Sunday, November 24, 2024

Netherlands (NLHO) layer based on rasterized ENC update in the GeoGarage platform

 
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I sailed in a North Sea winter stom

Making ready to depart, knowing there is a storm outside, is a gutwrenching feeling as you dont know what to expect.
I guess that is the description of fear, not knowing.
I reconed conditions would be within limits.
Februry I set out in what turned out to be my most challenging North Sea crossing by far.
Join this ride across these dangerous oceans from Shetland to Norway.
In following seas, the waves only grew bigger and bigger as I came closer to Norway.
from Erik Aanderaa, viking of the high seas

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Saturday, November 23, 2024

Exceptional footage of chaunacops and dumbo octopus in Palau | Nautilus Live


While diving on an Unnamed Seamount West of Babeldaob near the Palau National Marine Sanctuary, ROV Hercules happened upon two gorgeous deep sea creatures.
Shoutout to our operations team for these amazing shots of fan-favorite critters.
We start with what might be our best Chaunacops footage yet with clear views of this anglerfish’s famous lure.
Also called the frogfish or coffinfish, we often spot Chaunacops sp., but never with quite this much detail.
Next is an extra-leggy dumbo octopus (Cirroteuthis)- a deep sea cephalopod known for its adorable ear-like fins.
Both of these benthic animals rewarded our Corps of Exploration by hanging around long enough to allow us to gather great video footage and remind us of the beauty and biodiversity of Palau’s waters.
The NA168 Lebuu’s Voyage expedition to explore the deep sea inside and around the Palau National Marine Sanctuary was conducted in partnership with the Palau International Coral Reef Center and funded by NOAA Ocean Exploration via the Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute.
It was named Lebuu’s Voyage by Palauan stakeholders as part of a strategic effort to advance traditional knowledge and best practices in tandem with scientific understanding.
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Friday, November 22, 2024

How two brothers went from growing up on a sailboat to making underwater military vehicles

Image: VATN Systems

From Techcrunch by Margaux MacColl 
 
Vatn Systems founders Nelson and Freddie Mills spent their childhood cruising over turquoise waters, doing their homework on a sailboat off the coast of Caribbean islands.
While their surroundings were idyllic, their vessel of choice was decidedly not.
“The first boat I remember, I think our parents bought it for like five, ten grand,” Freddie said.
“It didn’t have refrigeration. It was leaky.”

But it turns out an unreliable ship is a great place to raise future engineers.
The brothers, who spent several months of each year on a sailboat, would occasionally put down their homework and pick up a wrench, helping their father jerry-rig mechanical solutions.
“We didn’t have enough money to rebuild an engine, so my dad and I and Nelson, we just figured it out,” Freddie said.


After spending years on the water, the brothers have now turned their ambitions to just below the ocean’s surface.
Last year, the two paired up with engineer Geoff Manchester and Dan Hendrix, a former special forces dive team officer, to found Vatn Systems, a startup producing autonomous underwater vehicles primarily for defense uses.
On Tuesday, the Portsmouth, Rhode Island-based company announced a $13 million seed round led by DYNE Ventures and with participation from Lockheed Martin Ventures, RTX Ventures, In-Q-Tel and others.
The round brings the startup’s total funding to $16.5 million.

The company’s vehicles — the first prototype is about fifty pounds — can swim within the top 300 meters of water and can carry weapons like torpedoes.
The vehicles have other uses as well, like passing messages between ships in areas where signals are blocked by adversaries.
To do so, a string of Vatn vehicles autonomously get into position and send data from down the line of drones to a ship, with the communication happening out of enemy sightline.
“Our ultimate goal is to become an underwater autonomy prime,” Nelson said. 
 

Vatn Systems Cofounders Freddie And Nelson Mills 
 
Vatn also plans to capitalize on the Department of Defense’s current obsession: swarming technology, meaning a large group of drones that a single military officer can operate at once.
While there are plenty of startups building aerial drone swarms, Vatn wants to be the government’s answer for underwater swarms.
Right now, a single user can operate about 10 Vatn vehicles.
“Eventually it’ll be like hundreds,” Nelson said.


Vatn will face well-capitalized competition.
Defense juggernaut Northrop Grumman has built its own underwater vehicle prototype, Manta Ray, and the Pentagon selected defense startup Anduril to continue producing its own autonomous underwater device.
Nelson argued that Vatn aims to make its vehicles less expensive and easier to mass-produce than competitors.

The brothers have a long road ahead, expanding their 18-person team and going to market in 2025.
But, by setting up shop right on Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay, the pair has ensured they will never stray too far from their seafaring roots.
“I’m staring at my sailboat right now,” Freddie said with a smile, looking onto the dock beside Vatn’s office.

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Thursday, November 21, 2024

Baltic subsea cable cuts feared to be act of ‘hybrid warfare’



From Total Telecom by Harry Baldock
 
The governments of Germany and Finland fear the damage is the result of deliberate sabotage
A pair of submarine cables in the Baltic sea were severed this week in a move European governments fear is the result of deliberate sabotage by malicious actors.

On Sunday morning, the 218km BCS East-West Interlink cable, which connects Gotland, Sweden, and Lithuania, was damaged and taken offline.
A spokesperson for Arelion, which owns and operates the BCS East-West Interlink, described the damage to as “not partial damage, it’s full damage”.
 
The C-Lion1 submarine telecommunications cable is being laid to the bottom of the Baltic Sea by cable ship Ile de Brehat on the shore of Helsinki, Finland on October 12, 2015. 
Lehtikuva/Heikki Saukkomaa/via REUTERS/File Photo
 
The following day, the 1,200km C-lion-1 cable between Helsinki, Finland, and Rostock, Germany, was also severed.
This cable represents the only direct data connection between Finland and Central Europe.
German and Finnish governments quickly released a joint statement on the damage, saying it must be treated as suspicious.
“We are deeply concerned about the severed undersea cable connecting Finland and Germany in the Baltic Sea.

The fact that such an incident immediately raises suspicions of intentional damage speaks volumes about the volatility of our times,” said the foreign ministers of both countries in a joint statement.
Russia, while not specifically blamed by any of government spokespeople, is the prime suspect for the attack, given the ongoing war in Ukraine and its attempts to destabilise Europe.
“Our European security is not only under threat from Russia‘s war of aggression against Ukraine, but also from hybrid warfare by malicious actors.
Safeguarding our shared critical infrastructure is vital to our security and the resilience of our societies,” continued the joint statement.
“We have to say, without knowing exactly who it came from, that this is a hybrid action. We also have to assume, without knowing it yet, that it was sabotage,” added German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius told reporters today.

According to Finland’s cyber security and telecoms firm Cinia, repairs on the cables should be completed within 15 days
The incident harkens back to 2022, when the Nord Stream gas pipelines were destroyed around the onset of the Russia–Ukraine war.
Investigations are ongoing, but deliberate sabotage is strongly suspected.
However, while submarine cables are no doubt increasingly enticing targets for asymmetrical warfare, it should be remembered that the vast majority of submarine cable incidents are accidental or environmental in nature.
 
 
Last year, two cables and a pipeline in the Gulf of Finland were cut, sparking similar rumours of Russian sabotage.
However, the damage was quickly linked to a Chinese merchant vessel in the area that had (intentionally or not) dragged its anchor through the impacted cables.

Similarly, a pair of submarine cables in the Red Sea were damaged early this year, with blame initially pointed at Yemeni Houthi rebels that were attacking local shipping routes; today the mostly likely explanation appears to be more indirect, with the leading theory suggesting that the cables were cut by the trailing anchor of the Rubymar, a ship that had been hit by a Houthi missile.

Regardless of the cause of the damage to these cable routes, the potential impact on the surrounding data landscape has the potential to be severe.
In areas served by multiple subsea cables, data traffic is typically rerouted quickly and with minimal impact to the end user.
For countries that rely on only a single cable, however, cable damage can leave the entire nation cut off from the global data backbone, leaving them reliant on satellites to communicat.

This is often the case for smaller island nations, for example Tonga, which had its only submarine cable cut off by a volcanic eruptuion in 2022.
As a result, it should come as no surprise that the submarine cable community is using this most recent incident of cable damage to promote the deployment of additional subsea routes, highlighting the growing need for alternative data traffic in an increasingly volatile geopolitical world.

“There have been many stories of high-profile cable cuts this year, highlighting the need for greater network redundancy. We are so reliant on these vital pathways to transport data, that more investment into alternative paths is needed to ensure that when a cable is down, whatever the reason, traffic isn’t impacted,” said Steve Roberts, SVP Network Investment at EXA Infrastructure.
“We are seeing governments and regulators starting to take the security of subsea cables more seriously, and this, coupled with continued investment into new projects, will mean that the impact of outages can be lessened in future.”
 
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Wednesday, November 20, 2024

EU faces criticism over Aegean maps, overlooks Türkiye’s rights

 
From TurkiyeToday

The European Commission, as part of its Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) initiative, has published official maps on its website that exclude Türkiye from the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean regions.

These maps, which outline the maritime areas of EU member states, have sparked attention due to Türkiye’s absence from key areas.

MSP Infographic base map/ European MSP Platform of the EU Commission

The MSP Platform, funded by the European Union and operating under the European Commission, has conducted a study outlining the maritime boundaries of EU member states.
The initiative aims to define the boundaries of European seas, promoting more efficient, secure, and sustainable activities in these maritime regions.

The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) defines Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) as a process through which maritime areas are determined via “a political process.” 
It emphasizes that MSP is “not a goal in itself,” but rather “a practical way” to manage and organize maritime space effectively.

As part of this initiative, the European Commission requested EU member states to submit their Maritime Spatial Planning studies by 2021.
However, some countries have yet to submit their plans.

Controversy surrounds Greek’s plans on EU website

Although Greece has not officially adopted a Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) framework, it has submitted some of its work to the European Commission.
The most recent Greek plans, updated and reviewed by the Commission in April 2024, have been added to the official website.
However, the map displayed on the site contains contentious information regarding maritime boundaries.

The maritime jurisdiction map for Greece, published by the European Commission, not only claims the entire Aegean Sea for Greece but also overlaps with Türkiye’s territorial claims in the Eastern Mediterranean, effectively confining Türkiye to the Gulf of Antalya.

Although the map states, “Greece’s territorial waters extend up to 6 nautical miles and cover an area of approximately 92,095 square kilometers,” it is evident that the map has been drawn according to the 12-nautical-mile rule, granting extensive maritime zones to islands on the opposite side, with the median line drawn using islands as reference points instead of the mainland.

This has resulted in the transfer of sovereignty over islands, islets, and rocks to Athens, even those not formally ceded to Greece.
Notably, the island of Meis (Kastellorizo) has been granted over 40,000 square kilometers of maritime space.

Map of the area of the maritime dispute between Turkey and Greece.
Greece claims Kastellorizo is part of mainland. Turkey claims Kastellorizo are islands. 
 
Alleged maritime boundaries conflict with facts

The international agreements cited while drawing these alleged boundaries do not align with the facts.
The document includes the following information regarding the agreements that determine the boundaries:
  1. The agreement signed between Italy and Türkiye on Jan. 4, 1932, in Ankara, and the accompanying protocol signed on Dec. 28, 1932, also in Ankara, define the maritime boundaries of the southeastern Aegean Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean.
    Greece has since become the successor to Italy’s rights and obligations, exercising full sovereignty over the Dodecanese Islands since 1947.
  2. The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne and the 1926 Athens Protocol defined the maritime boundaries in the region of Thrace on the Balkan Peninsula (up to a point 3 nautical miles from the mouth of the Meric River).
  3. From this point to the northern part of the Dodecanese Islands, the maritime boundaries will follow the median line between the Asian coast and the Greek islands in the region wherever the territorial waters of the two countries meet.
    These maritime boundaries are consistent with traditional and international customary law.
However, the Turkish-Italian Technical Record of Dec. 28, 1932, cited in the document was never signed, ratified in parliaments, or enacted into law.
 
EEZ with the GeoGarage platform

Map leaves Cyprus to Greek Cypriots

Furthermore, the European Commission’s website also features a map showing the so-called maritime areas of the Greek Cypriot administration.
 

This map was compiled from different international sources such as EMODnet, EEA or Marine Regions.
Information obtained from these sources was cross-checked with data from national sources. While compilation was carried out by the European MSP Platform, validation and quality assurance remain the responsibility of the primary data sources.
 

 
In the document, which states that the work regarding Cyprus has been completed, it is noted: 
“The internal waters and territorial waters of Cyprus extend over an area of approximately 13,968 km² up to 12 nautical miles. The Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of Cyprus is approximately 98,240 km².”

The document disregards the equal rights of Turkish Cypriots on the island, while also encroaching on maritime zones of Türkiye, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Egypt.
It is claimed that all these boundaries are in accordance with the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

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Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Scientists discover world’s largest coral—so big it can be seen from space


Divers from National Geographic Pristine Seas measure the world’s largest coral colony in the Solomon Islands.
Photograph by Manu San Félix, National Geographic Pristine Seas

From National Geographic by Melissa Hobson

Exclusive photos reveal a sprawling, 300-year-old coral near Solomon Islands, recently discovered by the National Geographic Society’s Pristine Seas expedition team.

From the surface, it looked like a shipwreck, long forgotten on the seabed.
But when cinematographer Manu San Félix dove down to take a closer look, he was amazed to find a huge, sprawling coral.

That was the moment the National Geographic Society’s Pristine Seas team says they discovered the world’s largest coral colony during an October 2024 expedition in Solomon Islands, an archipelago in the southwest Pacific Ocean.

At 112 by 105 feet, this mega coral is longer than a blue whale, Earth’s largest animal.
It is so enormous that it can be seen from space—yet it was long hidden from view.


Solomon Islands is nation made of six major islands and over 900 small islands in the southwest Pacific Ocean.
The Duff Islands seen here sit to the east and are approximately 300 nautical miles from the newly discovered 'mega coral'.
Photograph by Caitlin Bailey, National Geographic Pristine Seas

The researchers almost missed it too.
Its discovery “was really serendipitous,” says Molly Timmers, the expedition’s lead scientist.
“It was found the night before we were moving to another section.”

The expedition team say this is the largest coral colony ever recorded.
It is made up of nearly a billion genetically identical coral polyps that work together in the colony as if they are one organism.

Although the newly discovered coral is in excellent health, researchers worry about the many threats facing all corals, including global warming and overfishing.
They hope this discovery will inspire more protections for marine habitats in the Solomon Islands. 
 
The largest coral in the world has been found in the Solomon Islands.
The coral, which is visible from space, is three times larger than the previous record-breaker, and is believed to be about 300 years old.
 
Billions of coral polyps

“Finding this mega coral is like discovering the tallest tree on earth,” says Enric Sala, National Geographic Explorer in Residence and founder of Pristine Seas, via email.
“This discovery rekindles our sense of awe and wonder about the ocean.”

The organism is a type of hard coral called Pavona clavus, or shoulder blade coral because it has columns that “kind of looks like shoulders,” says Timmers.


Team members deploy a deep-sea camera from the Argo research vessel.
The 'mega coral' is so large it can be seen from space, but the coral has remained hidden from view just offshore.
Photograph by Caitlin Bailey, National Geographic Pristine Seas


Ronnie Posala, a fisheries officer with the Solomon Islands' government, prepares for a dive.
The newly discovered coral sits 42 feet beneath the ocean's surface and was discovered by chance, just before the research team prepared to survey a different location.
Photograph by Caitlin Bailey, National Geographic Pristine Seas


The newly discovered coral measures 112 by 105 feet.
It's larger than the average blue whale, the largest animal on Earth and is visible from space.
Photograph by Manu San Félix, National Geographic Pristine Seas

It is mostly brown with some patches of yellows, reds, pinks, and blues.

Although this individual might look like a gargantuan boulder, corals are animals related to jellyfish and sea anemones.
Tiny individual organisms called coral polyps come together in their thousands to form a colony, and many different colonies make up a reef.

The Solomon Islands are part of a region called the Coral Triangle because of its astounding diversity of coral.

Hiding in plain sight

The researchers believe there could be nearly one billion polyps in this mammoth colony, which is surrounded by sand.

“It's amazing that they've just found this and nobody really noticed before,” says Helen Findlay, a biological oceanographer at Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the U.K., who wasn’t involved in the expedition.


From above, the newly discovered colony looked like a giant boulder, or even a shipwreck. 
The colony is visible just behind the boat. 
It wasn't until underwater photographer Manu San Félix dove beneath the surface that he realized it was a coral so immense it was difficult to measure.
Photograph by Steve Spence, National Geographic Pristine Seas

Without scuba or snorkeling equipment to reach the 42-foot-deep coral, the local community may have assumed it was just a large rock.
“There's this Western belief that we have seen all of our [coastal] waters,” says Timmers, “but many, many people don't have the masks and snorkels to actually put their heads in the water to see it.”
 
Three centuries old

Researchers usually use a coral’s height to estimate its age.
This 16-foot-high colony is around 300 years old—but it could be even older.

These corals are usually dome-shaped, like a scoop of ice cream, Timmers explains.
“This one is kind of flattened and just goes on,” as if melting, she says.


A diver from the expedition team uses a tape measure to document the coral's size. 
Known scientifically as Pavona clavus, this coral species is nicknamed shoulder coral because it grows knobs reminiscent of shoulder bones.
Photograph by Manu San Félix, National Geographic Pristine Seas

This coral colony is so old it’s lived through major historical events.
It would have seen the first Christian missionaries that began visiting the Solomons during the 19th century.
It was alive during when the Declaration of Independence was signed, the Second World War, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It gives you that wow factor—life really created this and has sustained this massive colony,” says Timmers.
“It's like our ancestors are still there in the water.”

Corals under stress

During its 300-year life, this immense organism has witnessed striking changes to the ocean, such as global warming, overfishing, pollution, urban and agricultural development, and ocean acidification.
When they visited a nearby reef, the expedition team saw that many corals had already died, but it’s not clear how resilient this newly discovered colony could be in the face of these global threats.

Corals are very sensitive to changes in their environment. 
“These things are like the polar bear for the tropics,” says Findlay.


Lead scientist Molly Timmers collects water for eDNA sampling aboard the research vessel.
The new discovery has what Timmers calls a "wow factor." Collecting environmental DNA can tell researchers more about the conditions the coral lives in.
Photograph by Caitlin Bailey, National Geographic Pristine Seas

As more carbon dioxide is produced and absorbed by the ocean, it changes the pH balance of the water, which can stress the corals.
“Our climate crisis is making the ocean warmer and more acidic, and that’s eating corals worldwide, including the mega coral,” says Sala.

Corals use calcium carbonate from the water to create their skeleton so, as the waters become more acidic, it is more difficult for these organisms to grow strong and healthy.

“Just like in people: if you don't have enough calcium or carbonates, you end up with osteoporosis, so your bones start to degrade, and they can get fragile,” says Findlay.
“The same can be true for corals if they don't have the right conditions.”


Hope for reefs

With corals around the world being affected by bleaching—77 percent of coral reef areas were subjected to high enough temperatures to cause bleaching between 2023 and 2024— finding such an enormous individual colony still in good health offers hope that corals can be resilient enough to survive the climate crisis.

“You have this life pillar that’s still there,” says Timmers.
“It gives you this awe, this hope. Just seeing how big it is—the mega coral—and its survival in an area that wasn’t as healthy.”

Timmers believes the coral’s location—in deeper, cooler waters and protected by a slope and shelf—may be key to its good health.
It “is really in an ideal spot,” she says.


Tiny coral polyps form on coral colonies. 
Their numbers reach the thousands, but the Pristine Seas expedition team thinks there are about one billion polyps in this colony.
Photograph by Manu San Félix, National Geographic Pristine Seas


Pavona clavus coral colonies are usually dome-shaped, similar to a scoop of ice cream.
But this colony is flat and stretched over a long distance.
By measuring its height, 16 feet, scientists think the coral is about 300 years old.
Photograph by Manu San Félix, National Geographic Pristine Seas


The Solomon Islands sit in a region of the Pacific Ocean known as Coral Triangle for its astounding diversity of coral.
Many of the world's corals now face threats from oceans becoming warmer and more acidic, but this coral sits in a deep, cool pocket of water that may be protecting it from these changes.
Photograph by Manu San Félix, National Geographic Pristine Seas

The community is hoping the discovery could help their efforts to bring official protections to their waters.
In the Solomon Islands, waters are customary, “meaning they're owned by the local community,” says Timmers.
They have unofficially protected these waters for around 14 years, and have protection at the provincial level, but want national support, she explains.

For Sala, the discovery of this mega coral reinforces the sense of urgency to protect and restore the world’s wild places.

Global warming of more than 1.5 °C could be catastrophic for coral reefs.
Phasing out fossil fuels and protecting 30 percent of the ocean is vital, he says.
Currently, just 8.4 percent of the ocean is protected by government regulations.

In the wake of environmental destruction across the planet, seeing something so remarkable made Timmers feel like the coral is crying out: “We're still here. Don't forget about us.”
 
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Monday, November 18, 2024

Imray to stop publishing paper charts

 
Imray layers in the GeoGarage platform
 
From Imray
 
" After more than 200 years of guiding mariners, Imray will begin phasing out its chart publishing operations, marking the end of an era.
This tough decision reflects the shift toward digital navigation, but we’re not going anywhere.
 
We’ll continue supporting sailors with our trusted pilot books, cruising guides, and the popular ‘Explore with Imray’ digital product.
Paper charts will be supported until the end of the 2025 season, so now’s the time to stock up.
We thank our incredible customers and partners for their loyalty. As we chart a new course, our mission to provide reliable navigation resources lives on. "

 
Blueback chart of Cuba 1:1350000 scale from James Imray in 1854
click on the picture to magnify or see Geographicus
Blueback nautical charts began appearing in London in the late 18th century. 
Bluebacks, as they came to be called, were privately published large format nautical charts known for their distinctive blue paper backing.
The backing, a commonly available blue manila paper traditionally used by publishers to warp unbound pamphlets, was adopted as a practical way to reinforce the low-quality paper used by private chart publishers in an effort to cut costs.
The earliest known blueback charts include a 1760 chart issued by Mount and Page, and a 1787 chart issued by Robert Sayer. 
The tradition took off in the early 19th century, when British publishers like John Hamilton Moore, Robert Blachford, James Imray, William Heather, John William Norie, Charles Wilson, David Steel, R. H. Laurie, and John Hobbs, among others, rose to dominate the chart trade. 
Bluebacks became so popular that the convention was embraced by chartmakers outside of England, including Americans Edmund March Blunt and George Eldridge, as well as Scandinavian, French, German, Russian, and Spanish chartmakers.
Blueback charts remained popular until the late 19th century, when government subsidized organizations like the British Admiralty Hydrographic Office and the United States Coast Survey, began issuing their own superior charts on high quality paper that did not require reinforcement.
 
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Battery-powered sea glider could make coastal travel more climate-friendly

 
We asked coastal residents what they most look for in transportation, and the answer was clear: low costs, convenience, and comfort.

From Yale Climate

Vehicles like it could connect cities like New York and Boston.

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a boat … it’s … what is that?

Thalheimer: “A sea glider is an all-electric, battery-powered flying boat.”
Billy Thalheimer is cofounder and CEO of Regent, a company that’s developing a 12-seat seaglider called the Viceroy. 

Regent’s electric seaglider achieved its first series of flights on August 15, 2022 in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island, proving its full ‘float, foil, fly’ mission—making it the first craft to take off from a controlled hydrofoil to wing-borne flight. 
The seaglider technology demonstrator is a quarter-scale prototype for our 12-passenger seaglider, Viceroy. 
The prototype is an unmanned, remotely operated technology demonstrator that was built to prove the transitions for the seaglider’s float, foil, and fly modes of operation. 
The REGENT seaglider, a new category of electric vehicle that operates exclusively over the water, is the first-ever vehicle to successfully utilize three modes of maritime operation—floating, foiling and flying—marking a major step forward in maritime transportation. 
The successful flight demonstration of the quarter-scale, 18-ft wingspan technology demonstrator was the final step in proving the feasibility of seaglider technology. REGENT is now focusing on developing its full-scale, 65-ft wingspan prototype with human-carrying sea trials expected to begin in 2024.
 
It looks similar to a plane. But when operated, it starts out floating on its hull, like a boat. It rises up onto a hydrofoil – a winglike structure that lifts it slightly above the water.
Then in open water, it takes off and cruises on a cushion of air near the water’s surface.

Thalheimer: “And that is that cushion of air that birds are flying on when they fly low over the surface of the water.”


He says sea gliders could be a way to travel quickly between coastal cities, like Boston and New York or LA and San Francisco.

And because they’re powered by electricity, which can be provided by clean energy, they have the potential to be much better for the climate than planes or diesel-powered boats.
 
Float, foil, fly — Watch how seagliders navigate from busy harbors to the open ocean, maneuvering around other vessels and ensuring a smooth, comfortable passenger experience.
 
Regent has completed an operational prototype of the vehicle.
Thalheimer expects to start commercial production within three years and plans to eventually scale up to larger vessels that could carry 100 people or more.


 
So sea gliders could provide an alternative to planes, trains, and automobiles.

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Sunday, November 17, 2024

Rising sea levels in Senegal

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Saturday, November 16, 2024

Great Bubble Barrier: a radical way to reduce plastics in our waters


Every minute, the equivalent of one truck of plastic trash is dumped into the sea.
That’s 1440 trucks every 24 hours or 8 billion kilos per year.
Engineers in Australia and Amsterdam are working to tackle this problem by creating an innovative bubble screen barrier that can capture the plastic, while allowing fish and ships to pass unimpeded.
The bubble barrier is essentially a long, perforated tube which runs diagonally across the river bed and has compressed air pumped through.
As the bubbles from the tube rise upwards, the natural water current helps to push the waste to one side. The first operational bubble barrier has already been built in Amsterdam's canal networks at the end of 2019.
Shini Somara explores whether this could be the next big weapon deployed against the growing problem of plastic pollution in our seas and oceans?
 
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Friday, November 15, 2024

Report details fossil fuel threat to 'Amazon of the seas'


This aerial file picture taken on January 25, 2011, show islands and reefs in Wakatobi archipelago, a thriving marine paradise in Southeast Sulawesi, packing a bewildering abundance of life in the Coral Triangle, a region of rich tropical reefs spanning much of Southeast Asia and almost all of Indonesia.
Exploration for fossil fuels is threatening an ever-expanding swath of protected areas in the Coral Triangle, one of the most biodiverse marine areas in the world, said a report issued by monitoring bodies on October 26, 2024, to coincide with the UN's COP16 summit on biodiversity in Cali, Colombia.
(AFP/Stephen Coates )

From TheJakartaPost by AFP
 
Dubbed the "Amazon of the seas" for its species variety, the Coral Triangle covers over 10 million square kilometers in waters of Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, the Philippines, Timor-Leste and the Solomon Islands.

Fossil fuel exploration is threatening an ever-expanding swath of the Coral Triangle, one of the most biodiverse marine areas in the world, a report said Saturday.
Issued to coincide with the UN's COP16 summit on biodiversity in Colombia, the report warned expansion in oil, gas and liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the Indo-Pacific region was putting at risk marine species and the communities that rely on them.
 


The Coral Triangle, one of Earth’s most biodiverse regions, is being pushed towards its tipping point by expansion of oil, gas and liquefied gas projects
 
Dubbed the "Amazon of the seas" for its species variety, the Coral Triangle covers over 10 million square kilometers in waters of Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, the Philippines, Timor-Leste and the Solomon Islands.

It contains three-quarters of the world’s known coral species, said the report by monitoring bodies including the threat-mapping research project Earth Insight, satellite imaging watchdog SkyTruth, and the Center for Energy, Ecology, and Development, a Filipino think tank.

The triangle is a home to six of the world's seven marine turtle species, and acts as a feeding ground for whales and other marine mammals.
More than 120 million people rely on it for subsistence.
 

 
Yet, oil and gas concessions and production areas overlap with tens of thousands of square kilometers of marine protected areas, said the report.

It noted more than 100 known offshore oil and gas blocks producing in the region.
Another 450 blocks are being explored for future extraction.
"If all blocks were to go into production, about 16 percent of the Coral Triangle would be directly impacted by fossil fuel development," said the report.

It warned fossil fuel expansion will increase tanker traffic and the risk of oil spills.
 
President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. personally conducts an aerial inspection, April 15 2023, on places affected by the oil spill in Oriental Mindoro.
The President inspect the coastlines of the province, alongside with officials of the Philippine Coast Guard and local government of Oriental Mindoro to see the scope of the damage and to implement effectively the appropriate action in regards to the cleaning of waters, and distribution of aid to affected residents.

Since July 2020, satellites have spotted 793 oil slicks in the Coral Triangle, said the report.
Almost all were created by transiting vessels, some by oil infrastructure.
"Cumulatively, all slicks covered an area over 24,000 km2 –- nearly enough oil to cover the land in the Solomon Islands," said the report.
Its authors called for a moratorium on oil, gas, mining, and other industrial activities in environmentally-sensitive areas within the Coral Triangle.

They also urged "leapfrogging the use of LNG as a transition fuel" as the world moves away from coal and gas, and moving directly to clean energy sources instead.

The report called for the triangle to be designated a "particularly sensitive sea area" in need of special protection from shipping.
 The so-called Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework approved two years ago by 196 parties to the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity set 23 targets to "halt and reverse" biodiversity loss by 2030.
It includes ensuring that 30 percent of marine and coastal areas are "effectively conserved and managed," and 30 percent are "under effective restoration.
" A report by Greenpeace Monday said only 8.4 percent of the global ocean enjoys protection to date.
"At the current rate, we won't hit 30 percent protection at sea until the next century," said Greenpeace policy advisor Megan Randles.
The biodiversity summit meant to measure progress towards achieving the UN goals.
 
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Thursday, November 14, 2024

Surfboards and submarines: the secret escape of East Germans to Copenhagen


On his arrival in West Germany, Peter Döbler reconstructed his adventure for a German tabloid.
The incredible story of Peter Döbler, who swam away from the GDR 
“Only the tube of my snorkel was emerging”.

From The Guardian by Philip Oltermann

Tales of Berlin Wall escapes are well known – but those daring East Germans who fled across the ‘invisible border’ into Denmark using kayaks, surfboards or home-built submarines are only now coming to light

In the north-western corner of Bispebjerg cemetery, a leafy graveyard on the outskirts of Copenhagen, lies a plot of land with a secret.
An old rumour has it that it contains the bodies of 12 East German citizens who were mysteriously washed up on Denmark’s coast in the late 1970s.

More than 5,600 East Germans tried to escape the GDR via the Baltic Sea between 1961 and 1989, aiming either for Danish soil some 40km away, or the nearer West German coastline.
Less than 1,000 made it, and scores are believed to have died.
Yet many of their stories remain untold.

Refugees on the Gedser Rev in 1968.
The Danish ship rescued dozens of East Germans in the cold war. Photograph: Niels Gärtig/Jesper Clemmensen
 
As Germany gears up to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, there will be numerous anecdotes about those who jumped over the top or dug tunnels underneath, and commemorations for those who were killed while trying to cross the death strip that divided the capital.

But the tales of those East Germans who tried to flee across the “invisible border” on the Baltic coast – on kayaks, surfboards, lilos or home-built submarines – have mostly vanished into the watery depths.

Only recently has the Baltic sea’s role during the cold war attracted new interest in Germany.
This year’s winner of the German equivalent of the Booker prize, Lutz Seiler, has dedicated an entire chapter chapter of his novel Kruso to the Bispebjerg graveyard mystery.
And the director of Berlin’s Checkpoint Charlie Museum hopes to raise funds for DNA tests on the buried bodies.

The total number of victims of the Berlin Wall is widely known: 138 people died trying to cross the border in the German capital.
Exactly how many people were killed while attempting to pass from one state to the other in the whole of Germany remains far from clear, however.

 
The most extraordinary story ...
GDR escapee Manfred Burmeister with his homebuilt ‘underwater scooter’. 
Photograph: Niels Gartig/Jesper Clemmensen

Two separate Berlin institutions are currently trying to come up with a total figure.
The director of the Museum at Checkpoint Charlie, Alexandra Hildebrandt, keeps a tally started by her late husband Rainer, the museum’s founder, which currently lists 1,720 victims.

A team of academics at Berlin’s Technical University lead by historian Klaus Schröder has since 2012 been trying to come up with a more academically credible total, by comparing records from the east and western side of the Wall, many of which were until recently blocked because of ongoing trials against border staff.
Their project, too, yields a much higher number than previously assumed: out of around five million people who tried to cross the border between 1949 and 1989, it says 1,128 lost their lives in the process.

The vast majority of border victims were male manual labourers under the age of 25, Schröder explains in his office in Berlin Dahlem, “which is ironic given that the GDR styled itself as a workers’ state”.
While many intellectuals or doctors could find ways of leaving the countries by official means, workers who had fallen out with the regime often had no other means of escape than a desperate dash across the border.

Yet even this latest research is unlikely to clear up the Bispebjerg graveyard mystery: researching the human cost of the Baltic border, Schröder said, would have exploded his team’s budget.

On a map, the stretch of water that separated the East German coastline from the West looks deceptively narrow.
The distance between the southernmost tip of Denmark and the coast near Rostock barely measures 40km.

Yet the little patch of sea between East and West Germany by Travemünde was fiercely guarded by watchtowers with radar systems, coastal patrol boats and keen informants in the fishing industry.
According to the Stasi archive’s research centre at Rostock, more than two thirds of escapees, around 4,500, were captured and sent straight back to prison.


Many of those who tried to evade the patrol boats by taking a less direct route were caught out by the elements.
Low salt levels make the water in the Baltic sea light and prone to high waves during bad weather.
The lowest figure for those who drowned at sea is 174.

The around 900 East Germans who managed to successfully escape across the Baltic sea did so thanks to either extraordinary determination or moments of rare ingenuity.
In July 1971, Peter Döbler swam for 24 hours without break to cover the 48km between Kühlungsborn in the GDR and Fehmarn island in West Germany, using weight-loss tablets and chocolate bars as energy boosters.

In November 1986, East Berliners Karsten Klünder and Dirk Deckert entered the waters off Hiddensee on surfing boats with handmade sails.
Separated in the rough sea off the island, Klünder managed to make his way to the Danish island of Møn, while his friend Deckert was rescued by a Danish fishing boat more than 24 hours after leaving East Germany.

Many of the stories of failed and successful escapes have only surfaced in recent years, thanks to the investigative work of Danish journalist Jesper Clemmensen, who interviewed a large number of German refugees and their Danish helpers for his 2012 book Escape Route: Baltic Sea.

One his key sources is Niels Gärtig, a former captain of the Gedser Rev, a lightship stationed about 17km from the East German coast, which served as a de facto extension of the Danish border.
Between 1962 and 1972, Gärtig managed to pull at least 50 East Germans out of the Baltic sea.

“August to October were always the busiest periods for us: the water would still be warm, but the nights would be still be long,” he said.
Once on board, the refugees would be given dry clothes and kept under deck, to hide them from the patrol boats and helicopters that liked to inspect the Gedser Rev up close.
Then Gärtig would radio the local post boat to bring his stowaway to safety, using a pre-agreed codeword in case the Stasi was intercepting his call: “We’ve run out of water.”

Museum ship ...
the plaque on the Gedser Rev in Copenhagen harbour makes no mention of its heroic role during the cold war.
Photograph: Philip Oltermann

His most extraordinary visitor, he recalled, arrived on 10 October 1969.
Engineer Manfred Burmeister had decided to leave East Germany after hearing about the violent crackdown on the Prague Spring in 1968.
But since he worked on a radar factory in Berlin, he knew leaving the GDR over the sea wasn’t as easy as some thought.
He needed to be be able to travel underwater.

Over the coming months, he combined a chimney tube and the motor of an old moped with a propeller from a car’s heating-cooling unit to create a “submarine scooter” that would be able to pull him out to sea while he was breathing through a snorkel.

After a series of test dives in Berlin’s Müggelsee lake, he packed his invention in two suitcases, travelled to the seaside resort of Wustrow and slipped into the water in the early hours of the morning.
When Burmeister reached the Gedser Rev, he made sure the device that had pulled him to freedom was lifted on to the ship before him.

Unlike West Germany, Denmark often played down its role in helping East Germans to flee the GDR.
“The Danish government seemed to be a bit worried about damaging its good trade relations with the GDR,” said Clemmensen.
As a result, the monumental rescue effort played by Danish rescuers has been nearly lost to history.

Decommissioned in 1972, the Gedser Rev now lies in Copenhagen’s Nyhavn harbour as a museum ship.
A plaque on its side tells some of the ship’s adventures, but makes no mentions of its heroic role during the cold war.

 
Lost to history ...
German graves in Bispebjerg cemetery, where it is said GDR refugees may be buried.
Photograph: Philip Oltermann

A visit to Bispebjerg cemetery, a mere 6km up the road, also reveals no further clues.
The north-western corner of the graveyard, so large that it can be accessed by car, may have a section with German war graves, and a plaque that references “594 refugees”, but there is no indication that they were buried any later than 1944.

The main source behind the legend is Erik Jensen, a former harbour master at Klintholm.
In 1992, he told a German journalist that fishermen between Møn and Rügen used to frequently catch the bodies of East German refugees in their nets: “I can remember 12 of them.” Yet Jensen now suffers from dementia and is unavailable for interview.

Bispebjerg’s grave supervisor, Stine Helweg, said she could find no reference to GDR refugees in her records.
Copenhagen police stated it was far more likely that the bodies had been buried in local graveyards on the coast.
Some of the stories may be forever lost in the fog over the Baltic sea.
 
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Wednesday, November 13, 2024

New video shows sharks making an easy meal of spiky sea urchins, shedding light on an undersea mystery

New video shows sharks making an easy meal of spiky sea urchins, shedding light on an undersea mystery

From The Conversation by Jeremy Day

Long-spined sea urchins have emerged as an environmental issue off Australia’s far south coast. Native to temperate waters around New South Wales, the urchins have expanded their range south as oceans warm. There, they devour kelp and invertebrates, leaving barren habitats in their wake.

Lobsters are widely accepted as sea urchins’ key predator. In efforts to control urchin numbers, scientists have been researching this predator-prey relationship. And the latest research by my colleagues and I, released today, delivered an unexpected result.

We set up several cameras outside a lobster den and placed sea urchins in it. We filmed at night for almost a month. When we checked the footage, most sea urchins had been eaten – not by lobsters, but by sharks.

This suggests sharks have been overlooked as predators of sea urchins in NSW. Importantly, sharks seem to very easily consume these large, spiky creatures – sometimes in just a few gulps! Our findings suggest the diversity of predators eating large sea urchins is broader than we thought – and that could prove to be good news for protecting our kelp forests.

A puzzling picture

The waters off Australia’s south-east are warming at almost four times the global average. This has allowed long-spined sea urchins (Centrostephanus rodgersii) to extend their range from NSW into waters off Victoria and Tasmania.

Sea urchins feed on kelp and in their march south, have reduced kelp cover. This has added to pressure on kelp forests, which face many threats.

Scientists have been looking for ways to combat the spread of sea urchins. Ensuring healthy populations of predators is one suggested solution.

Overseas research on different urchin species has focused on predators such as lobsters and large fish. It found kelp cover can be improved by protecting or reinstating these predators. 

 
Sea urchins feed on kelp. Nathan Knott

In NSW, eastern rock lobsters are thought to be important urchin predators. The species has been over-fished in the past but stocks have significantly bounced backin recent years.

But despite this, no meaningful reduction in urchin populations, or increase in kelp growth, has been observed in NSW.

Why not? Could it be that lobsters are not eating urchins in great numbers after all? Certainly, there is little empirical evidence on how often predators eat urchins in the wild.

What’s more, recent research in NSW suggested the influence of lobsters on urchin populations was low, while fish could be more important.

Our project aimed to investigate the situation further.

Eastern rock lobsters are thought to be major urchin predators. Flickr/Richard Ling, CC BY
 
 What we did

We tied 100 urchins to blocks outside a lobster den off Wollongong for 25 nights. This tethering meant the urchins were easily available to predators and stayed within view of our cameras.

Then we set multiple cameras to remotely turn on at sunset and turn off after sunrise each day, to capture nocturnal feeding. We used a red-filtered light to film the experiments because invertebrates don’t like the white light spectrum.

We expected our cameras would capture lobsters eating the urchins. But in fact, the lobsters showed little interest in the urchins and ate just 4% of them. They were often filmed walking straight past urchins in search of other food.

Sharks, however, were very interested in the urchins. Both crested horn sharks (Heterodontus galeatus) and Port Jackson sharks (H. portusjacksonii) entered the den and ate 45% of the urchins.

As the footage below shows, sharks readily handled very large urchins (wider then 12 centimetres) with no hesitation.

Until now, it was thought few or no predators could handle urchins of this size. Larger urchins have longer spines, thicker shells and attach more strongly to the seafloor, making them harder to eat.

But the sharks attacked urchins from their spiny side, showing little regard for their sharp defences. This approach differs from other predators, such as lobstersand wrasses, which often turn urchins over and attack them methodically from their more vulnerable underside.

In fact, some sharks were so eager to eat urchins, they started feeding before the cameras turned on at sunset. This meant we had to film by hand.
Footage captured by the researchers showing crested horn sharks eating sea urchins. Horn sharks generally do not pose a threat to humans.
 
Footage captured by the researchers showing crested horn sharks eating sea urchins.
Horn sharks generally do not pose a threat to humans.
 
A complex food web

Our experiment showed the effect of lobsters on urchins in the wild is less than previously thought. This may explain why efforts to encourage lobster numbers have not helped control urchin numbers.

We also revealed a little-considered urchin predator: sharks.

Lobsters are capable but hesitant predators, whereas sharks seem eager to eat urchins. And the shark species we filmed are abundant, hardy and not not actively fished.

When interpreting these findings, however, a few caveats must be noted.

First, sharks (and lobsters) are not the only animals to prey on urchins. Other predators include bony fishes, and more are likely to be identified in future.

Second, other factors can control urchin numbers, such as storm damage and the influx of fresh water.

And finally, it is unsurprising that we found a key predator when we intentionally searched for it by laying out food. Tethering urchins creates an artificial environment. We don’t know if the results would be replicated in the wild.

And even though we now know some shark species eat sea urchins, we don’t yet know if they can control urchin numbers.

But our research does confirm predators capable of handling large urchins may be more widespread than previously thought.
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