US Coast Guard Can’t Crew All Its Ships Due to Recruiting Shortage

Posted on by August 12, 2024

Last week, US Coast Guard Vice Commandant Adm. Kevin Lunday spoke at the Brookings Institution and addressed the service’s enlisted force’s ongoing 10 percent manning shortage.  Entering the fiscal year, the Coast Guard was about 3,000 members short of end strength numbers. “That’s the backbone of the Coast Guard,” Lunday said.

Due to the shortfall, the Coast Guard “can’t crew all our ships” and has had to “temporarily shutter some of our smaller stations,” the vice commandant said.

“We had to lay up three of our major cutters because we don’t have enough enlisted personnel to crew them.” Since the action, the service has shifted funds from other parts of the budget to bolster recruiting and retention.

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Boaty McBoatface Returns From 55 Day Undersea Voyage

Posted on by August 11, 2024

Boaty McBoatface, referred to as the UK’s most famous robot, recently returned to Scotland after 55 days on a more-than-2,000km undersea scientific odyssey from Iceland, studying the pace of climate change. 

BBC reports that the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) was hunting for marine snow – “poo, basically” in the words of one researcher. This refers to tiny particles that sink to the ocean floor, storing huge amounts of carbon.

The deep ocean, referred to as the “twilight zone”, is enormously mysterious. Acting as the eyes and ears of the scientists, Boaty went there on the longest journey yet for its class of submarine. 

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Fire & Explosion on Container Ship YM Mobility Berthed in Ningbo, China

Posted on by August 9, 2024

Containers caught fire and exploded on the 6,589 TEU YM Mobility today at around 1:40 PM, local time, while berthed at the Port of Ningbo, China. A statement by Yang Ming, the ship’s operator, said that preliminary findings suggest that an explosion occurred in a container loaded with dangerous goods on board. Immediate fire-fighting measures have been taken at the scene, the fire has been brought under control

China Central Television (CCTV), citing preliminary findings from authorities, said the goods included lithium batteries and tert-Butyl peroxybenzoate, an organic compound that is flammable and explosive and should not be stored in an environment over 30C (86F), as reported by Reuters. 

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Great Barrier Reef Threatened by Highest Ocean Heat in 400 Years

Posted on by August 8, 2024

In a new study, published in the journal Nature, scientists say that sea surface temperatures over the past decade in and around Australia’s Great Barrier Reef are the highest on record for 400 years. The study concludes that these increased temperatures, driven by climate change, now pose an “existential threat” to the vast coral reef.

Extreme heat has caused five mass coral bleaching events in the past nine years alone.

“The science tells us that the Great Barrier Reef is in danger – and we should be guided by the science,” Prof Helen McGregor, from the University of Wollongong, told BBC News.

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Cocaine Worth $1 Million Swept Ashore in Florida Keys by Hurricane Debby

Posted on by August 7, 2024

Hurricane Debby brought high winds and storm surge as it traveled up and ultimately came ashore on the Gulf Coast of Florida. It also washed packages of cocaine worth more than $1 million ashore in Islamorada in the Florida Keys, officials said.

Debby, which slammed into the state as a Category 1 hurricane but has since been downgraded to a tropical storm, washed the drugs ashore in the Florida Keys, U.S. Border Patrol acting chief patrol Agent Samuel Briggs II wrote on social media.
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Unexpected Cetacean Spectator in Olympic Surfing Competition in Tahiti

Posted on by August 6, 2024

Most of the 2024 Summer Olympic Games have been held in Paris. The surfing competition, however, took place some 9,800 miles from Paris in the French Polynesian island of Tahiti. 

NPR reports that while Brazil’s Tatiana Weston-Webb and Costa Rica’s Brisa Hennessy were waiting for waves in the surfing semifinals, they spotted an unexpected spectator — a humpback whale breaching not far offshore.

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Update: A23a, the Iceberg “That Refuses to Die,” Caught in Antarctic Vortex

Posted on by August 4, 2024

In January, we posted about an iceberg designated A23a, the world’s largest, which had begun to drift on the Antarctic Circumpolar Current into “iceberg alley.” As it drifted, it was being eroded by waves and melting in the relatively warmer waters of the Southern Ocean. The impact of the waves carved huge arches and caves in the 400-meter-high walls of the iceberg.

The expectations were that the berg would continue to melt as it drifted and would begin to break up, with luck, missing the British Overseas Territory of South Georgia.  

Instead, A23a went precisely nowhere, as reported by the BBC. It remains in place just north of South Orkney Islands, turning in an anti-clockwise direction by about 15 degrees a day. And as long as it does this, its decay and eventual demise will be delayed.

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More Baltic Bubbly — 100 Sealed Bottles of Champagne Discovered in 19th Century Shipwreck

Posted on by August 1, 2024

A team of Polish divers discovered the wreck of a 19th-century vessel laden with about 100 sealed bottles of champagne.  The shipwreck is in the Baltic Sea in 60 meters of water about 20 nautical miles south of the Swedish island of Öland.

“I think we have a treasure,” Tomasz Stachura, leader of the Polish diving group Baltictech, posted to Facebook after the team’s July 11 discovery.

Stachura, who specializes in underwater photography, said the ship was in “very good condition” and “brimming with historical treasures, including crates of champagne, baskets of mineral water and porcelain,” according to the Washington Post.

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Scientists Discover “Dark Oxygen” on the Deep Ocean Floor

Posted on by August 1, 2024

A bed of manganese nodules offshore of the Cook Islands

About half the oxygen we breathe comes from the ocean.  It was long presumed that this oceanic oxygen was produced by photosynthesis, the process by which green plants use sunlight to synthesize foods by absorbing carbon dioxide and water, emitting oxygen as a byproduct. For at least a decade, however, researchers have observed significant levels of oxygen in the dark, deep ocean, far too deep for sunlight to reach and therefore too deep for photosynthesis.

New research published in the journal Nature Geoscience reveals that nature has devised a way to produce oxygen without the involvement of plants. It’s “an amazing and unexpected finding,” Daniel Jones, a researcher at the National Oceanography Center in the United Kingdom who wasn’t involved in the study, tells CNN’s Katie Hunt.

Rather than relying on sunlight and plants, the new research concluded that “dark oxygen” is being produced in the deep ocean, apparently by electrolysis involving lumps of metal on the seafloor.

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Sperm Whale Killed by Ship in Strait of Gibraltar

Posted on by July 31, 2024

The whale’s severe injury was apparent in footage captured shortly after the incident. Photo: CIRCE

Yesterday, we posted about the sinking of the British sailing yacht Bonhomme William last week, following an attack by orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar. Fortunately, the crew were rescued without injury. 

Two days later, a sperm whale encountered a ship with a more tragic outcome. According to the BBC, the endangered sperm whale – nicknamed Julio by scientists – was killed in a collision with a vessel in the busy Strait of Gibraltar.

Researchers say this is the fifth sperm whale to die after being struck by a ship since they started monitoring the population in the area more than 10 years ago.

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New Orca Attacks — Yachts Sunk Off Gibraltar & Damaged Off Coast of Brittany

Posted on by July 29, 2024

The mystifying attacks on sailboats by a pod of Iberian orcas continue.

The crew of the British yacht Bonhomme William had to be rescued after an orca sank their vessel in the Strait of Gibraltar, according to Spanish authorities. It is the latest in a long-running series of “interactions” between orcas and midsize sailing yachts off the coast of Spain.

Maritime Executive reports that the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre at Tarifa received a distress call from the yacht Bonhomme William on Wednesday night. The crew reported that their vessel had been disabled by orcas, which had hit it several times, and was adrift about two miles off Punta Camarinal in the strait’s western entrance.

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Robert L. Allen, Chronicler and Champion of Black Sailors in Port Chicago Disaster & Mutiny, Dies at 82

Posted on by July 28, 2024

Robert L. Allen, who definitively told the story of 50 Black sailors who were convicted of conspiracy to commit mutiny for refusing to continue to load munitions onto cargo ships after explosions had blown apart two ships at a California port during World War II, died on July 10 at his home in Benicia, in Northern California. He was 82.

On July 17, 1944, two ships being loaded with munitions in Port Chicago, California exploded. Over 4,000 tons of bombs, shells, depth charges, and fuel erupted in two shock waves that were felt by seismographs at the University of California, Berkeley. The second, larger shock wave was equivalent to a 3.4 magnitude earthquake. The calamity killed 320 people of which 220 were black seamen.

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Update : Hawai‘i Issues New Bids to Remove Historic Windjammer Falls of Clyde From Honolulu Harbor

Posted on by July 27, 2024

The Hawai‘i Department of Transportation (HDOT) has issued a request for proposals (RFP) to permanently remove the historic ship Falls of Clyde from Honolulu Harbor, where it has languished since 2008. Bids must be submitted by September 25, 2024.

The 145-year-old vessel is currently berthed at Pier 7 where it once served as a museum ship as part of the Hawai‘i Maritime Center.  The vessel is privately owned but was impounded in 2016 and remains in the custody of the department.

In November 2023, the Hawaii Historic Places Review Board voted 4-1 in favor of removing the Falls of Clyde from the Hawai‘i Register of Historic Places and recommending removal from the National Register. The Hawai‘i Department of Transportation (HDOT) Harbors Division initiated the application for the ship’s removal with a case that the qualities that made it eligible for listing are no longer present based on an evaluation of the ship’s physical condition.

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Australia Finds Shipwreck of MV Noongah, 55 Years After Tragic Loss

Posted on by July 25, 2024

The wreckage of the MV Noongah, dubbed “one of the nation’s worst post-war maritime disasters” has been discovered off the coast of Australia’s New South Wales 55 years after it sank in heavy weather with the loss of 21 of its crew. There were only 5 survivors. Of the 21 who died, only one body was recovered.

The 71m (233ft) freighter was carrying a cargo of steel off Smoky Cape, New South Wales when it sank on August 25, 1969, sparking one of the biggest maritime searches in Australian history.

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Video of Humpback Capsizing Fishing Boat Off the New Hampshire Coast

Posted on by July 24, 2024

A humpback whale that appeared to be lunge feeding breached the water and landed on a recreational boat near Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on Tuesday, capsizing the vessel and tossing two occupants into the water, the United States Coast Guard said.

The New York Times reports that the Northern New England sector of the Coast Guard received a mayday call for a 23-foot boat that had capsized when a whale shot up from underneath the boat and flopped onto it, about half a mile east of Odiorne Point State Park.

The dramatic flip was caught on video by Colin Yager, 16, who was out fishing on another boat nearby, according to WHDH in Boston. He sped over to rescue the two boaters in the water, neither of whom were injured. The whale also appeared to be uninjured, the Coast Guard said.

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Brazilian Sharks Test Positive For Cocaine

Posted on by July 23, 2024

Graphic: D Ross Robertson

Have you heard of cocaine bear? Well, meet cocaine sharks. Sharks living off the coast of Brazil have tested positive for cocaine, according to new research, the first time that the drug has been detected in free-ranging sharks.

Scientists tested 13 Brazilian sharpnose sharks in the waters off the city of Rio de Janeiro and found cocaine present in both the liver and muscle tissue of all 13 specimens, according to a paper by researchers at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Brazil sent to CNN on Tuesday.

The species was chosen due to its small size and the fact that it lives in a small area of coastal waters, where it is exposed to significant contaminant discharges for its entire life cycle, according to the study.

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Scott & Shackleton’s Antarctic Ship Discovery Now Has a “Digital Twin”

Posted on by July 22, 2024

RRS Discovery is a barque-rigged auxiliary steamship built for Antarctic research. She was the last traditional wooden three-masted ship to be built in the United Kingdom. Her first mission was the British National Antarctic Expedition, carrying Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton on their first, and highly successful, journey to the Antarctic, known as the Discovery Expedition.

The aptly named Discovery is now a museum ship in Dundee, Scotland, the port where she was built in 1901. After a storied and arduous career spanning 123 years, it is remarkable that the ship has survived.

Now, the historic ship has a brand new “digital twin.” Using state-of-the-art technology, a team led by researchers at the University of Southampton has created a highly accurate 3D representation of RRS Discovery. The new “digital twin” provides new insights into how the ship was built and used while also informing ongoing restoration work on the original vessel.

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Mission Underway to Map Titanic and Wreck Site Using Cutting Edge Tech

Posted on by July 19, 2024

Photo: NOAA/Institute for Exploration/University of Rhode Island

Just over a year after the ill-fated Titan expedition to the Titanic killed five people, another expedition down to one of the most famous shipwrecks in the world is underway. Using remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), a team of imaging experts, scientists, and historians plans to get updated images of the Titanic that will be used to make a 3D model of the ship. RMS Titanic Inc. – the only firm with salvage rights to the wreck – will carry out the mission.

This is RMS Titanic, Inc.’s first expedition to the wreck site since 2010. The expedition will utilize cutting-edge technology to focus on imaging and high-resolution photography of the site to preserve the Titanic’s legacy for future generations and scientific study. ROVs will survey the wreck site and debris field. The images captured will reveal important new insights into the condition of the site, areas, and artifacts at risk, and contribute to ongoing conservation efforts and educational initiatives already underway.

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Houthis Release Video of Sea Drones Striking Tanker Chios Lion in the Red Sea

Posted on by July 17, 2024

Yemeni Houthi rebels have released a video of an attack they claim to have been carried out by a sea drone on an oil tanker in the Red Sea. The footage shows a small vessel approaching, then colliding with the ship’s port side, resulting in a large explosion. 

BBC has confirmed that the tanker seen in the video is the Chios Lion. The attack occurred on July 15, 100 nautical miles northwest of Yemen’s port of Hodeidah. The attack is reported to have inflicted minor damage to the Chios Lion. The tanker’s crew was not injured in the attack.

Satellite images revealed that an oil slick between 40-200 km may have resulted from the attack.

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Remains of Two Sailors Found in Inflatable Washes Ashore on Sable Island, Nova Scotia

Posted on by July 15, 2024

Last week, a 10-foot inflatable boat with two bodies on board was discovered washed ashore on Sable Island, Nova Scotia. The remains are believed to be of Brett Clibbery, 70, and Sarah Packwood, 60, from British Columbia, who were reported missing on June 18.  Nova Scotia’s medical examiner service continues to work to positively identify the bodies,  police said, but next of kin have been notified.

The CBC reports that the inflatable boat found on Sable Island, about 290 kilometers southeast of Halifax, is believed to have been from a GibSea 42 ft sailboat named Theros.

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