. In 1944, a strange dark shadow came out of nowhere and flew beside a Bristol Beaufort bomber for almost 20 minutes over the Bass Strait. In 1978, one of the most famous UFO incidents in Australian history occurred over Bass Strait. There was enough time for coastal sand dunes to form, and in some cases theyve actually been preserved, Nichol says. Known locally as The Paddock, the Bass Strait is the body of water separating mainland Australia and Tasmania. It also states that communication was never established with the nearby pleasure craft, though a standard UAS warning script was read over the radio. 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. 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 . Bass Strait sea conditions and wind forecast. The crew allegedly claimed they could hear the sound of a plane around them, and there were even several reports of an aerial machine coming toward them. 1980. In the coming days the sea will remain rough. Banks Strait is the southeastern opening to the Tasman Sea. Although many questions remain about these incidents, one thing is clear. The strait was possibly detected by Captain Abel Tasman when he charted Tasmania's coast in 1642. The Alaska Bering Sea crab fishery . Addressing these particular security gaps has been a clear priority for the Navy in recent years, with a number of high-profile projects involving directed energy weapons. Notably, Ralph Johnson assessed the UAS as operating in a safe and professional approach that was "in accordance with the internationally recognized COLREGs 'rules of the road' and internationally recognized maritime customs" in a draft public affairs statement. Drone swarms are an increasingly common occurrence, though precise statistics about the total number and severity of incidents are hard to come by. Blom, W. M., & Alsop, D. B. 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. And after flowing for hundreds of kilometres, it suddenly appears to stop moving south. Its not just whats happening under the water that makes it difficult to cross Bass Strait. And that creates the hazard for yachts., In terms of treacherous water, its got to be up there with the most treacherous in the world., Its why Peter Langman, who will lead one of the smallest boats to Hobart, gets nervous thinking about it. You can see evidence of old sand dunes that should be on the coastline that are now 50 or 60 metres underwater, he says. Even if that had happened, the plane was designed so that it should have been able to be guided to an emergency landing. The strait provides the most direct waterway between the Great Australian Bight and the Tasman Sea, and is also the only maritime route into the economically prominent Port Phillip Bay. The major airports in Tasmania are Hobart International Airport and Launceston Airport, where the main airlines are Jetstar and Virgin Australia. The circumstances of these incidents vary widely. 1.Gulf of Guinea. Her purse, full of money, was also discovered. 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. Bass Straight is exposed to the Roaring 40s that blow across the southern coastline of Australia. All Rights Reserved. Lin Pardey. Despite being in the Roaring 40s, we had good . Perhaps the most famous of these incidents is the case of Fred Valentich. The shows co-creator, Vikki Madden, has stated that she experienced many strange incidents in the area while growing up there. He has been a guest speaker on numerous national radio and television stations and is a five time published author. 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 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. Were sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. 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." For a few thousand years, the sea was 60 metres below its current levels. In this incident, drones crossed the flight deck of the ship while flying in a consistent pattern that did not alter course, speed, or altitude.. In fact, the first recorded incident appears to be the disappearance of the Eliza in 1797. Please try again later. A wave tears towards super maxi Labana in the 2021 Sydney to Hobart.Credit:Dallas Kilponen. And the most dangerous fishing ground is the Northeast Coast, where fishermen go after groundfish the bottom-dwelling species like flounder, sole and cod. GENEVA (ILO News) - As many as 24,000 fishermen and persons engaged in fish farming and processing are killed every year putting fishing and related occupations among the most dangerous of all professions, according to a new report* released by the International Labour Office (ILO). The first windsurfer crossing was in 1982 by Mark Paul and Les Tokolyi. 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]. Speculation has swirled around these incidents in the last year, following high-profile leaks of night vision video footage depicting objects with an apparent triangular shape overflying Navy vessels. It is a narrow and deep strait. Owing to the various currents and weather systems that move through it, and also due to its shallow depth (varying around 50 . [12], Despite the strait's difficult waters, it provided a safer and less boisterous[clarification needed] passage for ships on the route from Europe or India to Sydney in the early 19th century. But we've already seen that Tasmanian canoe-rafts became unmaneuverable and sank after about 10 miles of travel in calm seas. The two larger reserves, Flinders and Zeehan, extend mostly outside of the Bass Strait area. These concerns are shared broadly throughout the military and United States government. Strange lights were often seen coming from the Bass Strait and over the treetops, or even from one of the 50-something islands that reside within the strait itself. So if that happens, obviously you can get a fairly sudden deterioration in conditions and quite strong winds and heavy seas.. This occurred during the last glacial maximum (18,000BP) when the basin was completely isolated. A . 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. Andrew McAuley was the first person to cross Bass Strait non-stop in a sea kayak in 2003. 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. 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. Perhaps the most thorough list of losses and disappearances has been the oft reprinted book of Jack Loney[20] though it is possible that most losses can be adequately explained by extreme weather events.[21]. 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. 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. In 1798, Bass explored along the southern coast of what . The Biden administration issued a new directive to address data collection, among other provisions, regarding drone incidents earlier this year. DroneSec collects and categorizes drone incident reports on a global basis. In June 2017, the Government of Victoria announced a three-year feasibility study[17] for Australia's first offshore wind farm. That has caused issues in past races. Bass can be disorienting, and can cause nausea, particularly in people who already have problems with that sort of thing, but is less . The Panama Canal: Interlinking the Atlantic Ocean with . (Yes, thats a bit before the 19th century.) There are over 50 islands in Bass Strait. Though some of these incidents involved things like attempts to hack civilian light displays, many fall in the realm of more nefarious activities. Exactly as Lien has said. He also has a liking for the NFL, film and music. Further analysis suggested that the area had been in flames, and other material appeared to show someone had tried to intensely stamp it out. 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. Finally, the USS Ralph Johnson (RJN), another Arleigh Burke class destroyer, also prepared briefing slides about the incident. CROSSING THE BASS STRAIT. 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. Stretching 250 kilometres from west to east and 200 kilometres north to south at its narrowest point is the Bass Strait (or just Bass Strait, as many people call it) that separates Victoria and Tasmania. The vessel was part of a salvage operation for the Sydney Cove, which had recently become wrecked on the rocky coast. What makes Bass Strait a gnarly part of the Sydney to Hobart yacht race? [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. A strange stretch of water off the south-east coast of Australia, the Bass Strait Triangle, is one such place. Its exploitation began in 2005. However, the newly released documents contain several clarifying details. As you might imagine, there were numerous accounts of strange events in the Bass Strait during World War II. Deck logs previously indicated that another more complex incident occurred around July 30th, again involving multiple Navy vessels. In short, there was nothing to indicate that she had been planning on leaving.[6]. DroneSec CEO Mike Monnik told us that incidents involving multiple drones have increased significantly worldwide since 2019. 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. 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. The issue of planes, ships and people having been lost in the strait over time has spawned a number of theories. Although this is perhaps the first strange occurrence in the Bass Strait to be connected with potential UFO activity, two other very similar accounts took place in the 1900s. [22] In 1998 Australian offshore sailor Nick Moloney took on a different challenge by being the first person to windsurf unaided across the Bass Strait in a time of 22 hours. Hence, The Bosphorus strait is of great significance. 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. normal font sizelarge font sizevery large text size Will Oxley expected the 1998 Sydney to Hobart yacht race to be rough. The stories of the ancient world made the whirlpool into a much more deadly threat. In the case of the naval incidents, some ships indicated that they did not yet have any operational C-UAS technologies. But having sailed through the passage, he confirmed it separated the two large islands of New Zealand. 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. Id love to say that Im expecting north-easterly winds and a nice run down to Hobart, says Langman. 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