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The Sundaland Blog

This is the blog postings of the Maritime Mysteries Explorers, from their travels and explorations

Maritime mysteries Explorers

Southern Sun searches for WWII wrecks

16/11/2017

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Southern Sun departed Miri 2nd Sept for Kuching with crew of 3.
Arrived Kuching marina 5th Sept.
Meeting with Dr Charles and Sherman 6th.
Departed Kuching marina first light of the 9th. and investigated a marked wreck to the west of Tanjung Sipang distance 1.4nm water depth 9meters. Sonar images suggested by its shape that this wreck could be the W6. We determined to return to this wreck the next day to fully identify it.
Departed Santubong River anchorage mid morning of the 10th with Dr Charles and Sherman on board.Obtained more sonar images and decided to anchor and investigate by diving. Visibility very poor less that half meter and strong current more than 1 knot.
11th down day for repairs and maintenance.
12th departed Santubong River anchorage with Sherman and local diver Eng on board. Swept wreck with tow-fish sonar as well as hull mounted sonar. Anchored and brought up 2 artifacts to help identify the wreck.
Artifacts appear to be parts of a marine radio of the period 1920/1930. This is consistent with the view that the wreck is the W6.
13th down day for repairs...installed new salt water pump on starboard engine.
14th down day for repairs and maintenance.
!5th departed Santubong River anchorage local diver Eng on board. Obtained more sonar images anchored and dived to recover more artifacts.Severe squall and rising sea brought a close to the days activities.
16th down day for repairs and maintenance.
17th departed Santubong anchorage, obtained further sonar images and overlaid these images onto the electronic charts. This has allowed us to determine in which direction she is lying and gives us a very exact position. After the days work we proceeded directly back to Miri. Arrived back in Miri early on the 20th.

Summery
We are reasonably sure that the wreck we are working on is the Japanese minesweeper W6 but feel that more artifact need to be recovered to further identify this wreck. We are currently making improvements to the vessel and the electronic gear in anticipation to a return to Kuching next year and weather wise the period March -  May would be the best time to do it.
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Borneo Post Article

6/7/2015

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Borneo Post reporter, Cindy Lai,  just recently published an article on Maritime Mysteries Explorers, Hans and Roze Berekoven.  I have included it in our media page on this site.  It is an interesting read, so be sure to check it out and there promises to be more article coming in the near future.

Shoals ‘fit to be Unesco World Heritage site’
by Cindy Lai, reporters@theborneopost.com. Posted on June 23, 2015, Tuesday 
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Kuching Trip

29/6/2015

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Roze was able to post some photos of the trip to the MME Facebook page.
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Departure for Kuching

15/6/2015

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Josh, one of the dive team for MME, decided to chip in and replace the door to the wheel house on Southern Sun before its journey to Kuching.

News from the Captain:
Southern Sun will now depart Miri for Kuchin at 1800hrs Thursday 18th.  Weather has been rather unsettled this past week but should improve for the trip down.

We were back in the news again today more articles coming.  Mostly to do with the Viscount Melbourne and the standoff with the Chinese Navy at Laconia Shauls. Looks like the Malay Gov wants to use the VM as a lever against the Chinese claim to Laconia.  I have suggested that the VM should be listed at UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. This should strengthen Malaysia's case.

Anyway we need to now focus on the K16 project and I hope the weather is kind to us.
Will keep you all posted.....cheers  Hans 
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Captain Hans meets with his MP

13/4/2015

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Late last May, Hans and I travelled to Indonesia to connect with Bob Effendi and meet with a few people about the Sundaland Archaeological Project.  The meeting went very well and it was left that he would lobby the Australian government to collaborate with the Indonesian government on this.
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Just recently Hans was able to meet with his MP, Peter Hendy, at his electoral office in Bega.  He was very interested in the project and the next step is for the Indonesia government to extend a formal invitation to the Australian government to collaborate on the project.  Since there has been a change in government in Indonesia, Hans will have to meet with the new Minister of Culture, which Bob will set up for us.  Indonesia is already covering the first stage of the project by making maps of the paleo channels from the information that they already have at their disposal.  The invitation to collaborate will be on the second stage of the project, which will be the actual surveying of these paleo channels and this will be extending to the Australian Foreign minister, Julia Bishop.
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An Archaeological Collaboration between Australia and the Netherlands

6/4/2015

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Collaborating with the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, Australian archaeologists along with the University of Western Australia and the Department of Fisheries, are searching for the wrecks of Dutch ships off the coasts of Western Australia.  I was myself fortunate to be involved with the UWA and Department of Fisheries when I was making films for WAMSI (Western Australian Marine Science Institution).  Now these prestigious institutions are hoping to shed some light on the European exploration of Australia before the 'First Fleet '. 

'Australian archaeologists searching for 18th-century Dutch wreck
January 21, 2015 - 10:20am

Starting on 19 January a team of Australian archaeologists will be researching a number of Dutch East India Company shipwrecks in the Indian Ocean near Christmas Island and the Cocos Islands. This project, which will focus specifically on locating the wreck of the VOC ship De Fortuyn, is being supported by the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, the Dutch embassy in Canberra, and the Australian Silentworld Foundation.

Dutch and Australian archaeologists have been trying to locate the wreck of De Fortuyn for quite some time, and in this project the two countries will be combining forces. Martijn Manders, head of the Maritime Programme of the Dutch Cultural Heritage Agency, says: “I am very excited that the researchers will now investigate the most likely location of De Fortuyn according to our historical research. Pablo Boorsma, a Master’s student of Maritime Archaeology at Leiden University, has done an amazing job of plotting the search zone. It’s now up to our Australian colleagues to do the fieldwork. Following this work, we will evaluate our progress and discuss our plans for the future, in the hope that we will locate the wreck before or during the Dirk Hartog commemorative year in 2016.” ' (From the Cultural Heritage Agency website)
(See an in-depth article in 'The Monthly Essays', Bring up the Bodies by Jeff Sparrow)

Back in 2011, Roze was fortunate to run into Joke an archaeologist from the Cultural Heritage Agency in Miri and invited her to take a look at the artefacts that were brought up from the wreck of the Viscount Melbourne.  She was impressed with the care that Roze had taken with the artefacts and this led to an invitation to study the art of preservation at the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, which was posted in an earlier blog.   Photos of Roze and Hans' European trip can be found in our photo gallery.

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Late Night in the Midlands

30/3/2015

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Listen to Michael Vara's interview with Frank Joseph Hoff and Captain Hans and Roze Berekoven on the Late Night in the Midlands radio show, click on the link below:
http://www.spreaker.com/user/latenightinthemidlands/atlantis-lost-civilizations-3-27-2015


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A New Theory on Migration

20/3/2015

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Historical Archaeologist, James Edward Sved, has come up with a new hypothesis about the human migration to the American continents.  See what you think:
 
 
POLE SHIFT HYPOTHESIS by James Edward Sved
I am working on a new hypothesis about the arrival of homo sapien sapien (Humans) in the Americas.  I have long believed that the Clovis Paradigm, which claims that ancient Siberian hunters chased mastodon across the North American glacier and arrived, by accident, in North America 13,000 years ago, is a bunch of bunk.  It seems unlikely that primitive, nomadic hunters with no significant clothing or shoes to protect them from glacial temperatures could survive crossing the much larger, icier polar cap of that era.  According to Clovis, they would have encountered significantly sub-zero temperatures from approximately North Korea to New Mexico, walking on-foot.

With ancient sites in South America more than 20,000-24,000 years old, it seems much more likely that ancient Asians and Polynesians island-hopped their way to South America 25,000 years ago.

How is this possible?  Pole shift.  Currently, Earth's poles wobble between approximately 22 and 24 degrees.  When you consider the location of the North American glacier prior to the melting 20,000-12,000 years ago, it seems likely that the "North Pole" used to be almost 10 degrees closer to Canada.  What would this do to Antarctica?  It would put it more in the temperate locale of, say, New Zealand - not entirely and perpetually frozen, and not covered with Ice.  

In my scenario, with sea levels considerably lower than they are today (120 Meters), the aforementioned ancients could have paddled from island to island (There were many more islands above-water then), walked across a section of Antarctica, and right onto South America.   There may have even been a civilization living on Antarctica, before the current axial configuration became the norm.

What could shift the Earth's axis by 10 degrees?  Meteor impact.  Between 40,000 and 20,000 years ago, there were several large impacts on North America (and just off the Atlantic coast) alone, which could account for axial deflection.

There is scientific evidence to support this theory.  The melting glacier of Antarctica may well soon begin to reveal archaeological evidence to support this.  Undersea discoveries of long-forgotten cities which were once on dry land further supports this hypothesis.

Where is the archaeological evidence to support this theory? At the bottom of our oceans. You see, if humans first arrived in the Americas before the melting of the North American Glacier, their oldest settlements would have been consumed by the ocean, during the 120m sea level rise we know to have occurred.
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Meeting of the Minds

28/5/2014

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We were able to interview the chief archaeologist on the Presidential Task Force, Dr. Ali Akbar at University of Indonesia and get an update on the discoveries at Gunung Padang and its megalithic structure.

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Bon Voyage

27/5/2014

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Saturday night at the cultural fair in Miri, Roz, Pril and Hans get into the act.
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