Uncharted Magazine

AUG 2018 Volume I / Issue 3

Red TRIANGLE The

California’s

G R E AT WHITE Hot Spot

MILES

DEEP

James Cameron’s Descent int o th e

Mariana Trench

W a v e C hB iag gse s teSrt o rsms Finding the World’s

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CONTENT Vol. I / Issue 3 / August 2018

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RED TRIANGLE THE

by Lewis Samuels

The Dangers of California’s Great White Hot Spot

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D i s c o v e r m o re a t unchartedmag.com

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The Largest Underwater Volcano Eruption Recorded

The Plastic Epidemic that is Invading Our Oceans

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The Final Resting Place of WWII’s Planes in the Pacific

Finding the World’s Biggest Storms & Swells

The Thrills & Dangers of Kayaking on Open Waters

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James Cameron’s Descent into the Mariana Trench

Understanding the Path & Destruction of a Tsunami

Uncover the Unbelievable True Story Behind Adrift

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ERUPTION BELOW

A WAT E R Y G R AV E

7 MILES DEEP

VA N I S H I N G I S L A N D

Papua New Guinea & the Threat of Rising Sea Levels

WAV E C H A S E R S

SCIENCE DEBUNKED

ACROSS

THE

PACIFIC

Ben Lecomte Prepares to Attempt the Unthinkable

THE

I N VA S I O N

O C E A N K AYA K I N G

S U R V I VA L

AT

SEA

MISSING WHALES

The Disappearance of the Humpback Whale in Hawaii

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36.8007째 N, 121.9473째 W 38.3332째 N, 123.0481째 W

RED TRI NGLE T HE

Where Sur fers are Bait

by LEWIS SAMUELS

Certain spots are sharkier than others. The Red Triangle, a hazy region of fear, is defined by that notion, stretching along the California coast from Monterey to Bodega Bay. If you want to know what classifies a spot as sharky, Royce Fraley is a good person to ask. He’s not an expert on white sharks, but his experiences speak for themselves: In 1997 he was “torpedoed” by a white near

Bodega Bay. The shark hit him hard enough to launch him into the air, but did not bite. In 2002, Royce applied pressure to the femoral artery of a local who had been bitten down to the bone at their home break. And in December of 2006, Royce was attacked by a 15- foot great white and dragged beneath the surface while I watched from a hundred yards away.

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onventional wisdom dictates that the odds of Royce experiencing multiple shark encounters are astronomical- akin to a man getting struck by lightning twice. But after watching Royce’s attack I began to wonder. It was far from the first encounter I’d had with a white shark. At 16, I’d been circled by a dorsal fin as my horrified parents watched from the cliff. I’d seen a friend get knocked off his board by a white. Years later I’d seen dorsal and tail fins rise up beside me, and I’d seen a shark as wide as a car slowly pass beneath me in clear, calm water. Finally, after helping Royce to the beach post-attack, I began to wonder if the game was rigged. Royce was my fifth friend to be hit by a shark. Perhaps they were getting “struck by lightning” because they were holding metal poles up in lightning storms.

The research, regrettably, backs up this assertion. Scot Anderson has been studying white sharks for more than 25 years. In the 90s, he spent many a glassy fall day trolling for whites off the northern tip of Point Reyes, using a surfboard as bait. On average, it took six hours for a shark to “investigate” the board. Later, Anderson began using a seal silhouette instead of a surfboard. By 2004, his incident rate had increased to every 1.9 hours- on par with the Farallon Islands, where conventional wisdom dictates entering the water is suicide.

Every 1.9 hours. That’s once a session. “The sharks are obviously there, and the local guys know about it, but it’s not going to stop them,” Anderson explains. “People love surfing so much,” Royce agrees. “It has to be the greatest thing on this entire planet, as far as I’m concerned. So you don’t want to believe you can get hit by a shark- there’s a shark denial.”

Anderson has spotted a few of the same individual sharks coming to Point Reyes for more than 20 years, and he’s seen the same hardcore locals surf nearby for just as long.

R es ea rc hers enc o unte r g re a t w h i t e s every 1.9 hours in the Red Triangle

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“You hear these statistics about how unlikely shark attacks are, but the reality is if you take the core group of guys who surf up here, the odds of them getting attacked goes way, way up. They might have a 1 in 100 chance of getting attacked.”

large populations of five pinniped species. Recent studies estimate the population of whites in the Red Triangle to be 215. Anderson feels this number is surprisingly small. Surfers’ significant others will likely feel this number sounds surprisingly large.

So what can Norcal surfers do to minimize risk? “My main thing about shark safety is you should stay out of the water in places where there are known sharks,” Anderson explains. “But if you’re gonna surf anyway, know first aidhow to stop bleeding is critical.

Have a radio or cell phone, and use the buddy system.”

Tracking data suggests white sharks don’t wander the coast-instead they return each fall to “coastal aggregation sites” like Tomales Point, Ano Nuevo, and the Farallones. Perhaps worst of all, locals near these hotspots are usually entering the food chain for cold, lonely, sloppy waves of poor quality.

Anderson attributes the abundance of sharks in Point Reyes to

For Royce, the danger itself was always an element of the appeal.

“It’s part of the adrenaline rush. I hate to say it, but people get off on it...you’re with your friends, it’s absolutely beautiful, and yeah, it’s sharky. But for a lot of people that adds to it.” Royce escaped his attack relatively unscathed. His board took the biggest hit. Afterwards, he refocused on family and found himself reappraising his priorities. He never quit surfing, but he does avoid surfing particularly sharky local spots far from help. “Sometimes I totally get wigged out, and other times I’m fully comfortable,” he explains.

“But there’s nothing like the feeling of an animal wanting to eat you... until you have it happen, you don’t know how you’re going to react.”

Lewis Samuels lives in San Francisco a n d i s a n a v i d w r i t e r a n d s u r f e r.

there’s nothing like the feeling of an animal wanting

to eat you...

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Underwater graveyard of hundreds of World War II planes revealed: Scuba diver captures stunning photos of aircraft lost and forgotten for over 70 years on the Pacific Ocean seabed.

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series of incredible photographs showing more than 150 lost World War II aircraft 130-feet under the Pacific Ocean has been released. The stunning images show the planes surrounded by coral and fish as they lie- sometimes vertically- on the seabed more than seven decades after they were dumped there. The find includes historic American aircraft including Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bombers, F4U Corsair and TBF/TBM Avengers.

Amazingly, many of the planes have remained intact, with only a few broken tails and wings littering the floor. Brandi Mueller, from Cameron, Wisconsin, captured the planes while scuba diving around five miles from Roi-Namur in the Marshall Islands.

The 31-year-old was taking time off from her coastguard job to teach diving when she came across the incredible find.

She told MailOnline: “They call it the “Airplane Graveyard”- they aren’t war graves or planes that crashed. They were planes that were taken out over the reef and pushed off intact after the war ended. For me, diving on airplanes, especially World War II airplanes is really unique. Diving on shipwrecks seems normal, you expect ships to have sunk. But seeing planes underwater is strange, planes don’t belong in the water, they belong in the sky, so it feels weird to dive on them. But amazing and special too. And because these planes didn’t sink because of the war they are special. They should have flown more, lived longer, but they were sunk in perfect condition.”

They should have Flown more, lived longer, but they were sunk in perfect condition.

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Her pictures also show other Allied aircraft including Helldivers, B-25 Mitchell, Curtiss C-46 Commando and F4F4 Wildcats. The planes would have been dumped into the ocean off of aircraft carriers and transport ships after the successful Pacific Campaign ended in victory for the U.S. in August 1945. They would have arrived onto the Marshall Islands during the battle of Kwajalein that raged from January to February 1944 as the U.S. Marines and Navy conducted their ambitious “island hopping� strategy to defeat Japan.

Almost 50,000 members of the U.S. armed forces took part in the battle to take the Marshall Islands from Japan and from there could strike at Guam and eventually the Japanese mainland itself. The battle for the control of Midway was on of the defining battles in World War II.

Photograph s by B ra ndi Muel l er

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The Allies had been fighting the Empire of Japan, which had crippled the American Pacific fleet with its attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. While the American Navy mounted a comeback, the Japanese military conquered island after island in the South Pacific. But as the war continued, the Japanese began to suffer huge reversals. One by one the islands fell under Allied control, they helped form a staging point for a greater Allied offensive in the Pacific- a foothold in the region.

Eventually, American forces were able to launch bombing raids against Japan and on August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay took off from the island of Tinian in the Pacific and dropped a nuclear bomb onto Hiroshima, effectively ending the war.

Ly d i a W i l l g r e s s h a s a M . A . i n E n g l i s h L i t e r a t u r e and enjoys running, cooking, and reading.

douglas sbd

dauntless The Douglas SBD Dauntless was manufactured from 1940 to 1944. It is famous for delivering the fatal blows to the Japanese carriers at the Battle of Midway in June 1942- one of the most decisive battles of World War II. The Dauntless was replaced by the Curtiss SB2C Helldiver in the early 1940s. The Helldiver was a larger and faster plane, although delays in production led British and Australian troops to cancel substantial orders.

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