To provide information about a new Canadian lobster industry financial stimulus program, Canada’s department of fisheries set up a “hot line” which proved somewhat hotter than expected. Instead of hearing information on lobstering, callers were greeted with a woman’s voice saying, “Hey there, hot stuff, I’ve been waiting for your call. Are you ready for some tantalizing fun?” The agency apparently got the number right but the area code wrong, so the calls were directed to an phone sex service. Oops.
From New Scientist: As new ways of analysing the world around us are developed, new ways to visualise that information are needed. At the recent Eurographics Symposium, held in Berlin, traffic in shipping traffic near Rotterdam was mapped on both calm and rough weather days.
On a rough day it is clear that the shipping lanes have broken down, and that shipping density doesn’t get so high. The slow-moving vessels produce darker, more defined trails. Click the images below for larger images:
The new visualisation method was developed by Niels Willems at Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands, with colleagues Huub van de Wetering, and Jack van Wijk.
Photo : Fred Vloo
Some Monday mornings feel like I was in a head on collision with a containership. Here is a photo of the bow of the Nirit Pride which did indeed collide earlier this month with the MSC vessel Nikita in shipping lanes near Rotterdam.
Fortunately no one was seriously injured and both ships returned to port safely with the assistance of salvage tugs. Quick action by the salvors, Dutch Coast Guard and the Port Authority of Rotterdam prevented what could have have been a disaster as both ships were heavily damaged.
In honor of our unexpected whale watching in New York harbor, we are taking a brief look at whale watching around the country this summer. It has been an interesting summer indeed. After staying off shore for several years, fin and humpback whales returned to waters off Montauk, at the eastern end of Long Island, to the delight of whale watchers. On the West Coast, large krill patches close to shore off Southern California have attracted blue whales, which has pleased whale watchers while raising concerns that the whales are at risk of being hit by ships in the Santa Barbara ship channel. Whales were no the only large marine life traveling close to shore this season – great white sharks closed several beaches to swimmers on Cape Cod.
Humpback, fin whales return to waters off Montauk
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As reported by the Stockholm News –
WW1 Russian submarine found
The submarine wreck was discovered by a research ship of the Swedish Maritime Administration the 10 September. A closer study with a radio-controlled underwater vessel indicate that the submarine may be ‘Gepard’, one of twelve submarines of the Bars (snow leopard) class who operated in the Baltic Sea during WW1. “We have a strong suspicion that it’s ‘Gepard’, says Hans Oiås, responsible for the Swedish database of shipwrecks, to news agency TT.
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Humpback Whale sighted last April in New York Harbor
This morning while sailing on the schooner Pioneer in Upper New York Harbor, we were all surprised when the captain shouted “whale”. There, close aboard to starboard, the back and dorsal fin of a whale rose and then disappeared beneath the surface of the harbor. The whale surfaced again, some distance away swimming toward the Brooklyn shore near Red Hook. Later in the morning, we saw it again, further off. It looked to me to be a small humpback but could also have been a minke. Unfortunately, we were handling sails when the whale surfaced and it didn’t wait around for anyone to grab their cameras.
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There will be a preliminary hearing into the sinking of the ferry, Princess Ashika, next Thursday in Nuku’alofa by the Royal Commission set up by the Government to investigate the tragedy.
A letter from Port Authority Port Authority general manager, Lupeti Vi, to the Tongan Prime Minister, Feleti Sevele, revealed that welding repairs were carried out at night on the ill-fated ferry, without permission, to try to conceal how rusty the ferry was. The letter also implied that the ferry might not have been insured. According to the Lloyd’s Marine Intelligence Unit database, Princess Ashika had no current International Safety Management or International Ship and Port Facility Security code documentation.
A life buoy from the sunken Princess Ashika was found floating in Fijian water near Levuka about 1000 kilometers from where the ferry sank early last month. The Princess Ashika formerly was owned by the Patterson Shipping Company of Fiji, whose owners are originally from Levuka. The buoy is being returned to Tonga.
Perhaps it is the thought that counts. Swiss lawmakers have decided against joining EU anti-piracy efforts because it would violate the country’s long-held tradition of neutrality. The land-locked country lacks a blue water navy so could not send a ship or ships to support the efforts but had considered sending thirty military support personnel. The Swiss navy does operate ten patrol boats on Lakes Konstanz and Leman. Thirty-two merchant ships in international trade fly the Swiss flag.
The Lake Champlain Maritime Museum is hosting an Archeology Weekend tomorrow and Sunday. it will include presentations on Lake Champlain shipwrecks and feature some of their latest explorations including early steamboats, gunboats, sailing vessels and canal boats. There will be special demonstrations in the Conservation Lab, lectures and films and presentations on what threatens the lake’s collection of shipwrecks and what you can do to help protect and preserve underwater cultural resources.
We previously posted about the Royal Navy installing Windows on submarines. We were relieved to learn that the reference was to an a computer operating system and not panes of glass. Then again, it appears that the late Ivar Haglund, owner of the Seattle restaurant chain, Ivar’s Seafood, expected submarine viewers when he installed underwater billboards for submarines in Puget Sound over fifty years ago. On the other hand, some suggest that it may all be a hoax.
Is there something fishy about Ivar’s latest stunt?
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Depending on how you look at it, there is either good or bad news about the Mary Rose. The Mary Rose is the only only 16th century warship on display anywhere in the world. She was one of the first ships able to fire a broadside, and was a favorite of King Henry VIII.
The bad news is that her exhibit in Portsmouth is closing for three years. The good news is that a new 35 million pound museum is being built to house her in the manner she so richly deserves.
An update to our previous post – Spotted Dick Off the Menu. As reported by the BBC:
Council chiefs have reversed a decision to rename the pudding Spotted Dick after receiving “abusive letters” and accusations of political correctness.
Canteen staff at Flintshire council had decided it would be referred to as “Spotted Richard” on their menu after “immature comments” by some customers.
The council now says the pudding will revert to its traditional name.
No word yet whether Boiled Baby will be added to the menu. Boiled Baby is said to be similar to Spotted Dick, except without the raisins or eggs.
In honor of John Paul Jones’ victory in the Battle of Flamborough Head where he captured HMS Serapis on this day 230 years ago, we offer two works from the archives. (For those who have not yet discovered it, the Internet Archive is a wonderful resource.)
The first is:
The logs of the Serapis–Alliance–Ariel, under the command of John Paul Jones, 1779-1780, with extracts from public documents, unpublished letters, and narratives, and illustrated with reproductions of scarce prints (1911)
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I have always been a John Paul Jones sceptic. Was he a great naval leader or merely a prima dona? Was he so difficult a personality that he was never an effective leader? He was at the very least a complicated figure. Even his greatest triumph, the slugging match between the Bonhomme Richard and the Serapis, while a huge moral victory for the colonies, was a strategic failure. Though the Seraphis was defeated, she did ensure that the 41-ship convoy that she was escorting made good their escape. If the American squadron had been fighting only the British, rather than each other, the victory might have been more complete.
From the Smithsonian
In an attempt to disrupt English shipping during the Revolutionary War, Continental Navy Capt. John Paul Jones attacks the frigate Serapis off the English coast September 23, 1779. In the heated 3 1/2-hour battle, Jones’ own ship, Bonhomme Richard, is badly hit. His retort when asked to surrender—”I have not yet begun to fight”—won’t be reported for 46 years, but whatever his words, fight Jones does, winning both the battle with the Serapis and the sobriquet “Father of the American Navy.”
See also Captain Jones — Pirate or Patriot?
Last Friday the HMS Victory fired a 64 gun rolling broadside to to help launch the National Museum of the Royal Navy. (While the broadside was impressively load and smoky, the amount of gunpowder used for the symbolic broadside was reported to be less than the gunners onboard at Trafalgar would have used for a single shot.) The creation of the NMRN has been a long-term objective of the Navy Board and will ensure that naval heritage as a whole is properly focused and deployed to its full potential in promoting the Naval Service.
HMS Victory’s future in Portsmouth is secured
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Intriguing news about Charles W. Morgan, the last American sailing whale ship. From Boston.com
Mystic Seaport officials are now considering whether to make the ship seaworthy again so that it can tour New England’s coastline in the summer of 2012, with stops in New London, Newport, R.I., Provincetown, Mass., and New Bedford, Mass. The Morgan is undergoing a $6 million restoration at the museum, which has a working shipyard. Putting air in the sails would cost an additional $2 million. The idea has been tossed around for at least a decade, but last May, White and other officials started giving it serious consideration.
Last month we posted about The Great Gloucester Sea Serpent of 1817. Eric, a blog reader, commented, no doubt tongue in cheek, “So that is what the bloop was.” His comment got me thinking about the ironies of observations, technology and the unknown.
For the uninitiated, the “bloop” was an ultra-low frequency underwater sound detected by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) several times during the summer of 1997. NOAA was using an acoustic hydrophone array in the Pacific ocean originally developed by the US Navy to track Russian submarines. The ”bloop” was heard on multiple sensors over a range greater than 5,000 km. The sound appeared to be somewhere around 50° S 100° W (in the Pacific of the southwest coat of South American). Scientists agreed that the bloop matches the audio profile of a living animal, but no known animal could have produced the sound. Also given the range across which the sound was heard, any animal that created such a sound would have to be significantly larger than a blue whale, the largest creature ever know to have lived on the planet.
Last week, StatoilHydro inaugurated Hywind in the North Sea off South-west Norway. Hywind is the first full scale floating wind turbine and is a research pilot program to develop a new generation of offshore wind mills.
I started reading nautical fiction, specifically C.S. Forester’s Hornblower series, as a teenager. The Hornblower novels, while meant for adults, were great “boy books,” full of adventure and action, with a hero with just enough self doubt and angst for a teenager to relate to. The readers of most nautical fiction seem to be primarily boys and men, which is not surprising for a genre whose heroes and villains are overwhelming male. Is there room for female readers and indeed a female heroine in these crowded waters? And if so, what role could she and would she play? After reading Linda Collison’s novel, Star-Crossed, the answer to the first question is clearly yes.
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