{
 "topics": {
  "sailing": {"label": "Sailing lore", "color": "#23405e", "icon": "pennant"},
  "creatures": {"label": "Sea creatures", "color": "#2c6f75", "icon": "tail"},
  "myth": {"label": "Myth & legend", "color": "#6d3f78", "icon": "trident"},
  "history": {"label": "Maritime history", "color": "#8a4b2a", "icon": "hourglass"},
  "ocean": {"label": "Ocean & ecology", "color": "#3f7250", "icon": "waves"}
 },
 "eggs": [
  {
   "id": "americascup-cowes",
   "topic": "sailing",
   "title": "The Hundred Guinea Cup",
   "at": [-1.3, 50.77],
   "place": "Cowes, Isle of Wight",
   "story": "On 22 August 1851 the New York schooner America won the Royal Yacht Squadron’s Hundred Guinea Cup, a race around the Isle of Wight. The trophy was renamed after the boat and became the America’s Cup, the oldest trophy in international sport.",
   "fact": "The cup was made by the London silversmiths Garrard in 1848, and it is a bottomless ewer: a jug with no base.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "America (yacht) – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_(yacht)"},
    {"t": "America – Britannica", "u": "https://www.britannica.com/topic/America-yacht"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "americascup-newport",
   "topic": "sailing",
   "title": "132 years in Newport",
   "at": [-71.34, 41.49],
   "place": "Newport, Rhode Island",
   "story": "The New York Yacht Club held the America’s Cup from 1857 (it was first defended in 1870) until 1983, racing off Newport from 1930. In September 1983 Australia II won 4–3, ending a 132-year run often called the longest winning streak in sport.",
   "fact": "Australia II came back from 3–1 down, helped by its secret “winged keel”.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "1983 America’s Cup – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_America%27s_Cup"},
    {"t": "Australia II – Britannica", "u": "https://www.britannica.com/topic/Australia-II"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "fastnet",
   "topic": "sailing",
   "title": "Fastnet Rock",
   "at": [-9.61, 51.385],
   "place": "Fastnet Rock, off County Cork, Ireland",
   "story": "The Fastnet Race was first sailed in 1925 and has been held every two years since 1931, rounding the lonely Fastnet Rock off south-west Ireland. In 1979 a violent storm hit the fleet and 15 competitors died, which led to major changes in offshore safety rules.",
   "fact": "The Rock is nicknamed “Ireland’s Teardrop”: it was the last bit of Ireland many emigrants saw.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "1979 Fastnet Race – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_Fastnet_Race"},
    {"t": "Rolex Fastnet Race (official)", "u": "https://www.rolexfastnetrace.com/en"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "sydneyhobart",
   "topic": "sailing",
   "title": "Sydney to Hobart",
   "at": [151.3, -33.85],
   "place": "Sydney Heads, Australia",
   "story": "Every Boxing Day since 1945, yachts race about 628 nautical miles from Sydney Harbour to Hobart in Tasmania. In 1998 a savage storm in Bass Strait sank five yachts and killed six sailors; 55 people were rescued in Australia’s biggest peacetime search and rescue.",
   "fact": "The first race grew out of a planned cruise, when British officer John Illingworth asked, “Why don’t we make a race of it?” His yacht Rani won.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Rolex Sydney Hobart (official)", "u": "https://rolexsydneyhobart.com/"},
    {"t": "1998 Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Sydney_to_Hobart_Yacht_Race"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "vendee",
   "topic": "sailing",
   "title": "Vendée Globe",
   "at": [-1.79, 46.485],
   "place": "Les Sables-d’Olonne, France",
   "story": "Every four years since 1989, solo sailors leave Les Sables-d’Olonne to race around the world non-stop and without outside help. It is often called the “Everest of the seas”.",
   "fact": "In January 2025 Charlie Dalin set the race record: 64 days, 19 hours and 22 minutes.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Vendée Globe (official)", "u": "https://www.vendeeglobe.org/en"},
    {"t": "Vendée Globe – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vend%C3%A9e_Globe"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "knoxjohnston",
   "topic": "sailing",
   "title": "Suhaili comes home",
   "at": [-5.03, 50.145],
   "place": "Falmouth, Cornwall",
   "story": "On 22 April 1969 Robin Knox-Johnston sailed his 32-foot ketch Suhaili back into Falmouth after 312 days at sea: the first person to sail alone and non-stop around the world, and the only finisher of the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race.",
   "fact": "He gave his £5,000 prize for the fastest voyage to the family of fellow competitor Donald Crowhurst, who died during the race.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Robin Knox-Johnston – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Knox-Johnston"},
    {"t": "Sunday Times Golden Globe Race – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_Times_Golden_Globe_Race"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "slocum",
   "topic": "sailing",
   "title": "Spray",
   "at": [-70.912, 41.628],
   "place": "Fairhaven, Massachusetts",
   "story": "Joshua Slocum rebuilt a rotting oyster sloop called Spray at Fairhaven. He left Boston on 24 April 1895 and reached Newport, Rhode Island on 27 June 1898: the first person known to sail alone around the world, about 46,000 miles.",
   "fact": "His book “Sailing Alone Around the World” (1900) became a classic. Slocum and Spray vanished at sea in 1909.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Joshua Slocum – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Slocum"},
    {"t": "Spray (sailing vessel) – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spray_(sailing_vessel)"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "routedurhum",
   "topic": "sailing",
   "title": "Route du Rhum",
   "at": [-2.03, 48.66],
   "place": "Saint-Malo, Brittany",
   "story": "Every four years since 1978, solo sailors race across the Atlantic from Saint-Malo to Pointe-à-Pitre in Guadeloupe.",
   "fact": "The first race was won by Canadian Mike Birch in a small trimaran, just 98 seconds ahead of Michel Malinovsky.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Route du Rhum (official)", "u": "https://www.routedurhum.com/en"},
    {"t": "Route du Rhum – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Route_du_Rhum"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "kontiki",
   "topic": "sailing",
   "title": "Kon-Tiki",
   "at": [-142.28, -16.03],
   "place": "Raroia, Tuamotu Islands",
   "story": "In 1947 Thor Heyerdahl and five crewmates left Callao, Peru, on a balsa raft to show that ancient South Americans could have reached Polynesia. After 101 days and about 6,900 km, the raft ran onto the reef at Raroia on 7 August; everyone survived.",
   "fact": "The real raft is in the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo, and Heyerdahl’s film of the voyage won an Academy Award.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Kon-Tiki expedition – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kon-Tiki_expedition"},
    {"t": "Kon-Tiki Museum", "u": "https://www.kon-tiki.no/"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "cape-horn",
   "topic": "sailing",
   "title": "Rounding the Horn",
   "at": [-67.27, -56.1],
   "place": "Cape Horn, Chile",
   "story": "Cape Horn is named after the Dutch town of Hoorn by Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire, who sailed round it in 1616. Strong westerlies, big seas and ice made it the most feared cape of the sailing-ship era.",
   "fact": "By sailors’ tradition, those who had rounded the Horn earned the right to wear a gold earring.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Cape Horn – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Horn"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "tonga-humpbacks",
   "topic": "creatures",
   "title": "Humpbacks of Vava‘u",
   "at": [-174.0, -18.54],
   "place": "Vava‘u, Tonga",
   "story": "Each year humpback whales travel from Antarctic feeding grounds to Tonga’s warm waters to mate and give birth. In season (July to October) you can swim with them, but only with a licensed operator.",
   "fact": "Male humpbacks sing long, complex songs; all the males in a population sing the same song, which slowly changes over time.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Humpback whale – NOAA Fisheries", "u": "https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/humpback-whale"},
    {"t": "Humpback whale – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humpback_whale"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "marine-iguana",
   "topic": "creatures",
   "title": "The sea-going lizard",
   "at": [-91.45, -0.24],
   "place": "Off Fernandina Island, Galápagos",
   "story": "The marine iguana is the only lizard in the world that feeds in the sea, diving to graze on algae. It gets rid of the extra salt by sneezing it out through glands in its nose.",
   "fact": "In lean El Niño years marine iguanas can shrink by up to 20% of their body length, even reabsorbing bone, and grow back when food returns.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Marine iguana – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_iguana"},
    {"t": "Shrinking marine iguanas – Natural History Museum", "u": "https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/shrinking-galapagos-marine-iguanas.html"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "greatbarrierreef",
   "topic": "creatures",
   "title": "Great Barrier Reef",
   "at": [146.5, -17.5],
   "place": "Coral Sea, Queensland",
   "story": "Stretching more than 2,300 km along Australia’s north-east coast, the Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest coral reef system, with about 2,900 reefs and 900 islands. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981.",
   "fact": "It is the largest structure on Earth built by living things: billions of tiny coral animals called polyps.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Great Barrier Reef – UNESCO", "u": "https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/154/"},
    {"t": "Great Barrier Reef – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrier_Reef"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "sargasso-eels",
   "topic": "creatures",
   "title": "Eels of the Sargasso",
   "at": [-60.0, 28.0],
   "place": "Sargasso Sea",
   "story": "European and American eels are believed to spawn in the Sargasso Sea, a calm patch of the Atlantic with no coastline. Their tiny, leaf-shaped larvae drift on currents to Europe and North America, then swim up rivers. No one has yet seen eels spawn in the wild.",
   "fact": "In 2022 scientists used satellite tags to follow European eels from the Azores all the way to the Sargasso Sea for the first time.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "European eel – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_eel"},
    {"t": "Eels tracked to the Sargasso Sea (Scientific Reports, 2022)", "u": "https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-19248-8"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "leatherbacks",
   "topic": "creatures",
   "title": "Leatherbacks of Grande Rivière",
   "at": [-61.05, 10.85],
   "place": "Grande Rivière, Trinidad",
   "story": "Grande Rivière, on Trinidad’s north coast, is one of the densest leatherback turtle nesting beaches in the world. From about March to August, peaking in May and June, hundreds of these giant turtles may come ashore in a single night.",
   "fact": "Leatherbacks are the largest turtles alive, and the only sea turtle without a hard shell: their back is leathery skin over small bones.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Leatherback turtle – NOAA Fisheries", "u": "https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/leatherback-turtle"},
    {"t": "Leatherback sea turtle – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leatherback_sea_turtle"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "ningaloo",
   "topic": "creatures",
   "title": "Whale sharks of Ningaloo",
   "at": [113.7, -22.5],
   "place": "Ningaloo Reef, Western Australia",
   "story": "Every year from about March to July, whale sharks gather along Ningaloo Reef to feed on plankton: one of the biggest known gatherings of the largest fish in the sea.",
   "fact": "Every whale shark has its own pattern of spots, like a fingerprint, so scientists can identify individuals from photos.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Ningaloo Coast – UNESCO", "u": "https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1369/"},
    {"t": "Whale shark management – WA Parks and Wildlife", "u": "https://www.dbca.wa.gov.au/wildlife-and-ecosystems/marine/whale-shark-management-western-australia"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "johnstone-orcas",
   "topic": "creatures",
   "title": "Orcas of Johnstone Strait",
   "at": [-126.6, 50.5],
   "place": "Robson Bight, British Columbia",
   "story": "Each summer northern resident orcas come to Johnstone Strait to hunt salmon. At Robson Bight they rub their bodies on smooth pebble beaches, a behaviour protected by the Robson Bight (Michael Bigg) Ecological Reserve, set up in 1982.",
   "fact": "The reserve is closed to the public. It is named after Michael Bigg, who pioneered identifying individual orcas from photos.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Robson Bight Ecological Reserve – BC Parks", "u": "https://bcparks.ca/robson-bight-michael-bigg-ecological-reserve/"},
    {"t": "Northern resident orcas – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_resident_orca"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "biobay",
   "topic": "creatures",
   "title": "The glowing bay",
   "at": [-65.446, 18.102],
   "place": "Mosquito Bay, Vieques, Puerto Rico",
   "story": "At night Mosquito Bay glows blue-green whenever the water is stirred. The light comes from a tiny plankton, the dinoflagellate Pyrodinium bahamense. In 2006 Guinness World Records named it the brightest bioluminescent bay in the world.",
   "fact": "A gallon of its water can hold up to 700,000 of these glowing organisms. Swimming is no longer allowed, to protect them.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Puerto Mosquito – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Mosquito"},
    {"t": "Brightest bioluminescent bay – Guinness World Records", "u": "https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/brightest-bioluminescent-bay"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "sardinerun",
   "topic": "creatures",
   "title": "The sardine run",
   "at": [30.7, -30.65],
   "place": "KwaZulu-Natal South Coast, South Africa",
   "story": "From about May to July, huge shoals of sardines move north along South Africa’s east coast from the cool Agulhas Bank. Dolphins herd them into tight “bait balls”, and sharks, Cape gannets and Bryde’s whales join the feast.",
   "fact": "Cape gannets plunge-dive into the shoals from high in the air, hitting the water at great speed.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Sardine run – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardine_run"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "coelacanth",
   "topic": "creatures",
   "title": "The living fossil",
   "at": [27.65, -33.24],
   "place": "Chalumna River mouth, South Africa",
   "story": "In December 1938 a trawler brought up a strange steel-blue fish near the mouth of the Chalumna River. Museum curator Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer spotted it: a coelacanth, known only from fossils and thought extinct for about 66 million years.",
   "fact": "Scientist J.L.B. Smith named it Latimeria chalumnae, after Courtenay-Latimer and the river.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "West Indian Ocean coelacanth – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Indian_Ocean_coelacanth"},
    {"t": "Coelacanths – Natural History Museum", "u": "https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/coelacanths-the-fish-that-outdid-the-loch-ness-monster.html"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "moray-dolphins",
   "topic": "creatures",
   "title": "Dolphins of the Moray Firth",
   "at": [-4.05, 57.6],
   "place": "Chanonry Point, Scotland",
   "story": "The Moray Firth is home to the world’s most northerly resident bottlenose dolphins, about 200 animals along Scotland’s east coast. Chanonry Point, where the Firth narrows, is one of the best places in Europe to watch dolphins from land.",
   "fact": "They are the only resident bottlenose dolphins in the whole North Sea.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Most northerly bottlenose dolphins – NatureScot", "u": "https://presscentre.nature.scot/news/worlds-most-northerly-bottlenose-dolphins-stable-for-23-years"},
    {"t": "Chanonry Point – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chanonry_Point"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "scylla",
   "topic": "myth",
   "title": "Scylla and Charybdis",
   "at": [15.64, 38.25],
   "place": "Strait of Messina, Italy",
   "story": "In Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus must sail between two monsters: six-headed Scylla, who snatches sailors from her cliff, and Charybdis, a whirlpool that swallows the sea. Later tradition placed them on either side of the Strait of Messina.",
   "fact": "“Between Scylla and Charybdis” still means being caught between two dangers.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Scylla and Charybdis – Britannica", "u": "https://www.britannica.com/topic/Scylla-and-Charybdis"},
    {"t": "Charybdis – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charybdis"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "sirens",
   "topic": "myth",
   "title": "Isles of the Sirens",
   "at": [14.44, 40.575],
   "place": "Li Galli, Amalfi Coast",
   "story": "In the Odyssey the Sirens sing so sweetly that sailors steer to their deaths; Odysseus plugs his crew’s ears with beeswax and has himself tied to the mast. Local tradition says the little Li Galli islands off Positano, once called the Sirenuse, were their home.",
   "fact": "Ancient Greek art showed the Sirens as part bird, part woman, not as mermaids. In the 20th century the islands belonged to the dancers Léonide Massine and then Rudolf Nureyev.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Sirenuse (Li Galli) – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirenuse"},
    {"t": "Siren (mythology) – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siren_(mythology)"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "sounion",
   "topic": "myth",
   "title": "Temple of Poseidon",
   "at": [24.03, 37.64],
   "place": "Cape Sounion, Greece",
   "story": "The marble Temple of Poseidon, god of the sea, has stood on the cliffs of Cape Sounion since about 440 BC. Legend says King Aegeus watched here for his son Theseus; seeing black sails, he thought Theseus dead and threw himself into the sea, called the Aegean ever since.",
   "fact": "The temple was built in the same golden age as the Parthenon, under Pericles.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Temple of Poseidon, Sounion – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Poseidon,_Sounion"},
    {"t": "Aegeus – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegeus"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "santorini-atlantis",
   "topic": "myth",
   "title": "Atlantis?",
   "at": [25.4, 36.382],
   "place": "Santorini caldera, Greece",
   "story": "About 3,600 years ago a huge eruption blew apart the island of Thera (Santorini) and buried Bronze Age towns under ash. Some have wondered whether memories of it inspired Plato’s tale of Atlantis, but most historians see Atlantis as Plato’s own invention.",
   "fact": "The town of Akrotiri was preserved under the ash: a Bronze Age “Pompeii” with painted walls and houses several storeys high.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Minoan eruption – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_eruption"},
    {"t": "Atlantis – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantis"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "flyingdutchman",
   "topic": "myth",
   "title": "The Flying Dutchman",
   "at": [18.47, -34.4],
   "place": "Off the Cape of Good Hope",
   "story": "Sailors’ legend tells of a ghost ship that can never make port and must sail the seas forever. In the most common version her captain swore he would round the Cape of Good Hope in a storm, even if it took until Judgement Day. Seeing her was said to bring disaster.",
   "fact": "Richard Wagner turned the legend into an opera, The Flying Dutchman, in 1843.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Flying Dutchman – Britannica", "u": "https://www.britannica.com/topic/Flying-Dutchman"},
    {"t": "Flying Dutchman – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Dutchman"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "maui",
   "topic": "myth",
   "title": "Te Ika-a-Māui",
   "at": [177.0, -39.5],
   "place": "Hawke Bay, New Zealand",
   "story": "In Māori tradition the demigod Māui went fishing with his brothers and hauled up a gigantic fish, which became the North Island: Te Ika-a-Māui, “the fish of Māui”. The South Island is his canoe.",
   "fact": "Cape Kidnappers, at the south end of Hawke Bay, is Te Kauwae-a-Māui, “Māui’s jawbone”; the bay itself is Te Matau-a-Māui, “Māui’s fish-hook”.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Māui (Māori mythology) – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C4%81ui_(M%C4%81ori_mythology)"},
    {"t": "Te Matau-a-Māui – Hawke’s Bay Tourism", "u": "https://www.hawkesbaynz.com/visit/us/te-matau-a-maui-the-hook-of-maui"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "kraken",
   "topic": "myth",
   "title": "The Kraken",
   "at": [5.0, 67.0],
   "place": "Norwegian Sea",
   "story": "Scandinavian sailors told of the kraken, a sea monster so vast it could be mistaken for an island and could drag whole ships under. The legend was probably inspired by rare sightings of real giant squid.",
   "fact": "Nobody photographed a live giant squid in the wild until 2004, and one was first filmed in its deep-sea home in 2012.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Kraken – Britannica", "u": "https://www.britannica.com/topic/kraken"},
    {"t": "Giant squid – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_squid"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "pillars",
   "topic": "myth",
   "title": "Pillars of Hercules",
   "at": [-5.35, 36.0],
   "place": "Strait of Gibraltar",
   "story": "The ancients called the two headlands on either side of the Strait of Gibraltar the Pillars of Hercules: the Rock of Gibraltar and a peak on the African shore. Legend says Hercules set them there, marking the edge of the known world.",
   "fact": "The pillars were said to carry the warning “Non plus ultra”: nothing further beyond. After Columbus, Spain took “Plus Ultra” as its motto, and the pillars are still on its coat of arms.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Pillars of Heracles – Britannica", "u": "https://www.britannica.com/place/Pillars-of-Heracles"},
    {"t": "Plus ultra – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plus_ultra_(motto)"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "ithaca",
   "topic": "myth",
   "title": "Ithaca",
   "at": [20.78, 38.37],
   "place": "Ithaca, Ionian Sea",
   "story": "In Homer’s Odyssey, Ithaca is the rocky island kingdom Odysseus spends ten years trying to reach after the Trojan War. Today’s Greek island carries the name, though scholars still debate whether it is the Ithaca Homer described.",
   "fact": "When Odysseus finally comes home after 20 years, disguised as a beggar, only his old dog Argos recognises him.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Homer’s Ithaca – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer%27s_Ithaca"},
    {"t": "Ithaca (island) – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithaca_(island)"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "pele",
   "topic": "myth",
   "title": "Pele",
   "at": [-155.1, 19.28],
   "place": "Kīlauea’s south coast, Hawaiʻi",
   "story": "In Hawaiian tradition Pele is the goddess of volcanoes and fire, who shapes the land with her lava. She is said to live in Halemaʻumaʻu crater at the summit of Kīlauea.",
   "fact": "Fine golden strands of volcanic glass, formed when lava spatters and stretches in the wind, are called “Pele’s hair”.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Pele – National Park Service", "u": "https://www.nps.gov/articles/pele.htm"},
    {"t": "Pele’s hair – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pele%27s_hair"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "maryrose",
   "topic": "history",
   "title": "The Mary Rose",
   "at": [-1.104, 50.764],
   "place": "The Solent, off Portsmouth",
   "story": "Henry VIII’s warship Mary Rose sank in the Solent on 19 July 1545 while fighting a French fleet, as the king watched from shore. In 1982 her hull was raised in front of a worldwide TV audience; she is now shown in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.",
   "fact": "About 19,000 objects have been recovered, including longbows and the skeleton of the ship’s dog, a terrier nicknamed Hatch.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Mary Rose Museum", "u": "https://maryrose.org/"},
    {"t": "Mary Rose – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Rose"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "vasa",
   "topic": "history",
   "title": "Vasa",
   "at": [18.093, 59.322],
   "place": "Stockholm harbour, Sweden",
   "story": "The Swedish warship Vasa capsized and sank on her maiden voyage on 10 August 1628, only about 1,300 m after setting sail, in front of watching crowds. She was raised in 1961 remarkably intact and now fills the Vasa Museum.",
   "fact": "She came up on 24 April 1961, after 333 years on the seabed.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Vasa Museum", "u": "https://www.vasamuseet.se/en"},
    {"t": "Vasa (ship) – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "titanic",
   "topic": "history",
   "title": "Titanic",
   "at": [-49.95, 41.73],
   "place": "North Atlantic, off Newfoundland",
   "story": "On her maiden voyage the liner Titanic struck an iceberg late on 14 April 1912 and sank early on 15 April, with the loss of about 1,500 lives. Her wreck was found on 1 September 1985 by a French-American team led by Jean-Louis Michel and Robert Ballard.",
   "fact": "The wreck lies about 3,800 m down, some 325 nautical miles (600 km) off Newfoundland.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "RMS Titanic – NOAA", "u": "https://www.noaa.gov/office-of-general-counsel/gc-international-section/rms-titanic-history-and-significance"},
    {"t": "Wreck of the Titanic – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wreck_of_the_Titanic"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "trafalgar",
   "topic": "history",
   "title": "Battle of Trafalgar",
   "at": [-6.2, 36.2],
   "place": "Off Cape Trafalgar, Spain",
   "story": "On 21 October 1805 Admiral Nelson’s British fleet defeated a combined French and Spanish fleet off Cape Trafalgar. Nelson was shot by a French sharpshooter and died knowing he had won.",
   "fact": "His flagship HMS Victory is preserved in Portsmouth and is the oldest naval ship still in commission in the world.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Battle of Trafalgar – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Trafalgar"},
    {"t": "HMS Victory – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Victory"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "pitcairn",
   "topic": "history",
   "title": "Pitcairn Island",
   "at": [-130.09, -25.055],
   "place": "Bounty Bay, Pitcairn Island",
   "story": "In January 1790 the Bounty mutineers and their Tahitian companions landed on remote Pitcairn Island. On 23 January they burned the ship in what is now Bounty Bay so they could never be found. Their descendants still live on the island.",
   "fact": "Islanders mark “Bounty Day” every 23 January by burning a model of the ship in the bay.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Pitcairn Islands – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitcairn_Islands"},
    {"t": "Bounty Day – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounty_Day"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "pharos",
   "topic": "history",
   "title": "Lighthouse of Alexandria",
   "at": [29.88, 31.22],
   "place": "Alexandria harbour, Egypt",
   "story": "The Pharos of Alexandria, built around 280 BC, was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and may have stood over 100 m tall. Earthquakes toppled it in the Middle Ages, and in 1477 its stones were reused for the Citadel of Qaitbay.",
   "fact": "“Pharos” became the word for lighthouse in several languages: “phare” in French, “faro” in Italian and Spanish.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Lighthouse of Alexandria – Britannica", "u": "https://www.britannica.com/topic/lighthouse-of-Alexandria"},
    {"t": "Lighthouse of Alexandria – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse_of_Alexandria"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "jamescaird",
   "topic": "history",
   "title": "The James Caird lands",
   "at": [-37.35, -54.166],
   "place": "King Haakon Bay, South Georgia",
   "story": "Stranded after their ship Endurance was crushed by ice, Ernest Shackleton and five men sailed a 7-metre lifeboat, the James Caird, from Elephant Island on 24 April 1916. After about 1,500 km (800 nautical miles) of the stormiest seas on Earth they landed here on 10 May; three of them then crossed South Georgia’s unmapped mountains to get help.",
   "fact": "The James Caird survives and is on display at Dulwich College in London, Shackleton’s old school.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Voyage of the James Caird – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_of_the_James_Caird"},
    {"t": "The James Caird – James Caird Society", "u": "https://jamescairdsociety.com/the-james-caird"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "qar",
   "topic": "history",
   "title": "Queen Anne’s Revenge",
   "at": [-76.67, 34.68],
   "place": "Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina",
   "story": "In June 1718 the pirate Blackbeard ran his flagship, Queen Anne’s Revenge, aground at Beaufort Inlet. Divers found the wreck in 1996, and in 2011 North Carolina officially confirmed who she was.",
   "fact": "Before Blackbeard captured her in 1717 she was the French slave ship La Concorde.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Queen Anne’s Revenge Project (North Carolina)", "u": "https://www.qaronline.org/history"},
    {"t": "Queen Anne’s Revenge – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Anne%27s_Revenge"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "lanse",
   "topic": "history",
   "title": "L’Anse aux Meadows",
   "at": [-55.53, 51.6],
   "place": "Northern tip of Newfoundland",
   "story": "Here lie the remains of a Norse camp, the earliest known European settlement in the Americas. A 2021 tree-ring study showed Norse visitors were cutting wood here in the year 1021. It became one of the first UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1978.",
   "fact": "It is still the only confirmed Norse site in North America outside Greenland, found in 1960 by Helge Ingstad and Anne Stine Ingstad.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "L’Anse aux Meadows – UNESCO", "u": "https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/4/"},
    {"t": "L’Anse aux Meadows – Parks Canada", "u": "https://parks.canada.ca/lhn-nhs/nl/meadows"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "cuttysark",
   "topic": "history",
   "title": "Cutty Sark",
   "at": [-0.01, 51.486],
   "place": "Greenwich, London",
   "story": "Launched at Dumbarton in 1869, Cutty Sark was one of the last and fastest tea clippers, racing cargoes of tea from China. She has been kept in dry dock at Greenwich since 1954 and is now a museum ship.",
   "fact": "Her name comes from Robert Burns’s poem “Tam o’ Shanter”: a “cutty sark” is the short nightdress worn by the witch Nannie, who is the ship’s figurehead.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Cutty Sark – Royal Museums Greenwich", "u": "https://www.rmg.co.uk/cutty-sark"},
    {"t": "Cutty Sark – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutty_Sark"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "portroyal",
   "topic": "history",
   "title": "Port Royal",
   "at": [-76.842, 17.945],
   "place": "Kingston Harbour, Jamaica",
   "story": "In the 1600s Port Royal was a booming harbour town famous as a haven for pirates and privateers. On 7 June 1692 a powerful earthquake struck, and about two-thirds of the town slid into the sea.",
   "fact": "A pocket watch found by divers in 1959 had stopped at 11:43, matching accounts of when the quake hit.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Port Royal – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Royal"},
    {"t": "1692 Jamaica earthquake – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1692_Jamaica_earthquake"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "seaventure",
   "topic": "history",
   "title": "Sea Venture",
   "at": [-64.665, 32.4],
   "place": "Off St. George’s, Bermuda",
   "story": "In July 1609 the Sea Venture, flagship of a fleet taking settlers to Jamestown, was caught in a hurricane and wrecked on Bermuda’s reefs. Everyone survived, built two new ships and sailed on in 1610. Their stay led to Bermuda’s settlement, and survivors’ accounts are widely thought to have inspired Shakespeare’s The Tempest.",
   "fact": "The wrecked Sea Venture appears on Bermuda’s coat of arms.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Sea Venture – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Venture"},
    {"t": "Coat of arms of Bermuda – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_arms_of_Bermuda"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "chagos-great-bank",
   "topic": "ocean",
   "title": "The reef that bounced back",
   "at": [71.8, -6.3],
   "place": "Great Chagos Bank, Chagos Archipelago",
   "story": "In the middle of the Indian Ocean, the Chagos Archipelago holds the Great Chagos Bank, the world’s largest coral atoll structure, and became a no-take reserve of about 640,000 km² in 2010. When the 2015–16 heatwaves cut coral cover and carbonate production by over 70%, these remote, unfished reefs began rebuilding within six years, with fast-growing table corals returning first.",
   "fact": "Chagos shelters around 220 coral species and at least 784 fish. In 2015 an international tribunal ruled that the UK had breached the UN Law of the Sea Convention by declaring the reserve without respecting Mauritius’s rights; a 2025 UK–Mauritius treaty, still awaiting ratification, would hand over the islands and keep the reserve.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Chagos Marine Protected Area – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagos_Marine_Protected_Area"},
    {"t": "Coral reefs in the Indian Ocean recover – Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research", "u": "https://www.leibniz-zmt.de/en/news-at-zmt/news/news-archive/reefs-in-the-indian-ocean.html"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "aldabra-giant-tortoises",
   "topic": "creatures",
   "title": "The last tortoise kingdom",
   "at": [46.45, -9.3],
   "place": "Aldabra Atoll, Seychelles",
   "story": "Remote Aldabra atoll is home to roughly 100,000 giant tortoises, the largest population on Earth and far more than the Galápagos. Sailors hunted the species out of the other Indian Ocean islands, and by about 1840 only Aldabra’s tortoises survived. When a military base was proposed there in the 1960s, the outcry helped win the atoll full protection, and UNESCO listed it in 1982.",
   "fact": "Aldabra sits just metres above sea level, yet it is home to the white-throated rail, the last flightless bird in the Indian Ocean.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Aldabra – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldabra"},
    {"t": "Aldabra giant tortoise – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldabra_giant_tortoise"},
    {"t": "Aldabra Atoll – Seychelles Islands Foundation", "u": "https://sif.sc/aldabra/"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "sainte-marie-pirate-cemetery",
   "topic": "history",
   "title": "The pirates’ graveyard",
   "at": [49.81, -17.02],
   "place": "Île Sainte-Marie, Madagascar",
   "story": "In the 1690s Île Sainte-Marie off Madagascar became a pirate haven, where trader Adam Baldridge supplied crews until his business collapsed in 1697. Names such as Henry Every, Thomas Tew and William Kidd are linked to the island. A hilltop cemetery near Ambodifotatra still has about 30 headstones, some carved with skull and crossbones, though the pirates’ remains have never been identified.",
   "fact": "Local lore says Captain Kidd lies in a large black tomb here, but he was hanged in London in 1701, and Libertalia is believed fictional.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Nosy Boraha – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosy_Boraha"},
    {"t": "The Pirate Cemetery – Atlas Obscura", "u": "https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-pirate-cemetery-analanjirofo-madagascar"},
    {"t": "Adam Baldridge – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Baldridge"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "mirissa-blue-whales",
   "topic": "ocean",
   "title": "Blue whales who never leave",
   "at": [80.46, 5.85],
   "place": "Off Mirissa, Sri Lanka",
   "story": "Most blue whales commute thousands of kilometres between polar feeding grounds and warm breeding seas, but off southern Sri Lanka they appear all year. A whale-watching crew from Mirissa logged 485 blue whale sightings in three years (2009–2012). These northern Indian Ocean whales don’t fit neatly into known subspecies, so scientists suspect they may be something distinct.",
   "fact": "A busy shipping lane crosses their home, and four dead blue whales were found along Sri Lanka’s south coast in just five months of 2014.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Blue Whales of the Northern Indian Ocean – J. Cetacean Res. Manage. (IWC)", "u": "https://journal.iwc.int/index.php/jcrm/article/view/577"},
    {"t": "Blue whale – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_whale"},
    {"t": "Blue whales off southern Sri Lanka – J. Cetacean Res. Manage. (IWC)", "u": "https://journal.iwc.int/index.php/jcrm/article/view/522"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "moken-laboon-wave",
   "topic": "myth",
   "title": "The wave that eats people",
   "at": [97.78, 9.44],
   "place": "Surin Islands, Andaman Sea, Thailand",
   "story": "The Moken, sea nomads of the Andaman Sea, tell of the laboon, a “wave that eats people”, which follows a sudden retreat of the sea. When the 2004 tsunami approached, Moken on the Surin Islands recognised the warning signs and fled to high ground, and their mortality was reported to be extremely low compared with neighbouring communities. Researchers credit the oral tradition.",
   "fact": "Moken children see about twice as sharply underwater as European children by constricting their pupils, a skill European children matched after training.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Moken – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moken"},
    {"t": "When the sea recedes: lessons from the Moken during the 2004 tsunami – INGV", "u": "https://cat.ingv.it/en/media-and-documents/news-en/511-when-the-sea-recedes-lessons-from-the-moken-during-the-2004-tsunami"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "raja-ampat-coral-triangle",
   "topic": "ocean",
   "title": "Epicentre of reef life",
   "at": [130.68, -0.62],
   "place": "Raja Ampat, Indonesia",
   "story": "Raja Ampat, at the heart of the Coral Triangle, holds more than 600 hard coral species, about three quarters of all those known, and well over 1,600 kinds of reef fish. Marine biologist Mark Erdmann calls it the global epicentre of marine diversity. Its corals also cope with swings from about 19 to 36 °C, which scientists hope makes them unusually resilient to warming.",
   "fact": "By one count Raja Ampat has more than 600 coral species, while the entire Caribbean has fewer than 70, and this archipelago is far smaller.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Raja Ampat Islands – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raja_Ampat_Islands"},
    {"t": "Understanding the beauty and diversity of Raja Ampat, aka “Underwater Eden” – NBC News", "u": "https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/understanding-beauty-diversity-raja-ampat-aka-underwater-eden-flna1c7006945"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "palau-jellyfish-lake",
   "topic": "ocean",
   "title": "Jellyfish that follow the sun",
   "at": [134.4, 7.16],
   "place": "Eil Malk (Jellyfish Lake), Palau",
   "story": "On Eil Malk in Palau’s Rock Islands, a saltwater lake linked to the sea by limestone fissures holds millions of golden jellyfish. Each morning they swim east, following the sun so the algae in their tissues can photosynthesise, stopping short of shaded shores where anemones lurk, then drift back west in the afternoon. They have lost their painful sting, so snorkellers can join them.",
   "fact": "After the 1998 El Niño, the lake’s golden jellyfish population fell to zero, then recovered to earlier levels by 2012.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Jellyfish Lake – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jellyfish_Lake"},
    {"t": "Golden jellyfish – National Geographic", "u": "https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/invertebrates/facts/golden-jellyfish"},
    {"t": "The Changing of the Jellies – Conservation Magazine", "u": "https://conservationmag.org/en/places/the-changing-of-the-jellies-snorkelling-in-palau-s-jellyfish-lake"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "tubbataha-guardian-grounding",
   "topic": "ocean",
   "title": "The reef the chart got wrong",
   "at": [119.95, 8.9],
   "place": "Tubbataha Reefs, Sulu Sea, Philippines",
   "story": "Tubbataha, a World Heritage reef in the Sulu Sea about 150 km from Palawan, is guarded by rangers who stay on a remote atoll two months at a time. In January 2013 a US Navy minesweeper ran onto it at night, trusting a digital chart that placed the reef roughly 7.5 nautical miles away. The ship had to be cut up and lifted off.",
   "fact": "The grounding damaged about 2,345 m² of reef; the US later paid the Philippines roughly US$1.96 million, and the Navy called the accident “entirely preventable”.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tubbataha_Reefs_Natural_Park"},
    {"t": "USS Guardian (MCM-5) – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Guardian_(MCM-5)"},
    {"t": "U.S. Pays the Philippines Nearly $2 Million in Damages Over USS Guardian Grounding – gCaptain", "u": "https://gcaptain.com/guardian-investigation-reflects/"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "tsunami-raft-tohoku",
   "topic": "ocean",
   "title": "Lifeboats across the Pacific",
   "at": [141.6, 40.7],
   "place": "Tōhoku coast off Misawa, Japan",
   "story": "After the March 2011 tsunami swept docks, boats and buoys into the Pacific, living coastal creatures hitched rides with them. Researchers documented 289 Japanese species from 16 phyla that crossed to North America and Hawaii over about six years, mostly on plastic and fibreglass. A fisheries dock from the Port of Misawa reached Oregon in June 2012 carrying about 100 species.",
   "fact": "Lead scientist James Carlton called it “one of the biggest, unplanned, natural experiments in marine biology”; the survival times are the longest recorded for rafting coastal species.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Tsunami-driven rafting: Transoceanic species dispersal – Science (Carlton et al., 2017)", "u": "https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aao1498"},
    {"t": "Tsunami enabled hundreds of species to raft across Pacific – ScienceDaily", "u": "https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170928142101.htm"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "takashima-kamikaze-fleet",
   "topic": "myth",
   "title": "The divine wind",
   "at": [129.8, 33.38],
   "place": "Takashima, Imari Bay, Japan",
   "story": "Japanese tradition says a “divine wind”, the kamikaze, wrecked Kublai Khan’s invasion fleet off Kyushu in 1281. Divers at Takashima in Imari Bay have since found ship timbers, anchor stones, weapons and Mongol seals preserved in seabed mud. Some historians argue that Japanese defenders ashore and poor coordination mattered as much as the typhoon that legend remembers.",
   "fact": "Underwater archaeologists at Takashima recovered ceramic bombs; X-rays showed that they contained gunpowder packed with scrap iron.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Relics of the Kamikaze – Archaeology magazine", "u": "https://archive.archaeology.org/0301/etc/kamikaze.html"},
    {"t": "Ships on the Seabed: Searching for the Mongol Empire’s Lost Invasion Fleet – Nippon.com", "u": "https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/c13704/"},
    {"t": "Mongol invasions of Japan – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasions_of_Japan"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "noronha-spinner-dolphins",
   "topic": "creatures",
   "title": "Dolphins on the night shift",
   "at": [-32.47, -3.83],
   "place": "Baía dos Golfinhos, Fernando de Noronha, Brazil",
   "story": "Spinner dolphins around Fernando de Noronha work night shifts: they hunt far offshore in the dark, then gather in the sheltered Baía dos Golfinhos during the morning and early afternoon to rest, socialise and raise calves. Researchers have recorded groups of up to about 2,000 in the bay. The archipelago, some 360 km off Brazil, has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2001.",
   "fact": "Numbers swing with the seasons: one study reports daily averages from about 26 dolphins in the rainy season to 155 in the dry, with far bigger peaks.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Fernando de Noronha IMMA – Marine Mammal Protected Areas Task Force", "u": "https://www.marinemammalhabitat.org/factsheets/fernando-de-noronha-imma"},
    {"t": "Fernando de Noronha – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_de_Noronha"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "tristan-volcano-evacuation",
   "topic": "history",
   "title": "The island that left and came back",
   "at": [-12.31, -37.03],
   "place": "Tristan da Cunha, South Atlantic",
   "story": "On 10 October 1961 a volcanic cone erupted beside Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, and all 264 people of Tristan da Cunha escaped by boat to Nightingale Island. A Dutch liner took them to Cape Town and on to England. Homesick, most came back in 1963 after a Royal Society expedition found their settlement had survived the eruption.",
   "fact": "Tristan lies about 2,400 km from the nearest inhabited land and has no airport; reaching it from Cape Town still takes roughly six days by ship.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Tristan da Cunha – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan_da_Cunha"},
    {"t": "Tristan da Cunha evacuation 1961 – National Maritime Museum Cornwall", "u": "https://nmmc.co.uk/?p=828"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "ss-great-britain-falklands",
   "topic": "history",
   "title": "Brunel’s ship comes home",
   "at": [-57.65, -51.65],
   "place": "Sparrow Cove, Falkland Islands",
   "story": "Brunel’s SS Great Britain, launched in 1843, ended up damaged at Port Stanley in 1886 and served for decades as a storage hulk before being scuttled at Sparrow Cove in 1937. In 1970 a salvage team floated her onto the pontoon Mulus III, and she was towed home across the Atlantic. On 19 July 1970 she re-entered the Bristol dock where she was built, 127 years to the day after her launch.",
   "fact": "At her 1843 launch the champagne bottle missed its target, so Prince Albert reportedly hurled it against the iron hull himself.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "SS Great Britain – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Great_Britain"},
    {"t": "SS Great Britain in Sparrow Cove, 1970 – Royal Museums Greenwich", "u": "https://rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-1181206"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "valdes-orca-beaching",
   "topic": "creatures",
   "title": "Orcas that hunt on the beach",
   "at": [-63.74, -42.06],
   "place": "Punta Norte, Península Valdés, Argentina",
   "story": "At Punta Norte in Patagonia, some orcas deliberately launch themselves onto the beach at high tide to snatch sea lion pups, then wriggle back to sea on the next wave. The technique is learned rather than instinctive: young orcas need years of practice, and mothers coach them. Experienced hunters are reported to succeed about half the time.",
   "fact": "These orcas reportedly swim on their side to hide their dorsal fin from the pups, hunting around high tide from about February to April.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Orca – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orca"},
    {"t": "Astonishing footage shows orcas hunting sea lion pups – Discover Wildlife", "u": "https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/marine-animals/astonishing-footage-shows-orcas-hunting-sea-lion-puppies"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "red-sea-aqaba-corals",
   "topic": "ocean",
   "title": "Corals that shrug off heat",
   "at": [34.94, 29.5],
   "place": "Gulf of Aqaba, Red Sea",
   "story": "In the Gulf of Aqaba, at the northern tip of the Red Sea, corals endured experimental warming and acidification that bleach reefs elsewhere. Scientists believe their ancestors passed through a hot bottleneck at the Red Sea’s southern entrance after the last ice age, leaving only heat-tolerant survivors to colonise the north. Researchers suggest these reefs may be among the last standing this century.",
   "fact": "In a six-week experiment, Gulf of Aqaba corals did not bleach, and most of the measured variables actually improved under stress.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Coral reefs in the Gulf of Aqaba may survive global warming – EPFL", "u": "https://actu.epfl.ch/news/coral-reefs-in-the-gulf-of-aqaba-may-survive-globa/"},
    {"t": "Hardy Red Sea corals hold out hope for world’s dying reefs – ISRAEL21c", "u": "https://archive.israel21c.org/hardy-red-sea-corals-hold-out-hope-for-worlds-dying-reefs/"},
    {"t": "Gulf of Aqaba – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Aqaba"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "bom-jesus-namib-wreck",
   "topic": "history",
   "title": "The treasure ship in the desert",
   "at": [16.3, -28.58],
   "place": "Oranjemund, Namibia",
   "story": "The Portuguese ship Bom Jesus left Lisbon on 7 March 1533, bound for India, and vanished. In April 2008 a diamond-mine worker at Oranjemund in Namibia’s forbidden Sperrgebiet spotted copper ingots and ivory in the sand. The wreck held about 1,845 copper ingots, 105 elephant tusks and over 2,000 coins, mostly Spanish. A storm is believed to have driven her onto rocks.",
   "fact": "The ingots carried the trademark of the Fugger banking family, and coins bearing the emblem of Portugal’s King John III helped date and identify the wreck.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Bom Jesus (ship) – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bom_Jesus_(ship)"},
    {"t": "2,000 Gold Coins Discovered In 500-Year-Old Portuguese Shipwreck In Namibia – Marine Insight", "u": "https://www.marineinsight.com/2000-gold-coins-discovered-in-500-year-old-portuguese-shipwreck-in-namibia/"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "cape-verde-loggerheads",
   "topic": "creatures",
   "title": "Turtles by the thousand",
   "at": [-22.66, 16.05],
   "place": "Boa Vista, Cape Verde",
   "story": "Cape Verde holds the only significant loggerhead nesting site on the eastern side of the Atlantic, and Boa Vista is its heartland. A study reported in 2026 found nesting at three Boa Vista beaches rose about 80-fold between 1998 and 2024, credited to decades of beach patrols, egg-poaching enforcement, hatcheries and turtle-watching tourism. Worldwide, loggerheads have fallen roughly 47% over three generations.",
   "fact": "Warmer sand produces more female hatchlings, so conservationists on the islands have begun shading hatcheries to keep nests cooler.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Teeming with turtles: Cabo Verde island sees 80-fold increase in nesting loggerheads – Mongabay", "u": "https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/teeming-with-turtles-cabo-verde-island-sees-80-fold-increase-in-nesting-loggerheads/"},
    {"t": "Loggerhead sea turtle – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loggerhead_sea_turtle"},
    {"t": "Boa Vista, Cape Verde – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boa_Vista,_Cape_Verde"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "endurance-wreck-weddell",
   "topic": "sailing",
   "title": "Shackleton’s men ashore",
   "at": [-55.0, -61.03],
   "place": "Elephant Island, South Shetland Islands",
   "story": "Shackleton’s Endurance was crushed by pack ice and sank in the Weddell Sea on 21 November 1915. Her 28 men camped on the drifting ice, then took to the three lifeboats, and in April 1916 they landed here on Elephant Island: their first solid ground in 497 days. The wreck itself lies far to the south. On 5 March 2022 the Endurance22 expedition, working from the ship S.A. Agulhas II, found her upright and intact at 3,008 m, only a few nautical miles from the position recorded by navigator Frank Worsley.",
   "fact": "The cold Antarctic water kept wood-boring organisms away, and the wreck is now a protected Historic Site and Monument under the Antarctic Treaty, with a 500 m protection zone.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Endurance (1912 ship) – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_(1912_ship)"},
    {"t": "Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance is found – MercoPress", "u": "https://en.mercopress.com/2022/03/09/sir-ernest-shackleton-s-endurance-is-found"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "surtsey-new-island",
   "topic": "ocean",
   "title": "An island born in 1963",
   "at": [-20.64, 63.29],
   "place": "Surtsey, Westman Islands, Iceland",
   "story": "In November 1963 eruptions off Iceland’s south coast built a brand-new island, later named Surtsey after the fire giant of Norse myth, and they lasted until June 1967. Closed to all but a few scientists, it became a living laboratory: the first vascular plant arrived in 1965, and by 2008 there were 69 plant species, with seabirds and seals breeding.",
   "fact": "Surtsey has already shrunk from 2.7 km² to about 1.3 km² as the sea wears it away, though its hardened core is expected to resist for a long time.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Surtsey – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surtsey"},
    {"t": "Surtsey: Iceland’s volcanic natural laboratory – Discover Wildlife", "u": "https://www.discoverwildlife.com/environment/surtsey-island-iceland"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "black-sea-greek-wreck",
   "topic": "ocean",
   "title": "The sea that keeps ships",
   "at": [28.9, 42.5],
   "place": "Black Sea, off Bulgaria",
   "story": "Deep water in the Black Sea has almost no oxygen, and that dead water is a time capsule. In 2018 the Black Sea Maritime Archaeology Project revealed an ancient Greek trading ship, about 23 m long and roughly 2,400 years old, lying over 2 km down off Bulgaria. Declared the oldest known intact shipwreck, it was one of more than 60 wrecks the project found.",
   "fact": "The Greek ship lies on its side with its mast, rudders and rowing benches still in place, preserved by oxygen-free water more than 1.2 miles deep.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Underwater Archaeologists Find “World’s Oldest Intact Shipwreck” – Sci.News", "u": "https://www.sci.news/archaeology/worlds-oldest-intact-shipwreck-06535.html"},
    {"t": "Oldest intact shipwreck known to man discovered in Black Sea – gCaptain", "u": "https://gcaptain.com/oldest-intact-shipwreck-known-to-man-discovered-in-black-sea/"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "jardines-de-la-reina",
   "topic": "ocean",
   "title": "The Queen’s gardens",
   "at": [-78.8, 20.72],
   "place": "Jardines de la Reina, Cuba",
   "story": "Columbus named this chain of more than 600 cays off southern Cuba the Gardens of the Queen for Isabella of Castile. A marine reserve since 1996 and a national park since 2010, it is one of the largest marine protected areas in the Caribbean. Its reefs still shelter top predators such as sharks and groupers, and only catch-and-release fly-fishing and regulated lobster fishing are allowed.",
   "fact": "Scientists comparing reefs found richer microbial diversity and cleaner, nutrient-poor water here than at degraded Florida Keys reefs.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Jardines de la Reina – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jardines_de_la_Reina"},
    {"t": "How microbes reflect the health of coral reefs – Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution", "u": "https://www.whoi.edu/press-room/news-release/how-microbes-reflect-the-health-of-coral-reefs/"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "cabo-pulmo-rebound",
   "topic": "ocean",
   "title": "The reef that came back",
   "at": [-109.4, 23.42],
   "place": "Cabo Pulmo, Sea of Cortez, Mexico",
   "story": "Cabo Pulmo in the Gulf of California became a no-take national park in 1995. A 2011 study found that between 1999 and 2009 total fish biomass rose by 463%, the largest gain ever measured in a marine reserve, and top predators grew more than tenfold. Its reef, believed to be about 20,000 years old, is among the northernmost in the eastern Pacific.",
   "fact": "By 2009 fish biomass at Cabo Pulmo was 5.4 times that of other core zones, and a village of about 100 people earned roughly US$539,000 from tourism in 2006.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Large recovery of fish biomass in a no-take marine reserve – PLOS ONE", "u": "https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0023601"},
    {"t": "Cabo Pulmo National Park – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabo_Pulmo_National_Park"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "cocos-hammerhead-network",
   "topic": "creatures",
   "title": "Hammerheads of Treasure Island",
   "at": [-87.02, 5.53],
   "place": "Cocos Island, Costa Rica",
   "story": "Cocos Island, 550 km off Costa Rica, is famed for buried pirate treasure, and hundreds of expeditions have searched in vain. Its real riches are sharks: scalloped hammerheads gather in schools that can number in the hundreds. After 84 were tagged with acoustic transmitters, records showed sharks linking Cocos to the Galápagos, about 710 km away, and to Malpelo.",
   "fact": "Hammerheads tagged at Cocos stay near the island by day and disperse offshore at night, and trips to the Galápagos took a median of about 33 days.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Cocos Island – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocos_Island"},
    {"t": "Movements of scalloped hammerhead sharks at Cocos Island and between oceanic islands in the Eastern Tropical Pacific – PLOS ONE", "u": "https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6413943/"},
    {"t": "Scalloped hammerhead – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalloped_hammerhead"}
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "bikini-coral-comeback",
   "topic": "ocean",
   "title": "Coral after the bomb",
   "at": [165.45, 11.58],
   "place": "Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands",
   "story": "The United States used Bikini Atoll for nuclear tests between 1946 and 1958, and the 1954 Bravo blast left a crater about two kilometres wide. Five decades later, divers recorded 183 coral species and found tree-like corals 30 cm thick growing in the crater. About 70% of the atoll’s coral assemblage proved resilient, though about 28 species may be locally extinct.",
   "fact": "With no fishing, Bikini’s lagoon teems with sharks and big fish, and divers visit the sunken “nuclear ghost fleet”, including the aircraft carrier Saratoga.",
   "links": [
    {"t": "Bikini Atoll coral biodiversity resilience revealed five decades after nuclear testing – Australian Museum", "u": "https://publications.australian.museum/bikini-atoll-coral-biodiversity-resilience-revealed-five-decades-after-nuclear-testing/"},
    {"t": "50 years after the blast: recovery in Bikini Atoll’s coral reef – Mongabay", "u": "https://news.mongabay.com/2008/05/50-years-after-the-blast-recovery-in-bikini-atolls-coral-reef/"},
    {"t": "Bikini Atoll – Wikipedia", "u": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikini_Atoll"}
   ]
  }
 ]
}