World Tourism Blog

The cold depths of the Adriatic Sea have yielded yet another bonanza — and it’s not fishing. Scuba divers are now able to plunge into the sea’s clear, astonishingly blue waters and see ancient treasures protected by a giant underwater safe.

An ancient Greek shipwreck containing treasure with an estimated value of about $8 million is accessible to divers just off the coast of the off the coast of the Croatian town of Cavtat. Included in the wreck are hundreds of clay amphoras, the storage jars of antiquity, probably once filled with wine and oil, lie just 96 feet below the water’s surface.

“Although the shipwreck is destroyed, the cargo of the wreck appears to be pristine,” Boris Obradovic, the head of “Epidaurum” Scuba Diving Center, who found the shipwreck in 1999, and now guides experienced scuba divers down to the wreckage, told ABC News.com.

A striking video made by Obradovic and his team shows “a mixture of gray, brown and reddish amphoras much like they were placed shortly after the ship settled into the ooze.” Some amphoras are encrusted with purplish sponges, others with algae and feathery hydroids.

After studying the videos with nautical archaeologists, Marijan Orlic, an underwater archaeologist and retired director of operations for Croatian Conservation Department, tentatively identified the jars as typical of the African origin, near modern day Tunis, around the third century AD.

A steel mesh cage the size of a volleyball field shields the wreck, which is about 67 feet long and 35 feet wide. At least 700 amphoras are visible above the seabed.

“It’s an incredible find,” Orlic said in an interview from Zagreb. ”It’s the biggest shipwreck we ever found. We were very excited, but had to protect it from the looters, so we chose to physically protect it with a metal cage.”

By DRAGANA JOVANOVIC

The cold depths of the Adriatic Sea have yielded yet another bonanza -- and it?s not fishing. Now, scuba divers will be able to plunge into the clear, astonishingly blue water of the Adriatic Sea, heading straight to the bottom -- and back a bit less than two millenniums ? to see ancient treasures protected by the giant underwater safe.

Greenland is the largest island in the world. Its northerly location, at the point where the Atlantic meets the Arctic Ocean, means that Greenland is surrounded principally by cold ocean currents, so the coasts are constantly being cooled. This, combined with the radiation of cold from the inland ice, gives Greenland its arctic climate.
The ice cap or inland ice covers 1,833,900 square km, equivalent to 85 percent of Greenland’s total area, and extends 2,500 km (1,553 miles) from north to south and up to 1,000 km from east to west.

At its center, the ice can be up to 3 km thick, representing 10 percent of the world’s total fresh water reserves.If all the ice were to melt, the world’s oceans would rise seven meters.

Greenland is often associated with cold and darkness and it can, of course, get very cold. However, there is also plenty of light and, although the polar darkness often reigns (in Qaanaaq, the sun doesn’t rise for a whole three months!), it is never totally dark. Greenland enjoys more hours of summer than anywhere down south, but the weather is nowhere near as warm, even though the light is much more intense. Greenland summers won’t give you an all-over tan, but your face and neck will turn a beautiful shade of brown.

The climate of Greenland is generally dry, and this means that the same temperature feels very different in Greenland from what it does in Europe. 10 - 15 C (50 - 60F) seems very warm, while -10C (-50F) seems a very pleasant temperature.