June 2, 2009 -
Article from USA Today
Lake
Tahoe sub mission seeks pollution, climate answers
By Jeff DeLong, USA TODAY
SOUTH
LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — A team of submariners that
spent the month of May exploring
Lake Tahoe
and examined, among other things, evidence of an
earthquake fault that may have ruptured thousands of
years ago, is hoping the operation is just the
beginning of their underwater explorations.
Scott Cassell, the sub's captain
and founder of the non-profit Undersea Voyager Project,
says his team has plans for a five-year mission to
gather information and develop ideas to help restore
endangered bodies of water around the world.
The goal, Cassell says, is to
collect data and attract sufficient attention to prompt
people and governments to halt pollution and overfishing
and take other actions to protect threatened bodies of
water.
A two-person submarine spent the
past month cruising Lake Tahoe, examining earthquake
faults, ancient submerged trees and beds of invading
clams that threaten the lake.
"I think it's a very useful
tool," said John Kleppe, a
University of Nevada-Reno
scientist who for years has researched submerged trees,
some more than 3,000 years old, in Fallen Leaf Lake just
west of Lake Tahoe. The trees, which grew when the lake
level was lowered by lengthy drought, provide a "very
good record of climate change," Kleppe said.
Lake Tahoe, 1,645 feet deep and
second to
Oregon's
Crater Lake
as the nation's deepest, has problems, including
sediment pollution and algae growth diminishing the
lake's famed clarity and invasive species that could
forever alter its ecology, says Cassell, 47, a
commercial diver, explorer and filmmaker from
Pasadena, Calif. He says he has been fascinated
with aquatic depths since seeing the movie
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea when he was 6.
Several other explorations are
planned in the coming months in preparation for the
five-year mission Cassell and colleagues hope to
commence in 2011.
Cassell said he dreamed up the
Undersea Voyager concept along with veteran submariner
Andreas Rechnitzer in 2003 as the pair worried about
failing fisheries, the sea's impact on climate and the
fact that many of the
Earth's oceans are unexplored. He says he decided
to make the effort his "life's mission" after Rechnitzer
died in 2005.
Richard Schweickert, a geology
professor from University of Nevada-Reno used the sub to
study an earthquake fault he says ruptured within the
past few thousand years.
The resulting earthquake,
Schweickert says, was likely between magnitude 6.5 and 7
— strong enough to generate a tsunami on Lake Tahoe's
surface up to 30 feet high. Geologic evidence shows such
tsunamis have happened there in the distant past and
could again, he says.
Other team members — there were
five at Lake Tahoe and plans for a total of 15, Cassell
says — gushed over the experience.
"It's just magical," added Peri
Best, 48, of Napa, Calif. Best is training to pilot the
sub and she plunged several times below the surface
during the Lake Tahoe mission.
The sub's time at Lake Tahoe was
donated by manufacturer and owner SeaMagine Hydrospace
of
Claremont, Calif., Cassell says. Much of the
additional $25,000 in expenses came out of Cassell's
pocket, he says.
Cassell, who gained some fame in
November 2006 as the head of a team that was the first
to successfully film a giant squid in its natural
habitat in the
Gulf of California, also known as the Sea of
Cortez, says he next plans to explore a massive island
of plastic trash floating at a place where ocean
currents converge in the northern
Pacific Ocean.
He will be accompanied by Charles
Moore, who discovered the "Great Pacific
Garbage Patch" in 1997 while returning from a
sailing race. Moore estimated the size of the plastic
mass at twice the size of
Texas, something Cassell says he hopes to verify
while filming a documentary.
After that, Cassell plans an
underwater circumnavigation of
Santa Catalina Island and the Channel Islands off
the
California
coast, examining fish populations and pollutants.
Accompanying him, he says, will be researchers from the
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the
University of Southern California and the
University of California-Davis.
The planned longer-term effort,
which Cassell envisions being funded by both private
donations and contributions from interested governments,
would involve dives in 33 countries. He says he is in
negotiations for funding from Mexico.
The Undersea Voyager Project,
based in South Lake Tahoe, is trying to raise $3 million
to purchase a three-person sub, capable of diving 1,500
feet, for the global expedition. "Our focus is the
water. What is at 1,000 feet?" Cassell said. " It's the
most hostile place on the planet that supports life —
the top of the abyss."
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