Posted on 01/27/2006 12:23:44 AM PST by naturalman1975
IT might be one of the world's most impressive displays of military might, but the USS Ronald Reagan is no match for Queensland's jellyfish.
Some capabilities aboard the 97,000-tonne, $5 billion aircraft carrier were disabled after the blubbery invertebrates were sucked into its condensers while docked in the Port of Brisbane.
Condensers are used to take in water from the ocean and cool down the ship's engines.
A spokesman today confirmed the slimy creatures had caused problems during incoming tides.
"The impact was minor and required shifting of electrical generators in order to clear the fouled inlets," he said.
"The fouling by sand and biologics is a common occurrence which the ship's engineers are trained to counter.
"At no time was the ship or environment at risk and we remain capable of fulfilling our mission requirements."
The nuclear-powered ship suffered a similar problem in June 2004 when a main condenser was fouled with several hundred squid and octopi following a four day port visit to Valparaiso, Chile.
But the jellyfish couldn't completely put the brakes on the Ronald Reagan as the "floating city" today set sail after five days of offshore leave.
Around 6000 crew spent their time soaking up Brisbane's pubs, clubs and tourist attractions.
In turn, hundreds of fascinated locals queued for hours and caused traffic chaos to catch a glimpse of the warship.
A handful of people today protested its presence but their plans to kayak out to the "killing machine" were thwarted by tight security.
"The police stopped the kayaks going out to the waters ... they said that the whole river was an exclusion zone," Brisbane Peace Convergence spokeswoman Treena Lenthall said.
The Ronald Reagan left San Diego on January 4 and is on its maiden deployment. Brisbane is its first foreign port of call.
The warship stands 77m high from the waterline, 344m long and the flight deck covers 1.82ha, housing an air wing of 80 fixed wing aircraft and helicopters.
It will now conduct naval operations in support of the war on terror as well as security commitments in the western Pacific.
SciFi Channel is probably working on one of their boffo Original Movies about this. It will be written, filmed, and premiered within the month. January, I mean.
Oh great, my buddy probably had to deal with that. He works in one of the AC&R shops in engineering.
"Let's see... a squid gets sucked into a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and DOESN'T DIE!"
now we know where Al Gore came from...
Now, sharks are obviously the most known of the aquatic dangers, but to be honest with you the Irukandji is a far greater danger. When it comes to jellyfish most people know better (at least I hope they do) than to mess with them, and thus they will stay away from the Portuguese Man-o-war (which I had float maybe 10 feet from me once), and the larger variety of Box jellyfish .....however the irukandji (which is related to the Box) is only mere centimeters long. For all practical purposes it cannot be easily seen, and woe unto anyone who swims into a mass of them. Now that is one bad way to go.
Now, this article doesn't say whether it was irukandji that got inside the Reagan, but the photograph shown is of the Irukandji.
I'll bet that the next day the dining halls had a seafood special.
ROTFL
They cause you not to wear pants ?
if there anything like me,despite the problems caused they probably were all like "hey that was pretty cool" and laughed the whole time,
i seen a video of a test torpedo launch on a ship and it only shot out half way, right away the crew started going into hystirics,
i love our military
Of course they did - I'm an ex-sailor myself. As long as nobody gets hurt (or maybe I should say permanently hurt) a lot of things are very funny. I once dropped a boat into the water - having neglected to put the bungs in. I knew what to do though - I boarded her and 'went down with my ship'. Only thing I could do at the time.
Nuclear Octo-Squid:Terror Downunder!
Followed two months later by Nuclear Octo-Squid 2:The New Breed
He needs to cobble together some kind of ray gun in the engineering shop. "Die jellyfish, die!!!"
All I can say is Ick. Cleaning jellyfish and squid of the machinery has got to be a form of punishment.
5 metre race, from a standing start, Kayak versus Carrier, though... who would win that one?
Anyone have any ideas what a torpedo would do to a kayak?
*I'm going to have this image stuck in my head all day now. :p
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