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Spanish Vultures Released in Cyprus to Replenish Population

A griffon vulture flies free after released near the Korfi village in Limassol district in the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus, Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2022. (AP)
A griffon vulture flies free after released near the Korfi village in Limassol district in the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus, Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2022. (AP)
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Spanish Vultures Released in Cyprus to Replenish Population

A griffon vulture flies free after released near the Korfi village in Limassol district in the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus, Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2022. (AP)
A griffon vulture flies free after released near the Korfi village in Limassol district in the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus, Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2022. (AP)

Some 15 Griffon vultures from Spain have been released into the wild in Cyprus to help revive the east Mediterranean island's population that's dropped to just 8-10 birds because of deliberate poisoning, conservationists said Wednesday.

The LIFE with Vultures CY group said the large birds were initially brought to the east Mediterranean island nation nearly a year ago and stayed in a specially constructed cage to get acclimatized to local conditions before their release.

Cyprus’ Game and Fauna Service has attached GPS transmitters to all the vultures to monitor their movements and well-being. From previous releases of vultures elsewhere in Europe, it’s expected that the birds will intermingle with the remaining indigenous vulture population at feeding and roosting locations.

Conservationists say restoring the local vulture population to its former numbers remains a long-term goal, with the most pressing issue being to eradicate the biggest threat to the species which is use of poison bait in the wilderness.

A recent study suggested that the species of bird would disappear from Cyprus in about 15 years if nothing was done to eliminate the poisoning threat and replenish the population with vultures brought from abroad.

Another 15 vultures flown in from Spain — which hosts 90-95% of Europe’s population of the birds — will be released in Cyprus next year.

The Griffon vulture, which can grow up to 1.2 meters (4 feet) long and has a wingspan of 2.8 meters (9 feet), feeds on animal carcasses.

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The Surprising Reason Why There Are No Human Remains in the Titanic

The RMS Titanic sank at 2:20 am Monday morning on April 15, 1912 after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic. (Universal History Archive/Getty Images)
The RMS Titanic sank at 2:20 am Monday morning on April 15, 1912 after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic. (Universal History Archive/Getty Images)
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The Surprising Reason Why There Are No Human Remains in the Titanic

The RMS Titanic sank at 2:20 am Monday morning on April 15, 1912 after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic. (Universal History Archive/Getty Images)
The RMS Titanic sank at 2:20 am Monday morning on April 15, 1912 after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic. (Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

The Titanic, a symbol of hubris and human tragedy, has been a source of fascination for more than 112 years.

But the fact is, the sunken ocean liner was more than just movie fodder or a deep-sea explorer’s holy grail, it was a very real ship on which more than 1,500 people died.

And yet, whilst experts, using the most sophisticated submersible and underwater filming equipment, have found some extraordinary relics from the wreckage, they have never found any skeletons or bones.

“I’ve seen zero human remains,” James Cameron, director of the iconic 1997 film, told the New York Times back in 2012.

“We’ve seen clothing. We’ve seen pairs of shoes, which would strongly suggest there was a body there at one point. But we’ve never seen any human remains.”

Given that Cameron has visited and explored the wreck some 33 times (and claims to have spent more time on the ship than the ship’s captain), if he hasn’t seen any human remains we can assume that there really aren’t any there. So why is this?

It’s a question that has recently been perplexing Reddit users but, luckily, it has some relatively simple answers.

Whilst there was a notoriously insufficient number of lifeboats on the ship, many passengers and crew members still managed to put on life jackets. This means that they remained buoyant even after they succumbed to the freezing cold waters of the Atlantic.

And so, when a storm followed the sinking of the “unsinkable” ship, they were likely swept away from the site of the wreckage and carried further away over subsequent weeks and years by ocean currents.

“The issue you have to deal with is, at depths below about 3,000 feet (around 914 meters), you pass below what's called the calcium carbonate compensation depth,” deep-sea explorer Robert Ballard explained to NPR back in 2009.

“And the water in the deep sea is under saturated in calcium carbonate, which is mostly, you know, what bones are made of. For example, on the Titanic and on the Bismarck, those ships are below the calcium carbonate compensation depth, so once the critters eat their flesh and expose the bones, the bones dissolve,” he said.

Nevertheless, some people believe that there may still be some preserved bodies in sealed off parts of the ship, such as the engine room.

This is because fresh oxygen-rich water that scavengers rely on may not have been able to enter these areas.

Nevertheless, more than a century since the tragedy, it seems likely that such searches for remains would be fruitless.