Bouvet (Bouvetøya) island, the world's most remote island

Visualization of Bouvet island with the GeoGarage platform (NHS nautical raster chart)

This secluded patch of land is the world’s most remote island, with its closest neighbour the Princess Astrid Coast of Queen Maud Land, Antarctica which is 1,100 miles to the south.
A protected nature reserve, Bouvet Island is uninhabited but is officially a dependent territory of Norway.  

 

 

Map of the expedition of Jean-Baptiste Bouvet de Lozier, during which he discovered Bouvet Island January 1, 1739. 

The French title of this new map reads: "Map of the southern lands between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Antarctic Pole, where one sees the New discoveries made in 1739 south of Cape of Good Hope by orders of the (French) East-India Company

 

Several other sailors from other nations set sail for the island and in 1825 a British crew claimed it for Blighty.
George Norris, master of the Spritely vessel, landed on the icy outpost and named it Liverpool Island.
However, in 1928 it was claimed by a Norwegian crew led by Harald Horntvedt sparking a diplomatic row between Britain and its Scandinavian neighbour.
Likewise the lack of harbour meant by 1929, Britain renounced its claim.

 

 

 The unidentified whaler or ship’s lifeboat found abandoned on Bouvet Island on 2 April 1964

(see Links) 

In 1971, the island was named as an official protected nature reserve.

However, the harsh weather conditions means there is very little wildlife on the island.

In fact, the only non-plant life is fungi and types of moss and liverworts.

However, there are plenty of penguins on the island as well as seals.

Several types of whale and dolphins also pass around Bouvet.

 

Links :

• AtlasObscura : Bouvet Island
• NASA : A Thousand Miles from Nowhere
• IEEE : The Most Remote Island in the World Is Home to Seals, Seabirds, and an Internet Top-Level Domain 
• Life in Norway : Bouvet Island: The World’s Most Remote Island
• ABCnews : No-one lives on Bouvet Island but there are a dozen Australian bank accounts linked to it 
• BBC : Climate secrets of the world's most remote island
• DailyMail : Wrapped in mystery and covered almost entirely by a glacier could this be the ultimate coronavirus hideaway? Welcome to the world's most remote island, which lies a staggering 1,600 miles away from the nearest inhabited land
• Norwagian Offshore Directorate : Continental shelf’s extent outside Bouvet Island clarified 
• Historic mystery : Abandoned Lifeboat on Bouvet Island: Mystery Solved!   / An abandoned lifeboat at world’s end

Croatia (HHI)layer update in the GeoGarage platform

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Liftoff for the Norwegian satellites that will provide broadband to circumpolar Arctic

 

The two new satellites developed by Space Norway will provide broadband communication to the whole Arctic. Illustration: Space Norway

 

From ArcticToday by Atle Staalesen, The Independant Barents Observer  

 

The two satellites that are up for launch by Elon Musk’s SpaceX will open a new era for broadband communication across the Arctic.

It will benefit the growing number of operators in the region, including allied defense forces.

“With these satellites Norway gets control over strategically important communication services in an area that until now had been without broadband coverage,” Norway’s Defense Minister Bjørn Arild Gram says in a comment.
“It will strengthen Norwegian security and national control,” he underlines.

Until now, there has been little or no broadband connection beyond 75° North, and air traffic, shippers and expeditions have depended on one-way voice link or Iridium satellite phone.

The new broadband connection will benefit aircraft, research vessels, fishing vessels, cruise ships, the Coast Guard, expeditions and other operators in the Arctic, the Norwegian Ministry of Defense informs.

Among the prime beneficiaries will be Norway’s Armed Forces and NATO allies.

“The defense forces will now get access to crucial communications capacities, which will be important for cooperation with allied forces in the North,” Minister Gram explains.

The two satellites that have been under development for the past five years will be launched in mid-July. They will be launched with a Falcon-9 reusable launch carrier at the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The new broadband communication is expected to be in operation from late fall this year.

Norway is making major investments in space tech and intends to play a key role in the future development of space.

“Norway’s unique geographical location, our competence and capacity within development and launch of satellites, as well as downloading of satellite data, gives Norway a comparative advantage in cooperation with the USA, EU and other allies,” Bjørn Arild Gram argues.

The Norwegian satellite project is run by state-owned company Space Norway and its HEOSAT subsidiary. 

The project is named the Arctic Satellite Broadband Mission (ASBM) and is based on a contract with Northrop Grumman Space Systems. 

The latter will build the two satellites that are based on the GEOstar 3 platform.

According to Space Norway, the satellite payloads will include X-band for the Norwegian Armed Force, Ka-band for Viasat and a payload for the US military. 

One of the satellites will include also a radiation monitoring instrument that is to gather information about the radiation environment in the satellite orbits.

Links :

• SatNews : SpaceX to launch Northrop Gumman’s Arctic Satellite Broadband Mission for Space Norway

How to catch a Russian submarine

Submarine crews of around 130 people share four sinks and three toilets, with little to no contact with the outside world - 'it's challenging', admits Captain Ryan Ramsey 

Credit: John Clews/Crown Copyright

From The Telegraph by Dominic Nicholls

A Navy frigate commander and a British submarine captain on playing cat and mouse in a ‘little bubble of GCHQ’

When a torpedo starts coming straight at you, there’s only one thing a submarine crew can do – snap into “full evasion” mode.
Captain Ryan Ramsey issues swift orders.
His crew responds immediately, twisting the Royal Navy’s Trafalgar-class submarine to manoeuvre the boat beneath the waves in an effort to shake off the weapon bearing down fast on their position.

It would, though, take a miracle for a submarine of nearly 6,000 tons to outrun a torpedo.
And that miracle never comes.
The torpedo smashes into the fin, the large central structure on the submarine sometimes called the conning tower.
As it hits the boat, a loud bang reverberates hard through the hull, a high-strength steel alloy designed to withstand the extreme pressure experienced at the submarine’s maximum – and classified – diving depth.

It is lucky, then, that it is only an exercise, and that the Dutch torpedo has not been fitted with an explosive warhead.
The depth setting on the torpedo has been accidentally but incorrectly adjusted, meaning that the weapon should, on this particular exercise, never have been able to go deep enough to see the British submarine lurking below.

Nevertheless, the incident “focused the mind,” says Ramsey, who has now retired.

Ramsey was in the submarine service for 23 years.
For three of those, he was captain of the fast-attack HMS Turbulent, and deployed in a “cat and mouse” game of anti-submarine warfare.

It quickly becomes apparent that before we even talk about Russian submarine commanders (five of which Ramsey met at a function in 2009: “I learned so much in that vodka session that I applied later on”) the most challenging aspect of their work was the sea itself.

 

Commander Ramsey was in the submarine service for 23 years, three of those as captain of the fast-attack HMS Turbulent

Credit: South West News Service

“I always found it amazing that when we took a submarine off on operations, we were going to take the most complex platform that the British military owns into something that’s less explored than space,” Ramsey says.

Tom Sharpe, a retired Royal Navy commander with 20 years service at sea – on the surface – agrees.
“When you let go all lines and sail, you’re on operations irrespective of whether the enemy is present,” says Sharpe, whose tenure included command of an anti-submarine frigate.
“You’re in harm’s way from forces that far exceed anything an enemy can throw at you.
If you end up in it, your chances of survival diminish really, really quickly.”

And that’s just on the outside.
Inside the vessel, whether above or below the surface, conditions are equally harsh.
Submariners work a six-hours on, six-hours off shift pattern.
“That’s relentless in itself,” Ramsey says.
“You’re not getting a full night’s sleep, you might get a maximum of four hours at a time.”

“You can sustain this almost indefinitely but it’s not much fun,” Sharpe adds.
“Before long, it feels more like existing than living.”

The submarine crew of around 130 people share four sinks and three toilets.
“It’s challenging,” Ramsey observes, in his typically understated fashion.

“You’ve got a load of people in a steel tube and no contact with the outside world.
You receive a telegram maybe once a week, of 150 words, from your family.
You can’t speak to them.
You can’t pass messages to them.
Occasionally there’ll be friction on board.
People have arguments.
The important bit is to let those arguments play out because otherwise tensions build.
If they overstep, then you intervene.”

It sounds like a combustible environment.
So why do countries invest so much time and money into sub-surface warfare?
“Nations can exercise political intent using under-sea assets effectively,” Ramsey says.
“They can threaten, they can spy, they can gather intelligence.
They can do all kinds of things.”

He says submarines should be thought of less as metal cigar tubes trying to find other metal cigar tubes and more as “little bubbles of GCHQ”.

 

HMS Turbulent returns to Devonport Plymouth in 2003 after serving in the second Gulf War 

Credit: Barry Batchelor/Pa

“Submarines are the first line and last line of defence for the United Kingdom.
The last line of defence is obviously the strategic ballistic missile submarines with the Trident D5 [nuclear missiles].
But the first line of defence is intelligence gathering.
And that’s going to places in the world to gather intelligence and assess future capability to make sure that we’re ready to defend against it.”

Of course, there are many countries trying to do the same to Britain.
Finding hostile submarines is a team sport.

He says for the surface fleet, the most important concern is to stay outside an enemy submarine’s torpedo range of “high single digit miles”, adding: “If you’re outside of that you can do whatever you like as a ship.”

But he sounds a note of caution: “If you’re a single frigate against a single submarine, you’re going to be in trouble.
There are no absolutes in war fighting, there are so many variables in the business of anti-submarine warfare, but a singleton frigate against a submarine? It’s advantage to the submarine every time.”

Hunting Russian submarines starts with intelligence gathering.
Through satellite imagery and other sources, the British military would usually know when a Russian boat has deployed from its home base of Murmansk in the Russian arctic region.
Such knowledge would be highly classified and not shared widely around the Nato alliance.

Underwater sensors located on the seafloor in the “Greenland-Iceland-UK gap” would send a silent alert back to headquarters when a Russian vessel crossed into the high North Atlantic.

Long-range patrol planes, such as the RAF’s P-8 Poseidon multi-role maritime patrol aircraft, which is equipped with sensors and weapons systems for anti-submarine and surface warfare, would refine the search, perhaps aided by a friendly submarine.

After that, a close-in search would be conducted by frigates using towed-array sonars trailing behind the ship, dipping deep into the ocean to listen for the tell-tale sounds of man-made technology beneath the waves.
The ships would send out “pings”, basically a sound that would hopefully reach an enemy submarine and be reflected back.

“You’re giving away your position but in this case it doesn’t matter,” Sharpe says.
“As long as you’re outside their weapon range you are safe.”

However, “finding a well-run nuclear submarine on passive only [not emitting any noise] is a game probably only for another well-run submarine, not frigates,” he concedes.

Only when satisfied the Russian vessel had been found would the frigate’s commanding officer launch the on-board Merlin helicopter to locate the submarine and, if ordered, launch a weapon.
In the case of the Royal Navy helicopters this would be a Sting Ray torpedo with its sophisticated acoustic homing system and 45kg explosive charge, which is powerful enough to punch through the double hulls of modern submarines.

Sound can travel vast distances underwater and a frigate’s variable depth sonar will, in the right conditions, pick up noise from hundreds of miles away.
Exactly how far sound will travel underwater is governed by a number of factors.

Commanders above and below the surface are aided by highly sophisticated systems to construct mental models of the sea, where depth, temperature, salinity and distance from land all combine to form “layers” in the water.
Sonar pings can bounce off these layers in the right conditions, meaning submarines can hide below – potentially close to ships, but utterly unseen.
Submarine captains have to use their judgment to position their boat correctly in the layers to hunt or hide.

Grueling ‘Perisher’ course

Ramsey trained British and American would-be commanding officers on the Royal Navy’s gruelling “Perisher” course.
This unforgiving final hurdle, that tests future submarine commanders in every aspect of their work before they can be appointed, has just a 60 per cent pass rate.
Success or failure is a very human construct, Ramsey says.

“Ego has a huge part to play in this.
You see some captains that have massive egos that push the limits way beyond where they should do.

“We would get into contact with the enemy and start trailing them [but] we need to tell somebody so they can position other forces.
But breaking off to go back up to periscope depth to transmit, to tell somebody, means you lose the tactical advantage immediately.

“I always found that to be the real challenge.
How far do we push this before we pull out and say, ‘right, he’s going in this direction, you need to put other forces in to intercept’?

“Anti-submarine warfare is by far the biggest game of chess that you could ever participate in.

“I describe it as being in a really dark room where you’ve got a knife, the other guy’s got a knife, you can’t hear him and he can’t hear you, but you’re looking round, hoping, waiting for the person to make the first sound so you can get in there and deal with them.”

Has Ramsey been in contact with Russian submarines? “I’ve been in contact with many submarines in my time,” he replies cryptically.
But being detected by an enemy submarine is “a different game,” he says.

“You’re no longer in tactical control.
You need to work out how you’re going to evade, get out of there, and come back another time.
You don’t know whether they’re going to fire weapons or not.
You don’t know what their rules of engagement are; it’s not like we’ve spoken to them before we started this.
We have no idea what their rules of engagement are, we only know what ours are.
It’s exceptionally tense.”

Sharpe agrees: “Anti-submarine warfare is a complex and confusing business and the captain who can impose order on that the quickest is the one that inevitably ends up winning.”

Links :

• CBS : Canada wants 12 new submarines to bolster Arctic defense as NATO watches Russia and China move in
• Business Insider : What US sub-hunter planes learned by watching Russian sub near Florida
  
  

Lessons learned from the subsea project to raise Shackleton’s Endurance

The Endurance sank in 1915 after being crushed in the ice

(Credit: © Royal Geographical Society-IBG)

From APM

 

Nico Vincent was Subsea Project Manager of the Endurance22 expedition.
On 5 March 2022, his team found the wreck of Endurance, Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship, which sank off the coast of Antarctica 107 years ago.

In July, Vincent sat down with APM Podcast host Emma De Vita (Editor, Project journal) to explain how the project team used autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to find the shipwreck, one of the most complex subsea projects ever undertaken.

Vincent has spent 30 years recovering deep-sea wrecks and shared his project management insights on what it takes to prepare for a once-in-a-lifetime project, how it feels to see such a piece of history and the lessons he took away from the successful project.
Below is an edited extract from his interview.

APM Podcast: To start with, could you give us an overview of the project?

Nico Vincent: The purpose of Endurance22 was to discover the wreck of Endurance and then to deliver a full survey of the wreck to allow scientific analysis.
The wreck is in the Weddell Sea; there is a lot of sea ice in this area and it is quite unpredictable.
The reason Endurance was so difficult to find was not because she was really lost, but because access to the area is so complicated.
As the wreck is protected by the Antarctic Treaty, we were forbidden to touch anything, so we needed to produce a high-resolution survey of the wreck to allow scientists and archaeologists to produce a scientific report.

 

Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust and Esther Horvath

Tell us about your role.

NV: The [Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust] asked the expedition leader to lead above the surface and me to drive all operations under the sea.
However, to run the operation I was obliged to control surface support as well, including navigation, the helicopter flight plan and the ice camp.
The project schedule for me started in February 2019, when the previous expedition lost its AUV on site and I was immediately contacted to build a new solution.
The first step was to launch the manufacturing of the Sabertooth AUVs.

Tell us more about Sabertooth.

NV: Sabertooth is a vehicle which is able to reach 3,000m.
It’s an AUV manufactured by Saab in Sweden, and the main reason why we choose that vehicle is because it’s quite versatile.
Usually, this kind of vehicle is flying fully autonomous underwater, but for this project we asked to use a tethered one.
This is a lesson learned from 2019, which was to keep permanent control and anticipate the need for an emergency ascent in an incident.
That’s really a game changer on the ice.

For such a complex and unique project, was it important to come with an open mind, to find creative solutions and be innovative?

NV: Absolutely.
I spent a year building procedures, a scope of work, a task plan, server planning, deployment on ice, helicopter flight plans, time computing schedules.
The reason why I was on board is because we were all open that nothing would run as expected.
The environmental conditions on site are so complicated that you cannot anticipate all scenarios.
Usually in the subsea industry the project manager stays in the office.
The complexity of the variables that we faced created the obligation that I be on board.

 

Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust and Nick Birtwistleorvath

What kind of skills did you need on team for this kind of project?

NV: Usually in the subsea industry, all the skills or expertise are quite disconnected from each other.
People have a very important task and they do not look at what others are doing.
When you are doing a project like Endurance22, the opposite needs to be true.
People must have very strong connections with each other.
The leadership may switch from one person to another according to expertise.
That means that your boss in the morning, because you are driving an AUV, can become your support in the afternoon, because you are doing electronics.
That is something that allows you to build a very strong relationship between people.

What was it like to work at such close quarters and under such pressure?

NV: The advantage when you work with recurrent people is that you know them.
Being in a difficult constraint, all living together during months and months, is something normal for us, because we do that all year.
But for Endurance22, in addition, we were on an icebreaker and we were in a polar area, which is quite unusual for us.
But life on board is something we are ready for.
We run a watch of 12 hours on, 12 hours off, for example.
So the full team is organised to work 12 hours per day.
On Endurance22 most of the guys did huge overtime, not only because we faced issues, but because they love what they do.
If you are able to work on something that is so exciting and attractive, people respond on their own, especially if they like each other.

Ernest Shackleton's lost ship, Endurance, has been found after 107 years.

This 4k footage shows the preserved vessel 3008 metres below the ocean surface.

The ship was discovered just four miles south of the location recorded at the time by ship's captain, Frank Worsley.

What have been the highs and the lows of working on Endurance22?
 
NV: Highs? The discovery.
Lows are a very long list [laughs].
Each dive was a stressful time.
You have to keep in mind that the previous team lost another vehicle after two dives.
So my goal was not only to find Endurance, but to come back with my vehicle.
We had eight emergency ascents over 32 dives.
But seeing the vehicle back on deck after the last dive with the full scope accomplished was an extremely good time.
The team faced the worst conditions.
We had -22°C with 35 knots of wind, which is equivalent to -40°C.
The equipment was freezing on deck; the people were absolutely freezing on deck.
They never said anything.
They accomplished a huge task and I am very proud of them.

Listen to the full interview with Nico Vincent here or search ‘APM Podcast’ on your preferred podcast app.

Links :

• Maritime Executive :  UK Seeks to Expand Protections for the Wreck of Shackleton's Endurance
• GeoGarage blog : Endurance: Shackleton's lost ship is found in Antarctic / Will anyone ever find Shackleton's lost ship? / Shackleton's Endurance: Modern star maps hint at famous ... / Explorer Shackleton's last ship found on ocean floor / Antarctic expedition to renew search for Shackleton's Extraordinary 1915 photos from Ernest Shackleton's disastrous ... / Antarctic Weddell expedition targets Shackleton's lost ship / Walking in Shackleton's footsteps / Ernest Shackleton voyage to be retraced by modern-day ... / Shackleton Death or Glory - Rough Seas / 11 of History's most famous sea voyages / Henry Worsley's journey wasn't foolhardy / Scott and Shackleton logbooks prove Antarctic sea ice is ... /