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August 2026 – Volume Thirty-Two, Number Eight
Celebrating our 32th year!
EXPEDITION NEWS, founded in 1994, is the monthly review of significant expeditions, research projects, and newsworthy adventures. It is distributed online to media representatives, corporate sponsors, educators, research librarians, explorers, environmentalists, and outdoor enthusiasts. This forum on exploration covers projects that stimulate, motivate, and educate.
| | Pan Am crash is credited with improving air safety. | | |
LOST PAN AM AIRCRAFT FOUND
Next time you fly and hear a pre-flight safety briefing, you can thank Pan Am Clipper Endeavor flight 526A, lost off the northern coast of Puerto Rico in 1952 and only recently found.
Seventy-four years after crashing into deep water, the wreckage of the ill-fated Pan American Airways passenger plane was located following a years-long investigation led by Air/Sea Heritage Foundation (ASHF) in partnership with Deep Sea Vision (DSV), an Eco Minerals Company, and Discovery Channel’s series, Expedition Unknown.
The landmark discovery sheds new light on the fate of the aircraft whose tragic legacy forever transformed modern air travel.
| | Close-up of Pan Am company logo on Clipper Endeavor nose section. (Photo: Air/Sea Heritage Foundation and Deep Sea Vision) | | |
The Douglas DC-4 aircraft, roughly the size of a modern Boeing 737, was found using high resolution sonar on June 2, 2026. Broken into two sections, it was located resting almost 2,000 feet beneath the Atlantic Ocean. A follow-up photographic survey of the wreck site provided conclusive identification – images revealed the iconic winged Pan American logo and aircraft name still legible on the battered, but largely intact and well-preserved fuselage.
Pan Am’s flight was en route from Puerto Rico to New York carrying five crew members and 64 passengers. Shortly after takeoff, multiple-engine failures forced the pilot to conduct a violent water landing. Remarkably, everyone aboard initially survived the impact, which sheared off the aircraft’s tail but left the main cabin intact.
Yet with no safety briefing provided, a significant language barrier, and no coordinated evacuation procedure in place, passengers faced chaos, confusion, and heavy seas as the aircraft flooded and sank in less than three minutes. Despite swift and heroic action by rescue teams from the U.S. Coast Guard and Air Force, only 12 passengers and five crew members were saved; 52 people ultimately lost their lives.
The accident became a pivotal turning point in aviation history, prompting the Civil Aeronautics Board, a forerunner of today’s FAA, to implement sweeping reforms, including the now-mandatory pre-flight safety briefing and emergency procedure demonstrations that have since saved countless lives.
| | The Clipper Endeavor search team: (L-R) Craig Wallace, president of operations for Deep Sea Vision; Idee Matthews-Montijo, ASHF; Josh Gates, host, Expedition Unknown; and Russ Matthews (holding flag), ASHF. (Photo: Discovery Channel). | | |
Almost seven decades would pass before the incident caught the attention of aviation and maritime historian Russ Matthews, president and co-founder of the Air/Sea Heritage Foundation. Matthews has led and collaborated numerous expeditions to discover and document significant ship and aircraft wrecks around the globe.
Idee Matthews-Montijo, ASHF board member and field data scientist and analyst, tells EN,
“The fuselage is the only grave marker for 39 of the passengers who were never recovered from the accident site. In the minutes that followed the discovery, I began to feel a heavy sadness for the souls lost that day and for the Clipper Endeavor having existed alone in the darkness all these long years.
“Being able to find their resting place and reconnect families with their loved ones is incredibly humbling and a great honor.”
The search for Clipper Endeavor and the full story behind its historic discovery will be featured in a forthcoming episode of Discovery Channel’s Expedition Unknown later this year.
Learn more about the find:
https://airseaheritage.org/projects/mission-endeavor/
Watch the cringy Spanish music video about the accident called La Tragedia Del Viernes Santo. It includes a recreation of the crash, vintage film footage, and media coverage at the time.
https://tinyurl.com/cringymusicvideo
FEATS
| | GB Row Challenge Team Nautilus returns to London after 38 days nonstop around Great Britain. (Photo: GBRowchallenge.com) | | |
GB Row Challenge Conducts Scientific Research Around Great Britain
How to turn an adventure or sports competition into an expedition? Conduct field work. That makes it a trip with a “nobility of purpose,” a phrase we borrow from Richard Wiese, former Explorers Club president.
Two ocean rowing crews, Nautilus and Rowmads, set off last June from London’s Tower Bridge to take on one of the world's toughest endurance challenges: rowing, unsupported, non-stop around the approximately 2,000-mile coastline of Great Britain – a feat fewer than 40 people in history have ever completed, according to race organizers.
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The GB Row Challenge, founded in 2005,
combines a difficult, physical adventure with scientific value.
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Both teams successfully completed the GB Row Challenge with both earning Guinness World Record titles. Team Rowmads became the first and fastest team of five to complete the challenge, finishing in 32 days, 30 minutes and 58 seconds.
Team Nautilus set a new Guinness World Record for the fastest mixed crew of six, completing the challenge in 38 days, three hours, 41 minutes and 25 seconds, reports Sophie Wagstaff, head of media and communications.
The Nautilus and Rowmads crews collected scientific data to help assess the health of Great Britain coastal waters. Throughout the row, they gathered eDNA, microplastic samples, sound, temperature and salinity data, which will be analyzed by scientists at the University of Portsmouth.
This information is making waves and will contribute to building one of the UK's most comprehensive datasets on the health of Britain's coastal waters, before being shared through The Crown Estate's Marine Data Exchange.
Previous GB Rows have revealed striking findings – including microplastic pollution levels more than double those recorded just a couple of years earlier, along with valuable biodiversity insights and clear evidence of rising sea temperatures around the Great Britain coastline.
Learn more at:
https://gbrowchallenge.com
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
Experience is not what happens to you; it's what you do with what happens to you.
– Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), English writer and philosopher.
EXPEDITION FOCUS
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Space-Flown Artifacts Command Astronomical Prices
For space collectors, the term "flown" (often referred to as Flown in Space, Flown Artifacts, or Space-Flown) means that a specific object, material, or doohickey traveled into outer space on a rocket, spacecraft, satellite, or space station.
Because space travel is extraordinarily rare, difficult, and expensive, flown artifacts are among the most prized and valuable items in the hobby of space collecting.
Space-flown collectibles generally fall into a few major categories: hardware and equipment, Personal Preference Items (PPIs), postal covers, and biological and consumable materials (think food packets or spacesuit patches).
They offer extreme rarity, historical significance, and value – a standard Apollo patch might sell for $20, while an Apollo patch that flew to the lunar surface can fetch tens of thousands of dollars.
For instance, this small Explorers Club flag at club headquarters in New York is certified as having flown to the moon on Apollo 11.
| | It is considered a priceless historical artifact and is not for sale, making a definitive market value hard to pin down. Standard Apollo 11-flown small American flags from the crew collections routinely sell between $50,000 and $70,000, while a larger flight-flown flag on Apollo 11 signed and certified by Michael Collins, which was offered by Heritage Auctions as part of its sale in 2022, sold for $162,500, according to LuxuryLaunches.com. | | |
Interestingly, this dented plastic Duro Rocket felt-tip pen sold at auction alongside a broken piece of Apollo 11’s engine-arm circuit breaker for $857,600 – or the equivalent of 285,867 Sharpies.
What made it so pricey?
According to Sotheby’s and a typed provenance letter signed by Aldrin, the astronaut jammed it into the hole left by the broken switch, and miraculously succeeded in arming the Lunar Module engine, thereby saving himself and his fellow crewmates, and indeed, the future of the Apollo program.
But a space collectible doesn’t necessarily have to be flown so long as it has the right provenance. Consider Buzz Aldrin’s unflown personal 1990 Omega Speedmaster which sold for $44,800 – six times its low estimate – at Sotheby’s Space Exploration auction last month, according to Elliot Nash of Sydney-based ManofMany.com (July 20).
That’s not nothing.
“The value here comes not from any direct use aboard Apollo 11 but from personal ownership and the model’s broader connection to Aldrin,” writes Nash.
Aldrin's actual flight-worn Apollo 11 Speedmaster went missing in 1971 while in transit to the Smithsonian Institution and remains lost.
Apparently, history is not just written, it’s carried.
Read the story of the otherwise lowly felt tip pen here:
https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2026/space-exploration-2/apollo-11-16
MEDIA MATTERS
| | Endeavour is moved to a new exhibit space on the grounds of the Los Angeles California Science Center in Jan. 2024. (Photo: Ryan Sun) | | |
The Houston Shuttle Snub
NASA was winding down its space-shuttle program during the Bush administration when Houston realized it had a problem: none of the four retiring space shuttle orbiters were bound for Texas, even though the Lone Star State was home to Mission Control Center and had safely guided orbiters like Discovery, according to the Wall Street Journal story by Kelly Crow (June 6).
At the time, Space Center Houston submitted a bid. But NASA decided it didn’t measure up to some of its rival institutions, and in 2011 instead sent Discovery, which traveled 150 million miles during 39 missions to space, to the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum. The rest went to museums in New York, Florida and California, Crow reports.
Keep the Shuttle (keeptheshuttle.org), a 4,000-member advocacy group opposed to the move complains, “What’s to stop North Carolina from taking back the Wright Flyer or New York from reclaiming the Hope diamond?”
Not so easy: Discovery would need to be transported by some combination of rivers, roads and barges. Each step would need to steer clear of bridges, since the shuttle weighs more than a pair of fully loaded 18-wheelers.
Read more here:
https://tinyurl.com/ShuttleSnub
| | “Gus” was excavated in South Dakota, but it’s unclear where its next home will be. (Photo: Matthew Sherman) | |
Commercial Auctions Threaten Scientific Access to Fossils
On July 14, 2026, “Gus,” one of the most complete specimens of Tyrannosaurus rex, went to an as yet unidentified buyer for $50.1 million. The Sotheby’s auction (see related story) set a record for most valuable fossil ever sold.
“Another dinosaur has entered the luxury collectibles market, a reminder that even Earth’s deepest history can be sold to the highest bidder,” writes Kristi Curry Rogers, DeWitt Wallace Professor of Biology and Geology, Macalester College, on TheConversation.com (July 14).
To most paleontologists, a fossil like “Gus” – excavated from the Hell Creek Formation in South Dakota over three years starting in 2021 by commercial collector Thomas Heitkamp and his team – is not a trophy or a work of art. It is an irreplaceable scientific archive. Fossils preserve evidence of evolution, extinction, growth, disease, injury and ancient ecosystems. They are finite, irreplaceable records of life’s history on Earth.
But once a scientifically important fossil enters a private collection, access for researchers is no longer guaranteed.
The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology has long argued that scientifically significant vertebrate fossils belong in the public trust, curated in museums and universities that preserve them permanently, make them available for research and share them with the public, Rogers says.
Read the story here:
https://theconversation.com/what-science-loses-when-t-rex-becomes-a-trophy-287334
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The Keeper Chronicles Protector of the Hudson River
River keeper John Lipscomb is cantankerous, charismatic and passionately committed. In the 80-min. documentary, The Keeper, he reflects on 25 years patrolling New York State’s Hudson River in a 36-ft. wooden boat.
Like many of the world's rivers, the Hudson – birthplace of the American environmental movement – provided transportation and sustenance for a growing human population.
Sadly, the river paid a price for all this use and abuse, struggling against its share of contamination. At one time it was a national punchline and a local shame. It was the site of sewage overflows, algal blooms, and PCB stagnation.
In The Keeper, directed by explorer, educator and podcast host Jon Bowermaster, 72, of Oceans 8 Films, we learn how Captain John has acted as the river's poet laureate, battling industrial and human pollution – a never-ending fight. Today, he is one of more than 300 "keepers" around the globe, looking out for their respective rivers.
“The film shows that one man can make a difference and inspire others to be a ‘keeper’ in their own backyard,” Bowermaster tells EN.
The documentary is currently making the rounds of film festivals, environmental groups, and theaters.
See the trailer:
https://www.the-keeper.com/
| | (L-R) Philip Barantini, Ernest Shackelton and Mark L. Smith | | |
Netflix Plans Movie of Shackleton Survival
Hollywood just can’t quit the epic adventure stories most EN readers know by heart. Netflix is taking on the story of Irish explorer Ernest Shackleton and the harrowing rescue of the crew of Endurance when the ship he captained in 1915 became encased in ice off Antarctica in the Weddell Sea.
Phil Barantini, who’s coming off the celebrated Netflix limited series Adolescence, will direct the film from a script by Mark L. Smith, who wrote the survival tale The Revenant, according to Mike Fleming, Jr., reporting for Deadline (July 30).
The Shackleton story has been attempted as a feature a few times, including one where the late director Wolfgang Petersen tried to make it and eyed Mel Gibson or Russell Crowe in the role. Production is expected to begin next year.
Learn more:
https://tinyurl.com/ShackletonNetflix
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Aron Ralston in 2003. Hi story will be retold in a new
NatGeo documentary (Photo: Aron Ralston).
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Aron Ralston, Climber Who Severed His Own
Arm, Set for NatGeo Documentary
Even more adventure is coming to a screen near you … National Geographic is greenlighting a documentary from Oscar winner James Marsh that will explore the story of the mountain climber whose ordeal in a Utah canyon was captured in fictionalized form in the film 127 Hours. (See EN, October 2011)
The untitled project from Magna Studios will draw upon never-before-seen footage shot by Aron Ralston during the 2003 incident when a boulder dislodged, pinning his right arm as he descended Bluejohn Canyon alone. Ralston faced the extraordinary choice to perish in the canyon or sever his arm to free himself.
National Geographic plans to release the documentary next year. Ralston wrote about his experience in the memoir Between a Rock and a Hard Place (Atria Books, 2005), later adapted into the Danny Boyle film 127 Hours. The drama earned six Oscar nominations including one for lead actor James Franco who portrayed Ralston on screen, according to Matthew Carey writing for Deadline (July 28).
Learn more:
https://deadline.com/2026/07/national-geographic-untitled-aron-ralston-documentary-director-james-marsh-1237005092/
| | Kerstin Gurtner and Thomas Plamberger. (Photo: Kerstin Gurtner/Facebook) | | |
"Alpine Divorce" Faces Austrian Court
EN’s Buzz Word last May reported on the forces of evil that would lead one person to abandon their partner behind during an outdoor hike, climb, or remote wilderness activity. It’s an outing in which, usually, only the man returns.
The consensus among women alerted to this is potentially deadly mishegoss is to make sure they have the car keys, according to the New Yorker story (July 6 and 13) by William Finnegan.
This year a so-called “alpine divorce” went to trial at Innsbruck Regional Court, in western Austria, in a jurisdiction designated for mountain, avalanche, climbing, cable-car, and ski accidents.
Thomas Plamberger was charged with homicide by gross negligence in the death of his girlfriend, Kerstin Gurtner, during an attempt to climb Grossglockner, Austria’s tallest mountain (3798 meters/12,461 feet).
Hundreds of unfortunates – hikers, climbers, skiers, snowboarders – die in the Austrian Alps each year, but these fatalities rarely result in criminal charges. Gurtner, 33 at the time, had frozen to death a few dozen yards from the Grossglockner summit after Plamberger, then 36, parted ways with her at around 2 a.m. on a winter night, according to the New Yorker story.
The trial was debated in many forums in the mountaineering world. Some people worried that a guilty verdict would have broad impact on the sport. Climbers who rope up together learn from one another, with no strict hierarchy.
Now recreational climbers might start to think twice about going out with friends. A climber in the U.K. posts, “the foundation of climbing and mountaineering is trust—you have to trust yourself and others—and criminalizing these decisions would also be the death of trust.”
Read about the the trial:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/07/06/did-a-climber-leave-his-girlfriend-to-die-at-the-top-of-a-mountain
EXPEDITION FUNDING
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Lena Lancastle is one of two 2026 grant winners.
Her project is titled, “Changing Arctic Ecosystems: How Does Reindeer
Grazing Change the Biodiversity of Arctic Tundra.”
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Apply Now for Fjällräven Field Grant
The Explorers Club and Fjällräven, the Swedish-based outdoor gear and clothing company, have partnered to create a grant program promoting excellence in field exploration through scientific research that supports exploration and research to better understand our environment, a changing climate, and the interconnectivity of wildlife and civilizations around the planet.
The support is for graduate or post-graduate students, or early career scientists conducting fieldwork in the natural sciences.
Deadline for a 2027 grant is September 6, 2026. Awards are $5,000.
See past winners and apply here:
https://www.explorers.org/grants/fjallraven-field-grant/
Rising Explorer and Pathfinder Grants Close August 31
The deadline is fast approaching for two other Explorers Club grants. Applications for both the Rising Explorer Grant and the Pathfinder Grant will be accepted through August 31, 2026.
The Rising Explorer Grant is open to high school students, college undergraduates, or independent researchers doing work at an equivalent level. Awards are up to $3,000.
The Pathfinder Grant is available to graduate/post-graduate students or early career scientists conducting fieldwork. It awards up to $5,000.
For more information on both:
https://www.explorers.org/grants
EXPEDITION MARKETING
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Worst Aquarium Ever: One Star Review Turns into Five-Star Merch
When marketers at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts saw a one-star online review calling them the “worst aquarium ever,” rather than clutch their pearls they turned it into marketing gold. The museum created best-selling merch, a viral moment, and a CBS Evening News spot, according to Jason Feifer, editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine.
The museum wasn’t an aquarium when it was dissed in 2020 but has since installed a modest 250-gallon saltwater tank.
Today, what it lacks in live aquaculture, it makes up for in skeletons including those of a 66-foot blue whale, a 37-foot humpback whale, a 49-foot North Atlantic right whale, and a 48-foot sperm whale.
Why brag about a nasty review? Feifer says, “You look confident. You'd only do this if you knew you were good. It creates a rallying cry. Your customers want to take your side. It breaks through noise. While every brand promotes itself, this feels different.”
Watch the CBS News spot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pqMkv0VW6k
Read how the museum turned a flaming review into a hot money maker:
https://tinyurl.com/worstaquarium
Order your own t-shirt once they’re back in stock:
https://store.whalingmuseum.org/collections/t-shirts
EXPEDITION INK
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Murder, He Wrote:
Society of Crows: Adventures and Discoveries from a Lifetime of Crow Watching
By Robert W. Butler
Crows have figured into modern literature for decades. There’s Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut (1990), and The Stand by Stephen King (1978). You also may be thinking about a certain Edgar Allan Poe poem, but that was a raven, not a crow.
Not to mention, but we will, the suspenseful role crows held in one of the defining moments of cinematic horror – the iconic scene where hundreds of crows slowly accumulate behind Tippi Hedren in Alfred Hithcock’s The Birds (1963), as she sits calmly smoking a cigarette outside a schoolhouse.
Now crows star in a recent book all their own by Robert W. Butler, who has spent a lifetime watching these corvids. Society of Crows: Adventures and Discoveries from a Lifetime of Crow Watching (FriesenPress, 2026) spans 50 years of crow research beginning with owning a pet crow in his teens in the 1960s, and later, studying these crafty scavengers in Western Canada.
| | Somebody is picking for a fight. (Photo: ClydeLovett.com) | | |
Butler tells EN, “My fascination with crows and the way they charmed their way into so many peoples’ lives made me wonder if the crow might be a vanguard to a cultural rebirth arising from nature around us."
In a paper he and his wife, Sharon A. Butler submitted for the Northwestern Naturalist (Spring 2024), the two write that fighting between individual crows has been widely reported.
What more appropriate trait for a bird whose collective noun is “murder.” (See EN Buzz Words, July 2026).
Learn more:
https://books.friesenpress.com/store/title/119734000561182129/Robert-W.-Butler-Society-of-Crows
| | Travel With Purpose, A Field Guide to Voluntourism (Rowman & Littlefield) by Jeff Blumenfeld – People are traveling in record numbers and many include voluntourists. Be ready to lend a hand wherever you go. How to travel and make a difference while you see the world? Read excerpts and “Look Inside” at: tinyurl.com/voluntourismbook | | |
Get Sponsored! – Need money for your next project? Read about proven techniques that will help you find both cash and in-kind sponsors. If the trip is bigger than you, and is designed to help others, well, that’s half the game right there. Read Jeff Blumenfeld’s Get Sponsored: A Funding Guide for Explorers, Adventurers and Would Be World Travelers.(Skyhorse Publishing).
Purchase it here:
http://www.amazon.com/Get-Sponsored-Explorers-Adventurers-Travelers-ebook/dp/B00H12FLH2
Advertise in Expedition News – For more information: blumassoc@aol.com
EXPEDITION NEWS is published by Blumenfeld and Associates, LLC, 290 Laramie Blvd., Boulder, CO 80304 USA. Tel. 203 326 1200, editor@expeditionnews.com. Editor/publisher: Jeff Blumenfeld. Research editor: Lee Kovel. ©2026 Blumenfeld and Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN: 1526-8977. Subscriptions: US$36/yr. available by e-mail only. Credit card payments accepted through www.paypal.com. Read EXPEDITION NEWS at www.expeditionnews.com.
Research past issues of Expedition News dating back to May 1995 courtesy of the Utah State University Outdoor Recreation Archive. Access is free at: https://tinyurl.com/ENArchivesUSU
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