ПАНСТВО

Researchers have discovered the remarkably well-preserved wreck of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship, Endurance, in 10,000 feet of icy water, a century after it was swallowed up by Antarctic ice during what proved to be one of the most heroic expeditions in history.

A team of marine archaeologists, engineers and other scientists used an icebreaker ship and underwater drones to locate the wreck at the bottom of the Weddell Sea, near the Antarctica Peninsula.

The Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust’s search expedition Endurance22 announced the discovery on Wednesday.

Images and video of the wreck show the three-masted wooden ship in pristine condition, with gold-leaf letters reading “Endurance” still affixed to the stern and the ship’s lacquered wooden helm still standing upright, as if the captain may return to steer it at any time.

“This is by far the finest wooden shipwreck I have ever seen,” said Mensun Bound, the director of the exploration. Bound noted the wreck is still upright, clear of the seabed “and in a brilliant state of preservation.”

The discovery is “a titantic find” in “one of the world’s most challenging environments,” said maritime historian Steven Schwankert, who was not involved in the expedition.

The combination of deep, dark waters — no sunlight penetrates to 10,000 feet — frigid temperatures and sea ice have frustrated past efforts to find Endurance, but also explain why the wreck is in such good condition.

The bottom of the Weddell Sea is “a very inhospitable environment for just about everything — especially the kind of bacteria, mites and wood-eating worms that would otherwise enjoy munching on a wooden shipwreck,” Schwankert said.

The expedition Endurance22 embarked from Cape Town, South Africa, in early February in a ship capable of breaking through 1-meter-thick ice. 

The team, which included more than 100 researchers and crew members, deployed underwater drones that combed the seafloor for two weeks in the area where the ship was recorded to have sunk in 1915. 

“We have made polar history with the discovery of Endurance, and successfully completed the world’s most challenging shipwreck search,” said expedition leader John Shears. 

The British explorer Shackleton never achieved his ambition to become the first person to cross Antarctica via the South Pole. In fact, he never set foot on the continent. 

“Despite being designed to resist collision with ice floes and to break through pack ice, Endurance could not withstand being crushed by heavy sea ice,” said Ann Coats, a maritime historian at the University of Portsmouth. 

Shackleton himself noted the difficulty of the endeavor in his diary. 

“The end came at last about 5 p.m.,” he wrote. “She was doomed, no ship built by human hands could have withstood the strain.” 

Before the ship disappeared 3,000 meters below icy waters, Shackleton’s crew loaded food and other provisions into three lifeboats to escape and set up camp on ice floes, where they used sled dogs to carry their provisions, according to Shackleton’s diary. 

Shackleton and his captain, Frank Worsley, then sailed across 1,287 kilometers of treacherous icy waters in a 7-meter ship to the island of South Georgia, a remote whaling community, to get help. That successful trip is considered a heroic feat of fortitude, and Shackleton’s decisive response to imminent tragedy is still held up today as a model of how to lead in difficult circumstances. 

“Shackleton was a very good planner and a good improviser — I have a feeling that the polar explorers of today would not survive the same kinds of things he endured,” said Anna Wahlin, a polar researcher at the University of Gothenburg, who just returned from a two-month mission studying ice shelves and warming ocean currents in Antartica. 

In Antartica, “everything is gray or white,” and after only a few weeks, explorers “start to miss smelling Earth, walking in the forest, hearing birds chirp, seeing things that are green,” she said. 

The expedition to find Endurance comes a century after Shackleton’s death in 1922. British historian and broadcaster Dan Snow, who accompanied the researchers, tweeted that the wreck’s discovery on Saturday happened “100 years to the day since Shackleton was buried.” 

The ship is protected as a historic monument under the 6-decade-old Antarctic Treaty that is intended to protect the region’s environment. 

Researchers filmed the wreck, but nothing was recovered or disturbed. Instead, expedition organizers say they want to use laser scans to create a 3-D model of the ship that can be displayed in both traveling exhibits and a permanent museum exhibit. 

“Shackleton, we like to think, would have been proud of us,” the expedition’s Bound wrote in a blog post. 
…

A man who received the first heart transplant from a pig two months ago has died, the University of Maryland Medical Center said Wednesday. 

Doctors did not say the specific reason David Bennett, 57, died Tuesday, only saying his condition had been worsening over the past several days. 

“We are grateful for every innovative moment, every crazy dream, every sleepless night that went into this historic effort,” Bennett’s son, David Bennett Jr., said in a statement released by the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “We hope this story can be the beginning of hope and not the end.” 

Prior to the January 7 transplant, Bennett had been in poor health and was ineligible for a human heart. 

Organ transplants from animals — xenotransplantation — have largely failed because the human body rejects them almost immediately, but in this case, the pig had been genetically modified with human genes in the hope of delaying rejection.  

At first, things seemed to be going well for Bennett, and last month, the hospital released a video of him watching the Super Bowl from his hospital bed. 

“We are devastated by the loss of Mr. Bennett. He proved to be a brave and noble patient who fought all the way to the end,” Dr. Bartley Griffith, who performed the surgery at the Baltimore hospital, said in a statement. 

Bennett lived longer than one notable case in 1984 when a baboon heart was transplanted to a baby. The baby lived 21 days. 

“We have gained invaluable insights learning that the genetically modified pig heart can function well within the human body while the immune system is adequately suppressed,” said Dr. Muhammad M. Mohiuddin, professor of surgery and scientific director of the Cardiac Xenotransplantation Program at University of Maryland School of Medicine. “We remain optimistic and plan on continuing our work in future clinical trials.”

More than 106,000 people are on the organ donation waiting list in the United States. Last year, more than 41,000 transplants were performed, and of those, 3,800 were heart transplants. 

Some information in this report comes from The Associated Press. 

 
…

Ahead of World Tuberculosis Day (March 24), the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is calling for governments to renew the fight against the respiratory illness. In South Africa, a hotspot for TB, a mobile screening team is trying to make up for disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic. Linda Givetash reports from Johannesburg.
…

The World Health Organization expressed concern Wednesday that many countries are drastically reducing COVID-19 testing, inhibiting the ability of public health professionals to monitor where the coronavirus is, how it’s spreading and how it’s evolving.

During a briefing at agency headquarters in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that while cases and deaths were declining globally and many countries had lifted restrictions, the pandemic was far from over, “and it will not be over anywhere until it’s over everywhere.”

Tedros said the WHO on Wednesday published new guidelines on self-testing for COVID-19 and recommended that self-tests be offered in addition to professionally administered testing services. He said evidence showed that users can reliably and accurately self-test, and that self-testing may reduce inequalities in testing access.

The WHO chief said he hoped the new guidance would also help increase access to testing, which is too expensive for many low-income countries, where those tools could play an important role in expanding testing.

Tedros also said the agency and its partners in the ACT Accelerator grouping — part of the WHO’s COVAX initiative, which has focused on equitable access to vaccines globally — were seeking to raise funds “to ensure that all countries that need self-tests will be able to receive them as quickly as possible.”

Regarding the situation in Ukraine, Tedros said the WHO had so far delivered 81 tons of supplies to the country and was establishing a pipeline of supplies for health facilities throughout Ukraine.

He said Tuesday that the agency had delivered five tons of medical supplies to Kyiv to support surgical care for 150 trauma patients, and other supplies to manage a range of health conditions for 45,000 people for a month.

Tedros said the WHO “continues to call on the Russian Federation to commit to a peaceful resolution to this crisis, and to allow safe, unimpeded access to humanitarian assistance for those in need.”
…