April 2012

During the war, more than 2,750 Liberty ships were built by the US to help crush the Japanese and German war machines by delivering cargo, troops and munitions.

In the mid-1970s some of the vessels were stripped and deliberately scuttled to create fishing reefs, and that initial success led to an inshore and offshore artificial reef program that continues today..

This of course makes for good copy for the uninitiated—diving companies have long used tech sizzle to sell gear and training to recreationalists—but the fact is, it’s a bit of marketing hyperbole.

On 26th December 1942 when Norway was occupied by German forces, a Heinkel 115B seaplane from the Küstenfliegergruppe 906 based at Sola, sets down on Hafrsfjord when one of the floats tears off, capzing the plane.

The crew is rescued and so is one of the engines but the plane sinks to the seabed where it lies forgotten for almost seven decades until it was accidentally rediscovered when the Norwegian Charting Authorities were testing new sonar equipment.

"Actually having good followers helps leaders get on with their tasks," said Andrea Manica, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Cambridge who led the study recently published in the journal Current Biology. "They were doing more together than they would be doing by themselves."

Manica and his colleagues monitored individual threespine sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus) for their willingness to leave their safe, weedy cover and venture out into the risky, open waters to feed -- an indication of fish temperament.