It was too wet for a ride this morning but I got inspired this afternoon. It’s very muggy. The river is up at moderate flood level, and there is water everywhere. It is not expected to turn into major flooding in Narrabri, but a good fall of rain in the next 48 hours could change that.
As said in the previous chapter, satan wants to dethrone God, but praise and worship builds a throne for Him. Healing and deliverance flow from that throne. Terry Law
Man-made horrors lurk at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the ocean
Way, way down at the deepest point of the ocean lies a disaster of humanity’s own making that will never die – with untold consequences.Shannon Molloy3 min readNovember 24, 2021 – 1:18PM24 comments
A helium balloon decorated with characters from the film Frozen at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Picture: Mariana Trench – In Pursuit of the Abyss
The Mariana Trench is the deepest part of the ocean, and the deepest part of Earth itself, measuring some 11km down.
So unforgiving are the pitch-black, pressured and near-freezing conditions that we know little about what lurks below, with untold marine treasurers still waiting to be discovered.
Scientists consider the absolute lowest beds of the sea to be about as hard to reach as space.
Over five dives to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the American explorer found previously unknown crustacean species, witnessed brightly coloured outcrops and came across a pink snailfish.
Then, scattered throughout a place only two others have ever managed to physically reach, Vescovo saw plastic.
Lolly wrappers and a plastic shopping bag, to be precise.
Vescovo’s shock find almost overshadowed his remarkable achievement and the scientific promise of his sea life discoveries.
And for good reason.
“We always had this sense that there was a part of the planet that was beyond, that was untouched by human action,” Eric Galbraith, an ocean biochemist at the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies in Barcelona and adjunct professor at McGill University in Montreal, told the magazine Maclean’s.
“That used to be true. And now it’s no longer true.”
And unfortunately, Vescovo’s discovery isn’t the first, with previous unmanned voyages to the depths of the Mariana also encountering plenty of plastic pollution.
Showing how extensive the problem is – and how quickly waste can sink down – one dive found the remnants of a helium balloon decorated with characters from the children’s film Frozen, released in 2013.
Vision captured of that dive shows the balloon and, resting next to it, a heavy duty 20-litre plastic bucket.
A scene from the film Mariana Trench – In Pursuit of the Abyss shows plastic waste found by unmanned craft. Picture: YouTube
A Frozen balloon and a plastic bucket was seen in the near-inaccessible area. Picture: YouTube
In 2018, researchers from the Institute of Deep Sea Science and Engineering in China took samples of water and sediment at depths ranging from 2.5km to 11km.
“Man-made plastics have contaminated the most remote and deepest places on the planet,” they wrote in analysis published in the journal Geochemical Perspectives Letters.
“The (deepest Mariana) zone is likely one of the largest sinks for microplastic debris on Earth, with unknown but potentially damaging impacts on this fragile ecosystem.”
A muggy overcast morning. The Namoi River is heading towards moderate flooding in Narrabri. With rain forecast locally and in the Nandewar Ranges we could potentially have a good flood in the next few days.
The name of Jesus is one of three spiritual warheads that operate in tandem to defeat the devil and his devices. In Second Corinthians 10:4, St. Paul called them “mighty in God for pulling down strongholds.” Terry Law