Marine Technology Reporter Blogs - image:wikimedia

The USS Hatteras was an iron-hulled sidewheel steamship that was converted to a gunboat by the US Navy to enforce the wartime blockade of southern ports during the US Civil War. The Hatteras was lost in a brief, unequal battle with a better-armed foe, the Confederate raider CSS Alabama, on January 13th, 1863. The Hatteras was the only US warship sunk in combat in the Gulf of Mexico during the Civil War. Alabama sank Hatteras after a 20-minute exchange of cannon fire; two crewmen from the Hatteras were killed in the action. Six men managed to escape and the rest of the 126 man officers and crewmen were captured and taken to Jamaica, where they were paroled.

Recently a paleoceanographer, Alex Dickson, and his colleagues at The Open University in England have analyzed core sediment samples from the ocean floor. The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, an ongoing international marine research project, gathered the samples. The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maxim (PETM), which occurred approximately 55.9 million years ago was associated with rapid global warming, profound changes in ecosystem, and major perturbations in the carbon cycle. This caused changes in the ocean environment including animal migrations, ocean productivity, acidification and changes in the water cycle. Scientists analyzing seafloor sediment saw lower oxygen levels during this period.