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| Southeast Asia |
| Massive ocean vortex found off Australian coast |
| 2006-06-02 |
| A massive ocean vortex discovered off the West Australian coast is acting as a "death trap" by sucking in huge amounts of fish larvae, and it could affect the surrounding climate. A team of scientists from The University of Western Australia Murdoch University, CSIRO and three American, French and Spanish research institutions announced the discovery of the vortex after a month-long research voyage in the ocean just west of Rottnest Island. Led by Dr Anya Waite, a biological oceanographer from UWA, the 10-member team found the vortex - 200km in diameter and 1,000m deep - spinning at speeds of up to 5kph just off the Rottnest Canyon. Dr Waite said the vortex, shaped like a giant child's spinning top, was created by current movement down the coast and is one of the largest ever found off WA. Visible from space, the vortex is acting as a "death trap" by sucking in fish larvae from closer to the shore, she said. "It's actually acting as a predator, it's actually taking the fish larvae which need to stick around their natural habitat on the coast, and dragging them off to sea," Dr Waite said. She said the climate above the vortex was noticeably different. "It feels like you're in the tropics," she said. "It's warm, soft, moist air, with flying fish, it's a very different environment." It could also potentially affect climate further afield, she said. "The vortex is moving a large volume of a very warm current out back into cooler waters, so essentially it's taking that heat and moving it away from the coast. "So essentially that really changes the heat budget of our regional ocean and it's the ocean that determines climate." Dr Waite said the vortex was unlikely to pose a danger to people sailing or diving in the area but the change was definitely noticeable. "We were in a 70-metre boat and you could immediately feel the shift in the ship's tract, so you can certainly tell that there's something unusual going on out there," she said. |
| Posted by:Oztralian |
| #14 Someone must've pulled the plug, that's all. Put Michael Moore in there to plug it back up. Tell him it's for the good of the planet. Lol Rafel, that fat fuck could plug up a galatical toilet! |
| Posted by: RD 2006-06-02 23:57 |
| #13 Someone must've pulled the plug, that's all. Put Michael Moore in there to plug it back up. Tell him it's for the good of the planet. |
| Posted by: Rafael 2006-06-02 23:52 |
| #12 So how they call this thing... Monica? |
| Posted by: zazz 2006-06-02 23:49 |
| #11 #10 - winnah! ;-p |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2006-06-02 22:42 |
| #10 could be that Air America sux so badly that they sucked a vortex down undah |
| Posted by: macofromoc 2006-06-02 22:13 |
| #9 Isn't that where the ELF transmitters are? I'm just saying... |
| Posted by: Jinenter Phealing5856 2006-06-02 21:33 |
| #8 Yeah, I remember that. Since they're all equidistant, one more should be in Minnesota. Yall got any really crazy lakes up there ? |
| Posted by: wxjames 2006-06-02 21:13 |
| #7 Damnit, Frank G! Ya' beat me to it! It's all Bush's fault! Waaaaaa! Somebody awhile back (Charles Berlitz - is that the Bermuda Triangle guy?) did a book that located about a dozen "deadly vortices" scattered around in the worlds' oceans. One was, of course, located in the Bermuda Triangle, another was in the Dragon's Sea off of Japan, another, yup, you guessed it, near Australia, etc., etc. The author speculated that they were all located equidistant from one another and all somehow related, possibly via blackholes or underwater superpyramids or some other such tall tale... I tend towards the R'Lyeh theory myself. I welcome our tentacled amoeboid master... Cthulu pfthagn! Ia! Ia! |
| Posted by: FOTSGreg 2006-06-02 20:28 |
| #6 How convenient that this should show up when Republicans are getting low polling numbers. Conspiracy???? I think so.. Be afraid, very afraid of the Rove Machine..... |
| Posted by: macofromoc 2006-06-02 20:26 |
| #5 Heh, just looked in Google Earth and you can see something big and circular in the ocean to the west of Rottnest Island. Rottnest is off the coast of Perth, btw. |
| Posted by: DanNY 2006-06-02 20:03 |
| #4 Nothing to see here folks, sail along... |
| Posted by: Halliburton Oceanic Services 2006-06-02 19:50 |
| #3 HELLGATE!!!! |
| Posted by: tu3031 2006-06-02 19:50 |
| #2 I'm sure this started in 2000 because Bush wouldn't sign the Kyoto treaty or force the Senators to sign it or something. Whatever can we do?? When Clinton was President, the oceans behaved. We didn't have a Katrina and stuff |
| Posted by: Frank G 2006-06-02 19:46 |
| #1 Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fthagn! Ryleh has been found! |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2006-06-02 19:32 |