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[Nathan Lapointe]

As many of you are probably aware, the Canadian government is funding an expedition to find John Franklin's lost ships, the Terror and Erebus.  It's mostly about domestic politics, trying to prove that little 'ol Canada can actually send our lone icebreaker to the North and mount expeditions, I'm posting this for two reasons:

1 - They are using an AUV to do much of the exploring, in fact the approach seems very similar to Niku VII.  The main difference is the search area is much wider, there is ice that may have ground the evidence to a pulp instead of currents and a reef and it's funded by the government (my tax $$ at work) so they basically have an unlimited budget.

2 - The obvious historical reasons.  We know Franklin and his men died and roughly where, but we don't know exactly HOW.  There are many, many parallels to the Earhart mystery here.  They have found a lot of artifacts on prior occasions, including skeletons of the crew members. 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/features/franklin/ - Main CBC News page about the expedition.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/franklin/story/2012/08/22/franklin-arctic-search.html - Article about the AUV being used.  It looks VERY similar to the one used in Niku VII.  I'm going to be interested to see how well it performs with the icebergs and on an un-mapped ocean floor given the difficulties in Niku VII.

If nothing else, following this expedition gives us something to do while we wait for more information to be developed from the Niku VII information.   

Nathan.

[Nathan Lapointe]

Also - they've found the HMS Investigator using basically the same technology.  That ship was in amazing condition, sitting there on the bottom just waiting to be uncovered.  It was sent to look for Franklin's lost ships and suffered a similar fate to his ships.  Some of the crew survived from what I recall.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10899878

[Chris Johnson]

Thanks Nathan,

fits in well with this thread Franklin ramble via scott

Had seen about the other ship

[Alan Harris]

... it's funded by the government (my tax $$ at work) so they basically have an unlimited budget.

And maybe not.  This gentleman is complaining that the budget this year is only $275,000, and concludes that it is little more than a public relations exercise.  As do those folks who have commented to him.  I have small personal knowledge about the subject and claim zero expertise, but I consider this Franklin blog to be very interesting and balanced.

[Nathan Lapointe]

... it's funded by the government (my tax $$ at work) so they basically have an unlimited budget.

And maybe not.  This gentleman is complaining that the budget this year is only $275,000, and concludes that it is little more than a public relations exercise.  As do those folks who have commented to him.  I have small personal knowledge about the subject and claim zero expertise, but I consider this Franklin blog to be very interesting and balanced.

The budget of $275,000 doesn't include all of the ships, personnel and equipment.  The total comes to much more then that.  Of course, they would be spending the money on the ships, personnel and equipment anyways, I guess the $275k is the incremental costs.  Also, some valuable science is being done here since they will be mapping the ocean floor for the first time.  It is a PR exercise but there is some scientific and historical value to what they are doing.  My main curiosity is how well the AUV works in that environment compared to Niku's reef.  I wonder if they have a rescue ROV?

Thanks for posting the link to the blog.

Nathan.