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. The actual whirlpool in the strait is only a danger to very small vessels, and even then only in extreme circumstances. A lengthier description states that a total of five unknown drones approached the USS Russell in the course of the incident. As in the other cases, a contemporaneous email report and draft public affairs statement provide further details. The Alaska Bering Sea crab fishery . Bass and low frequencies aren't necessarily bad for your ears - but they can be if they're too loud. Perhaps strangest about the incident are the reports of strange lights being in the skies over the Bass Strait. It also indicates that the UAS incident continued after the Bass Strait departed the area. 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. so a higher than normal number of incidents can only to be expected. Sea level rise during the marine transgression flooded the basin, forming an westward embayment from 11,800BP to 8700BP, and the basin rim was completely flooded by about 8000BP, at which point Bass Strait was formed and Tasmania became an isolated island.[15]. A note on the slide states that the cruiser unsuccessfully attempted to contact the Bass Strait. in the Bass Strait and off the coast of northern and eastern Australia . Three small boats were identified nearby, with one identifying themselves as a small fishing vessel. It carried three passengers and two pilots. His communication radio also went out. Malikides, M., Harris, P. T., Jenkins, C. J., & Keene, J. In other words, what were once dune-lined areas of coast are now all underwater. As the the author explains, however, if you wait for the appropriate weather window, you can enjoy 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. Why is Bass Strait so rough? Sign up for our Explainer newsletter enlightening explanations for complex questions, delivered to your inbox Sunday night from January 15. On April 6, 1966, multiple Melbourne schoolchildren and school staff witnessed a huge disc-shaped object come into view and calmly make its way over their heads and to the trees next to the cricket field where they had been playing. However, after several days with no contact and no arrival, search planes were sent out in a desperate bid to find the apparently stricken vessel. The national park is wholly contained by the Beagle Commonwealth Marine Reserve. : 1881 - 1895), Sat 26 Mar 1892, Page 30 - THE SEALERS OF BASS STRAIT. These included the previously mentioned DRAKE system, a man-portable backpack that allows sailors to jam the radio frequency signals used to control drones. 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. These details were obtained after The War Zone successfully appealed extensive redactions of the ship logs. Please try again later. The first humans arrived in Tasmania around 40,000 years ago. The strait is named after James Cook, the first European commander to sail through it, in 1770. Updated June 16, 2022. 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. [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. Following her sudden disappearance, investigators would discover that none of her belongings had been taken and that her room was left as if had she been coming back to it that evening as normal. The USS Paul Hamilton reported observing and identifying the drones visually via technical means. Although an unknown vessel is referenced, it is unclear if this is the same ship that was operating near the USS Russell. Australian Journal of Earth Science, 35, 303-311. Bass Strait and its Islands. Subaqueous dunes (sandwaves) and tidal current ridges cover approximately 6,000km2 (2,300sqmi) of the seabed in Bass Strait. However, few people know about the Bab-El-Mandeb Strait, which lies on the Red Sea between Djibouti and Yemen. At times it becomes dangerous because of its narrowness and acute turns the ships have to take. In the previous year, it has been difficult to get definitive answers regarding these incidents. UFO captured by Roy Manifold. And the most dangerous fishing ground is the Northeast Coast, where fishermen go after groundfish the bottom-dwelling species like flounder, sole and cod. The surface of the King Island Rise also occurs in water depths of less than 50m (160ft), and includes the shallow (40m[130ft]) Tail Bank at its northern margin as well as King Island itself. To date, more than four billion barrels of crude oil and around eight trillion cubic feet of gas have been . While that has been covered here before, the first two points on our list share bizarre connections to the famous case, so thats where well start. There were also other, less fatal incidents. Monnik and Page emphasized that it is increasingly easy for criminals to field drone swarms. Another small group, the Hunter Islands, is . 28. Even aboard a cruise, the waters around the Drake Passage are still known as one of the most dangerous maritime routes in the world. 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. 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. Your buddies will want to blame fishing pressure. The smaller islands of Bass Strait typically have some form of protection status. On July 21st, the USS Paul Hamilton again reported seeing a group of drones. 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 . Email info@bst.net.au. Also, the strait has international commercial shipping traffic, as well as fishing ferries of both private and public organizations. Major islands include: Within Bass Strait there are several Commonwealth marine reserves, which are all part of the South-east Network. 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]). A note on the slide states that the cruiser unsuccessfully attempted to contact the Bass Strait. Crabbers work the dangerous waters of the Bering Sea in winter. 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. It also states that communication was never established with the nearby pleasure craft, though a standard UAS warning script was read over the radio. 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. Battlefield commanders in Syria and Afghanistan have both had to constantly contend with drone threats. Anyone who has seen the Australian television show The Kettering Incident will perhaps be aware that many parts of the shows story lines are based, in part, on real-life accounts, particularly of life in Tasmania along the coast of the Bass Strait. Fast replacing the Somalian coast as the piracy hotspot, the Gulf of Guinea has become one of the most dangerous places to go sailing. Pirates here mainly target tankers . counter drone technologies and techniques, Biden administration issued a new directive, Chief of Naval Operations Michael Gilday's statement. Bering, Gibraltar, Bab-el-Mandeb, Bosporus and Torres, etc. Blom, W. M., & Alsop, D. B. BASS STRAIT OFFSHORE 24. Once a target has been shown to be defenseless or easily overwhelmed, subsequent drones can be deployed to accomplish a particular mission. The Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race passes generally east of the strait but is affected by its weather conditions. 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. It is about 80 mi (130 km) wide and has many reefs and shoals dangerous to navigation, and its larger islands are inhabited. Wild weather on Sunday afternoon exacerbated massive swells along the already treacherous Bass Straight. Banks Strait is the southeastern opening to the Tasman Sea. However, the newly released documents contain several clarifying details. A timeline of events shows that the surveillance lasted for just under four hours. A . The children would follow the object for several minutes before it vanished over the trees and out of sight. 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. 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. Drone swarms are an increasingly common occurrence, though precise statistics about the total number and severity of incidents are hard to come by. The great English navigator, Captain James Cook first explored the strait in 1770, thinking that it might be a large harbour in the great southern continent that he had been sent to find. Records previously released to us demonstrated that DRAKE systems were deployed to several ships later in July 2019. The USS Gabrielle Giffords also queried what it believed to be the UAS "homeplate" a term used to indicate an aircraft's home airfield or ship. As you might imagine, there were numerous accounts of strange events in the Bass Strait during World War II. Though some of these incidents involved things like attempts to hack civilian light displays, many fall in the realm of more nefarious activities. 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. Carbonate mud sedimentation on a temperate shelf: Bass Basin, southeast Australia. Arguably, the year-long confusion surrounding the leaked footage from the USS Russell attests to this problem. Espionage collected in these areas is of extreme value to potential adversaries and poses a serious and ongoing national security threat. After a dash to Flinders Island, the crew of the 40-foot cutter Anastasia joined David for a nice hot "cuppa". Bass Straight oil production still amounts to between 17% - 19% of Australia's oil and 42% of LPG. According to Page, public reports started to escalate in late 2019. 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). He made two more crossings of Bass Strait before he died attempting to cross the Tasman Sea in February 2007. Even this map, of the shortest possible route, shows how the race passes along the eastern edge of Bass Strait (yes, that bit with the big drop-off). There appeared to be a burned patch only several centimeters wide. A legend on the slide shows at least four UAS tracks, and the timeline mentions that lights from as many as 10 additional drones were visually spotted. 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. However, two of the military aircraft involved in the search also vanished. DroneSec collects and categorizes drone incident reports on a global basis. We previously reported the close presence of several civilian vessels in conjunction with these sightings, notably the Hong Kong-flagged bulk carrier MV Bass Strait. This last account, as crazy as it sounds, is very similar to both ancient texts and other contemporary accounts that speak of portals or gateways to other dimensions. Somewhere between three and five minutes later another monster wave hit the keel and the boat righted itself, but the mast was broken.. The strait often experiences rough water and heavy swells from strong winds, especially from the south. The Danish Strait: Of extreme importance in the Northern European maritime network, the Danish Strait shipping route helps to interlink the North Sea with the Baltic Sea especially with respect to oil tanker ships that cross from Eastern Europe - mainly Russia - towards the West. An email sent on July 15th matches these details and references a number of images and one video file. Manifold believes what he heard was connected to the disappearance of Valentich. Carbonate sandwaves in Bass Strait. In the case of the naval incidents, some ships indicated that they did not yet have any operational C-UAS technologies. Valentich and his plane subsequently vanished and neither Valentich nor his plane were ever seen again. The two larger reserves, Flinders and Zeehan, extend mostly outside of the Bass Strait area. You have corrected this article This article has been corrected by You and other Voluntroves This article has been corrected by Voluntroves The Bass Strait's owner and operator, Hong Kong-based Pacific Basin, did not reply to several requests for comment. In the coming days the sea will remain rough. Half of the world's attacks now take place in the waters off Indonesia, Singapore and . The submarine topography of Bass Strait. 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. The unusual commingling of the longstanding UFO issue with drones has arguably created a potent cultural blindspot that can be exploited by adversaries. It also indicates that the UAS incident continued after the Bass Strait departed the area. Over the last few years, we have completed around $600 million of decommissioning works in Bass Strait, including successfully removing the Seahorse and Tarwhine facilities . Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray took pains to emphasize in a recent congressional hearing that the military "train as they would fight." The domestic sea route is serviced by two Spirit of Tasmania passenger vehicle ferries, based in Devonport, Tasmania. Torres Strait, passage between the Coral Sea, on the east, and the Arafura Sea, in the western Pacific Ocean. Bass Strait is a strait that separates Australia's state of Victoria from 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. Despite being in the Roaring 40s, we had good . 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