China unveils monster explorer ship with 17,261-mile-range, ice breaking power

China unveils monster explorer ship with 17,261-mile-range, ice breaking power 

China has taken a major leap in deep-sea science and technology with the commissioning of Tansuo 3, its first homegrown multifunctional scientific exploration and cultural relics archaeological ship, commissioned in Hainan Province.

 

From MSN by Christopher McFadden

China’s first-ever, domestically developed deep-sea multi-functional exploration ship has officially entered service.

Called the Tansuo-3 (Exploration-3), the ship has now been commissioned in Sanya City in south China’s tropical island province of Hainan.

She joins China’s existing fleet of other icebreaker ships, including the Xuelong, Xuelong 2, and Jidi, belonging to the Ministry of Natural Resources.

The announcement came on Sunday (Dec 29), and the ship will begin conducting deep-sea research missions in the first half of 2025.

This news now significantly expands China’s manned submersible exploration capabilities. 

 

The ship will now be operated by its new owner, the Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering. According to state news sources, she was jointly designed by researchers from the Sanya Institute, China State Shipbuilding Corp’s Guangzhou Shipyard International Co., and other research entities.
Tansuo-3 is now ready for service

“More than 100 domestic institutes, universities, and enterprises participated in the ship’s research, development, and construction. Designers and engineers developed a lot of new technologies and equipment through the project, according to the Sanya Institute,” the People’s Republic of China State Council said in a press release.

Construction began on the Tansuo-3 in June of 2023 at the Guangzhou shipyard, and the main body was completed in April.

She also completed an eight-day sea trial in late October and returned to her shipyard for final fit-out.

According to reports, the ship will carry a full-ocean-depth Human Occupied Vehicle (HOV) known as Shenhai Yongshi (Deep Sea Warrior) for regular scientific research operations.

This will also enable the Tansuo-3 to conduct deep-sea trials and archaeological studies in the South China Sea and beyond.

The ship also has world-class scientific equipment, such as advanced deep-sea sonar and release systems for crewed and robotic submersibles.

She also carries equipment to perform underwater excavations and recovery.

According to other reports, the ship is hoped to commence manned deep-sea submersible operations in abyssal oceans in the second half of 2025.

The ship is also theoretically capable of deep-sea exploration in various environments, including polar regions, thanks to its for and aft icebreaker features.

 

China unveils monster explorer ship with 17,261-mile-range, ice breaking power

Boosting China’s deep-sea exploration capabilities

The Tansuo-3 measures 104 meters long and has a displacement of 10,000 tons.

She was independently designed and built exclusively using Chinese contractors.

The vessel can reach a top speed of 16 knots (30 kilometers per hour) and has a designed range of 15,000 nautical miles (around 27,780 kilometers).

She has a crew capacity of around 80.

The Tansuo-3 also features a 6-meter by 4.8-meter moon pool (opening at the base of the hull) to ensure scientific exploration operations on floating ice and under challenging maritime conditions.

“The new ship’s deployment is expected to improve the country’s deep-sea scientific exploration efforts, helping scientists better understand the deep-sea ecosystem, geological structures, and distribution of marine resources, according to researchers,” the People’s Republic of China State Council added.

Tansuo-3’s commissioning marks a significant breakthrough in China’s autonomy in developing key core technologies, featuring not only domestically developed equipment but also independently developed key control systems.

 

Links :

• Interesting Engineering : China unveils monster explorer ship with 17,261-mile-range, ice breaking power

Rainbow meeting in the Vendee Globe

Le Grand Sud welcomes you!
Don't be fooled by this beautiful rainbow, from now on the elements will become more hostile and the race more complex.
Guirec Soudee has been waiting for this moment since March 2018.

Back then, he had turned back with Monique aboard Yvinec 1, which wasn't a boat cut out for these conditions.
At the time, he promised himself he would return one day with a boat capable of tackling these Dantean seas.

Today, with the IMOCA Freelance.com, he has done just that, and Guirec is grateful for every moment of it.

 

Guirec is the second fastest dinghy over the last 24 hours (16 knots average speed), just behind King Jean, despite very heavy seas.
He will now have to circumnavigate the Antarctic continent without ever entering the ZEA (Antarctic Exclusion Zone) defined by Vendée Globe race management.
This high-risk ice zone is forbidden on pain of penalties.
In view of the depressions that will now follow one another, the expression “safety first” is the order of the day.
Go Guirec Go!
To find out more about the 40th and 50th, download the Guirec educational kit

 

A perfect rainbow in the South Seas with Thomas Ruyant  (Dec 7th 2024)

Links :

 

Mapfre in the Volvo ocean

 

Dongfeng (Charles Caudrelier) in the Volvo Ocean (photo Jeremy Lecaudey)

Jules Verne trophee : Sodebo Ultim in the Indian Ocean

Jules Verne trophee : Sodebo Ultim 3 filmed by drone by Thomas Coville skipper

currently in the Indian Ocean

 

 

Arcona yacht sinking: couple share how they tried to save their boat after the rudder stock broke

The Swedish-flagged Arcona 460 yacht IdaLina has sunk in the Pacific Ocean.

The disaster occurred when the rudder stock, a crucial part of the boat, failed, punching a large hole in the hull.

 

From Pratical Boat Owners by Kety Stickland

 

Ingmar and Katarina Ravudd tell PBO about the steps they took to save their Arcona yacht after a broken rudder stock punched a hole in the hull, causing the boat to sink

 

Ingmar and Katarina Ravudd were sailing their Arcona yacht, IdaLina from Panama to French Polynesia when a loud bang indicated that not all was well on board.

 

Without warning, the aluminium rudder stock on the Arcona 460 broke; the boat was 200 miles from making landfall in Marquesas, French Polynesia.

 

The Swedish couple last checked the Jeffa spade rudder and bearings in January 2023 while IdaLina was on the hard in Trinidad. 

The boat was antifouled with Coppercoat, but Ingmar said they had followed the instructions from Jeffa, painting epoxy up to 15mm on the aluminium, and using a non-metallic antifouling paint 5cm around the rudder.

 

The Arcona yacht, IdaLina on the first day Ingmar and Katarina sailed her.

Credit: Katarina Ravudd

“I was down below and I didn’t hear the sound. People have asked us if we hit something but I heard no sound at all inside the boat. Ingmar heard a short, sharp sound underneath where he was standing. He called me and said “Look at this, I have no rudder” and he could turn the wheel with a finger.
My first thought was the chain had snapped so I opened up the hatch and the rudder stock was broken immediately below the steering quadrant inside the lazarette. That was not what I expected to see,” explained Katarina.

According to the Arcona website, the Arcona 460 rudder is made of glass fibre with multiaxial roving, and filled with polyurethane foam.

The rudder stock is made of water-resistant aluminium, laminated into the rudder and friction is minimised due to self-aligning roller bearings.

The rudder is also supported axially by ball bearings.

 

Katrina contacted two nearby Swedish boats – Pacific Wind and Yaghan – advising them of their situation.

At the time, they were sailing in 20-knot winds, with occasional squalls gusting 27 knots and 2.5m waves.

 

The broken rudder stock.

Credit: Katarina Ravudd

 

Initially, Ingmar and Katarina decided to rig lines from winches to the rudder to provide steering; at this point, there was no indication that the boat was taking on water.

They had already dropped the boat’s sails and turned off the autopilot.

They also had a Hydrovane self-steering system which could have been used as an emergency rudder.

 

“Our idea was to fix the rudder; to take a line from the winch down through the upper bearings to below the lower quadrant for the autopilot to lift it up and fix it as close as possible to the hull.

As the rudder stock is mounted inside, the movement of the broken upper part of the rudder stock was restricted due to the middle floor made of marine plywood.

Before we were ready it suddenly dropped 10 cm, and unsupported, the rudder stock had much more movement, which caused the lower quadrant to get stuck into the protecting polyester cylinder around the stock, and the force broke the protecting polyester cylinder free from the hull.

It was about 1.5 hours from the moment it broke until the rudder stock dropped down, and that was when the big problem started,” explained Ingmar.

 

The couple removed some of the glassfibre and rubber sealing to gain access to the lower quadrant.

By now, it was clear the Arcona yacht was taking on water; they removed the four bolts that held the quadrant together so they could push down the rudder to try and patch the leak.

 

The Arcona yacht, IdaLina was fitted with a Hydrovane self-steering system.

Credit: Ingmar Ravudd

 

“The glassfibre cylinder [which holds the lower bearings and protects the rudder stock] was totally broken and the aluminium tube of the lower bearing was separated from the other parts.

There were sharp parts from the glassfibre that had broken,” said Katarina.

Initially, they tried to use an inflatable repair kit to plug the hole, but the part in the valve to blow it up was missing. Instead, they used a diver’s surface marker buoy, but sharp plastic punctured it.

“We had to use the sealing equipment we had without being able to inflate the sealing ring. It consists of a stick with a rope tied in the middle that you thread through the hole.

The line passes through the centre of a round flat plastic disc with a clam cleat on top.

It was tightened tightly over the hole.

We pushed the disc down with bridge fenders and other things we had available.

However, the water pressure caused the disc to leak when the stern pumped in the waves,” said Ingmar.

At the same time, the Arcona yacht’s bilge pump and a separate 230V bilge pump were struggling to cope with the rate of water ingress and needed attention; debris including food can labels had clogged them.

Although Ingmar cleared the problem, it became increasingly obvious to both Ingmar and Katarina that they needed to shift their focus from saving the boat to saving themselves.

From the boat initially taking on water, it took 1.5 hours for IdaLina to sink.

“It was hard to say we would not be able to save her, and we would have to save ourselves instead. That was the hardest part,” said Katarina.

 

“I called up Pacific Wind, and I told them, “We will sink; we are taking on water”. 

The water was already 8 inches down below.

"We were never afraid.We were so lucky; apart from the boat sinking all of the circumstances were in our favour. We cut the string between the raft and IdaLina four minutes before she went down and then Pacific Wind came, arriving just as she was sinking.”

 

The Arcona 460, IdaLina just moments before she sank.

Credit: Katarina Ravudd

 

It took 1.5 hours for the Arcona yacht, IdaLina to sink.

Credit: Ingmar Ravudd

 

25 minutes later, Katarina and Ingmar were safely onboard Pacific Wind.

 

As part of their usual cruising plans, the couple already had two emergency grab bags with the boat’s papers, their passports, and emergency gear.

In addition, they packed six extra bags with food, clothing, computers, their mobile phones and water.

 

Reflecting on the experience, Katarina said she would have done things differently.

“In my first call to Yaghan,  who were 12nm ahead of us,  they asked if we wanted assistance and I said no. Today, I would have said yes. I would also make sure I packed our multi-purpose suits and our money with us. We had survival suits and multipurpose suits as we planned to go to Alaska, but in hindsight, we should have taken multi-purpose suits with us as although we spent 25 minutes in the raft, it could have been a lot longer if Pacific Wind had struggled to find us.”

 

A tired Ingmar safely on board Pacific Wind.

Credit: Ingmar Ravudd

 

Ingmar would also equip the boat with a higher capacity pump and ensure there was a watertight bulkhead around the rudder.

 

Arcona is still investigating the sinking.

Other sailors have also not been shy in coming forward with theories and comments on the sinking of the Arcona yacht.

 

“We get a lot of people telling us what we should have done, that it was no problem to sail a boat with a hole in the hull for 200nm,” said Katarina. 

“Often when you think of a hole in your boat, it is a through-hull fitting which has broken and for that, you have lots of plugs and bungs. But in our case, we suddenly had a hole with a 6-inch diameter which is jagged. People have told us we should have dived under the boat to plug the hole but in the conditions we were in, that would have been wishing death.”

 

In an earlier statement, the CEO of Arcona Yachts, Fredrik Malmqvist, said, “At Arcona Yachts, safety is our priority, and we are therefore taking this very seriously.

“We understand from the Arcona 460 owners that the rudder stock was broken, however, we don’t yet know how or why. We are working closely with our suppliers and key people to immediately investigate this serious incident further.

 

Ingmar and Katarina safely in Hiva Oa in the Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia.

Credit: Katarina Ravudd

Ingmar and Katarina are now looking for another boat, although their plan to sail around the world is over.

“Ingmar found me a boat, a First Seascape 24 called Unsinkable which would be perfect,” said Katarina. 

“We are planning to go back to French Polynesia for a few weeks and hopefully next summer we may be able to do Alaska for a few weeks or so, but we are not going to buy a new boat to continue going around the world.”

 

Links :

• PBO : Arcona 460 sinking prompts investigation by Arcona Yachts

Year in review: the impact of geopolitical conflicts on maritime trade in 2024

From Safety4Sea

The year 2024 is likely to be remembered for significant geopolitical conflict and rising tensions between several nations.

As the maritime industry operates on a global scale, it is no surprise that these tensions have had an impact on shipping.

Recent disruptions in global maritime trade have significantly affected key routes such as the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.

These disruptions pose major risks to trade reliability and global supply chains.

 

Seafarers on the front lines

The escalating geopolitical tensions and maritime conflicts of 2024 have placed seafarers at significant risk, transforming critical waterways into active danger zones.

With incidents such as missile strikes on vessels, hijackings, and targeted attacks in regions like the Red Sea and the Black Sea, seafarers are increasingly caught in the crossfire.

These threats not only endanger lives but also create immense psychological stress for crew members, who must navigate volatile waters while fearing for their safety.

The fatal attack on the MV True Confidence in March 2024, which claimed three crew members’ lives, underscores the severity of these risks.

Beyond physical harm, seafarers have also faced prolonged detentions, such as the crew of the MV Galaxy Leader, and the constant anxiety of operating in regions prone to hostilities.

To put the numbers into perspective, the Philippines’ Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) reported that 740 Filipino seafarers had been victims of attacks while navigating the volatile waters of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden up to November 2024.

As these dangers persist, protecting seafarers and ensuring their welfare must become a global priority. Stronger security measures, enhanced mental health support, and robust diplomatic efforts are essential to mitigate risks in high-conflict zones.

 

 

Understanding the dynamics of the conflict

The geopolitical instability in the Middle East has been significantly heightened since October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched a terrorist attack in Israel, setting off a chain of regional conflicts.

This attack not only exacerbated tensions between Israel and Hamas, but also drew in other actors, most notably Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who are backed by Iran.

Iran’s involvement has added further complexity to the situation, particularly due to its ongoing tensions with the United States.

Since November 2023, the Houthis have aligned with Hamas, targeting vessels in the Red Sea with ballistic missiles and explosives, resulting in approximately 90 reported attacks.

This has caused a dramatic 56% decrease in vessel transits in the region, according to data from MarineTraffic.

In response, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2722 in January 2024, condemning these attacks and calling for an immediate cessation.

However, despite international efforts, the situation remains unresolved, with far-reaching consequences.

Beyond the security threat, the conflict has also presented significant environmental risks.

In August 2024, the Greek oil tanker MV Sounion, carrying 150,000 tons of crude oil, was attacked by Houthi rebels, causing extensive damage and a fire onboard.

While salvage efforts were delayed, the tanker was successfully towed by September 16, averting a major environmental disaster.

This incident underscored the need for stronger protection for vessels operating in conflict zones.

Furthermore, the ongoing hostilities in the Red Sea have led to increased carbon emissions from ocean freight shipping, as vessels are forced to avoid the region and reroute through the Cape of Good Hope. According to the Xeneta and Marine Benchmark Carbon Emissions Index (CEI), emissions reached a record high of 107.4 points in Q1 2024, driven by a 63% rise in emissions for shipments from the Far East to the Mediterranean, and a 23% increase for shipments to Northern Europe.

 

 

Attacks on Black Sea ports and the rise of the shadow fleet

In addition to the Red Sea, the Black Sea has also seen considerable disruption due to missile attacks on Ukraine’s southern port infrastructure.

These attacks have targeted key facilities, severely affecting Ukraine’s grain exports and its overall economic stability.

Furthermore, 2024 witnessed a significant rise in shadow fleet activity, driven largely by sanctions imposed by the EU and other nations.

The “shadow fleet” refers to older tankers that often lack proper maintenance, inspections, and insurance coverage.

These vessels are frequently operated under unclear ownership and attempt to evade sanctions by operating without their Automatic Identification Systems (AIS) turned on.

According to Gibson, nearly 63% of tankers built in 2009 or earlier are now engaged in grey fleet activity, often trading sanctioned goods from countries like Iran, Venezuela, and Russia.

Between January and August 2024, CREA reported a 277% increase in “shadow” tanker activity in the Danish Straits compared to the same period in 2022.

Additionally, shadow fleet activity has expanded to LNG vessels. 

The EU estimates that approximately 4-to-6 billion cubic meters of Russian LNG were shipped to third countries via EU ports in 2023.

Over 50 LNG vessels have reportedly been transferred to companies based in the UAE since mid-2023.

The economic impact on global supply chains

According to UNCTAD’s Review of Maritime Transport 2024, freight rates surged in 2024 due to rerouted vessels, port congestion, and rising operational costs.

 

By mid-2024, the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index (SCFI) had more than doubled from late 2023, driven by longer shipping distances, higher fuel consumption, and rising insurance premiums.

If this surge in freight rates continues, global consumer prices could rise by 0.6% by 2025, as higher shipping costs are passed on to consumers.

The impact is especially severe for vulnerable economies that rely heavily on maritime transport.

Rising shipping costs are eroding trade competitiveness, threatening economic stability, and fueling inflation.

Furthermore, Lloyd’s of London highlighted that with more than 80% of the world’s imports and exports – around 11 billion tons of goods – at sea at any given time, the closure of major trade routes due to a geopolitical conflict is one of the greatest threats to the resources needed for a resilient economy.

Looking Forward

From the escalating threats in the Middle East to the rise of shadow fleet activity, the maritime industry is confronting a series of unprecedented challenges.

These developments are not only jeopardizing the safety of seafarers but also disrupting global supply chains and threatening vulnerable economies.

To effectively address these issues, it is crucial for the global community to prioritize international cooperation, ensuring a coordinated response that can mitigate the risks and address challenges.

 

Links :

• Safety4Sea : ReCAAP ISC: One incident of piracy and two of armed robbery 17-22 December /  Maersk: Five evolving dynamic trends for freight forwarding
• Maritime Executive : Houthis Claim Retaliatory Attack on Carrier Harry S. Truman in the Red Sea

Reading the seas: our top ocean books of 2024

A ship’s captain looks out over the northern Indian Ocean

(Image © Abbie Trayler-Smith / Greenpeace)

From Dialogue Earth by Daniel Cressey, Regina Lam, Neil Simpson

Dialogue Earth’s team have been reading up on ancient monsters, rising waters, murky depths and more – here are a few of their choice picks

Wild seas, high seas, mapping the bottom and determining where the top really is – ocean-focused books published this year cover an incredible range, both literally and metaphorically.

Here are some of our favourite ocean reads from 2024.

Tell us what we missed and should add to our reading lists on Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, LinkedIn and Bluesky.

What the Wild Sea Can Be – Helen Scales

A sea change has unfolded beneath the vast surface of the ocean over the last few hundred million years.
In her latest book, marine biologist Helen Scales rewinds the clock to sketch out this shift, starting with the trilobites that swam, crawled and drifted in ancient seas.
Swimming reptiles – including sea-monster-like ichthyosaurs – claimed marine dominance until the Permian extinction, which also led to the overthrow of the dinosaurs, hit some 250 million years ago.
Scales dusts off this tumultuous, pre-human past to offer a sobering lesson about the current state of our ocean, and its potential future.

(Image © Grove Press UK)

A mass extinction is currently underway.
“Whichever way you slice the data, the rate of extinction is now far higher” than the normal rate shown in the fossil record, she writes.
In today’s climate and biodiversity crisis, some species will win, and others will lose.
The rapidly spreading, adaptive lionfish remains strong in the changing ocean, boldly cruising in non-native waters.
On the other hand, emperor penguins frown at Antarctica’s disappearing sea ice, which is critical to raising their offspring.

Responding to the unfolding calamity, humans, again, endeavour to “invent their way out of trouble”, Scales notes.
They advance innovative plans such as floating cities and mining the deep sea.
But Scales prefers to let the ocean do its thing – to regenerate and recover on its own.
To allow that, humanity has to restrain itself and occasionally offer it a helping hand.
This includes by reintroducing species, curbing industrial fisheries and no longer treating the ocean as a forgiving dumping ground for plastics and sewage, she suggests.

Zestful and imaginative, the book shines a much-needed light on the hope for our ocean, alerting us that the wheel steering its course is in our hands.

– Regina Lam

The High Seas – Olive Heffernan

Like many who write about the ocean, Olive Heffernan starts by describing a childhood within reach of the sea.
But her journey has taken her far offshore: this book explores the “unclaimed ocean” that lies beyond the control of individual nations.

(Image: Profile Books)

Heffernan, a journalist who founded the Nature Climate Change journal and has contributed to Dialogue Earth among other outlets, first headed to the high seas in 2001.
In this deeply readable book, she takes us on a voyage with a motley collection of people, ships and creatures in a place that, as she says, most people will only see from aeroplane windows.
Her book details how this zone is not the lawless space of popular imagination, but a realm overseen by a “mish-mash of organisations and bodies”, many of which “wilfully ignore science and disregard expert advice”.
This has left much of the high seas under-protected in a time of widespread overfishing, seabed mining attempts and huge ecosystem changes brought on by climate change.

Heffernan’s book arrives at an apposite time – the year before it was published, governments agreed a treaty on conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction, called the BBNJ or High Seas Treaty.
Although it needs to be ratified by many more countries before it comes into force, Heffernan calls the deal “a major win for conservation”.
But she notes that while she hoped to produce an uplifting vision of the future to end her book, pessimism set in.
In the end, she returns to the shoreline with a plea to not see the high seas as an “other”, but as a place connected to more familiar territories closer to home, and to us.

– Daniel Cressey

Mapping the Deep – Dawn Wright

This inspiring read follows the first Black person to go to the deepest place on Earth, the Challenger Deep trench in the western Pacific Ocean.
Its hero is the oceanographer Dawn Wright, chief scientist at geographic information company Esri (formerly the Environmental Systems Research Institute).
She made the voyage in 2022 with her compatriot, financier-turned-explorer Victor Vescovo.

(Image: Mapping the Deep, Esri Press 2024)

The book charts Wright’s personal journey from a childhood spent living next to the beach in Maui, to a career mapping the ocean floor.
Like a winding conversation with a group of people who love the subject of deep-sea exploration, it then widens out to touch upon oceanography’s women trailblazers, the current deep-sea mining debate, the history of humans in submersibles, Earth’s deepest shipwrecks and lots more.

In recent years – particularly since the Black Lives Matter movement wrestled its way into mainstream consciousness in 2020 – the climate action movement has been at pains to map out its symbiosis with ongoing struggles for equality around the world.
But that is not an easy relationship to distil into a catchy placard or a pithy media soundbite.
Mapping the Deep takes the time to present Wright’s very specific example and carefully lay it all out for the reader.

It also contains insightful quotes from many others, including the first person to complete both a spacewalk and a trip to Challenger Deep, Kathy Sullivan (the “most vertical person in the world”), and the film director and ocean enthusiast, James Cameron.
This cast of extras reflects Wright’s repeated assertion that having a supportive community of family, friends and colleagues enabled her achievements.

Written lucidly and accompanied by an engaging collection of photographs, diagrams, explanatory asides and illuminating personal anecdotes, Mapping the Deep is perfect for anybody with a thirst for exploration – especially young adults looking for inspiring role models.

– Neil Simpson

Sea Level – Wilko Graf von Hardenberg

The ocean is rising, and faster now than ever before.
The rate of “global mean sea level” rise is up from 1.4mm per year for most of the 1900s to over 3mm annually since the turn of the millennium, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
By the end of the century, the level could be over half a metre higher than at the end of the 1900s, even if the greenhouse gas emissions that are melting glaciers and sea ice, and expanding the ocean by making it warmer, are largely curtailed.
But what do such measurements actually mean, when the difference between high and low tide can reach over 10 metres in some extreme locations?

(Image: The University of Chicago Press)

Historian Wilko Graf von Hardenberg examines how “sea level” is a baseline that’s often taken as a certainty when it is actually “far from a natural index – a product of technically and culturally determined assumptions”.
From examining how it was produced, he goes on to chart how sea level was then re-imagined as an exemplar of change brought about by anthropogenic warming.

The “global mean sea level” familiar from climate change warnings turns out to actually be just one possible way of looking at the height of the ocean – just as the Greenwich meridian is only one possible baseline for longitude.

Von Hardenberg notes that between his first thoughts on this book in 2011 and its completion in 2022, global sea levels rose by 5cm.
They are not done rising yet, and this book offers a fine explanation of why these apparently small and certain measurements are worth thinking more carefully about.

– Daniel Cressey

Tracks on the Ocean – Sara Caputo

Lines on maps have real power to influence the world, defining claims of ownership and entitlement.
In Tracks on the Ocean, maritime historian Sara Caputo looks at the inky threads made on sea charts to showcase examples of navigational prowess, or sometimes, how they inadvertently record a lack thereof.
Caputo reveals that, while there has been a long history of outlining routes, tracing individual journeys via such lines appears to have only started in the 16th century.
The revolutionary idea that a journey is noteworthy enough to leave a permanent mark, too, has a “fundamentally watery” origin, she notes.

(Image: Profile Books)

“It is also inextricable from the development of European sea-bound empires,” she writes, as she retraces the traces of voyages; some famous, some fictional, some largely forgotten.
These lines are for gathering knowledge, but also for making claims: “a storytelling tool”, she observes.
Caputo’s approach is scholarly and occasionally more academic than a beach read, with philosophy and historiography on full display.
But through this, she makes the creation of ocean tracks come to life.

Crucially, Caputo acknowledges that most of the tracks she applies her gaze to represent the workings of powerful, white men acting out colonialism and environmental conquests.
This raises the question of who has not left such traces, or not been allowed to leave them.

Caputo’s book notes some of their stories: the lowly sailors on epic voyages, who did the hard work.
Women like Mina Benson Hubbard, who journeyed into Labrador by canoe, accompanied by four (unnamed) Indigenous men, and had her exploration characterised in media reports at the time as a sentimental jaunt.
And, of course, all those Indigenous people who made vast ocean journeys long before captains of famous European ships, but perhaps preferred to record them in chants rather than on charts.
As humanity seeks increasingly to delineate the oceans, both for exploitation and for protection, it is well worth considering the origins of how lines on maps are made, and why.

– Daniel Cressey