The supposed Open Polar Sea

Map showing the supposed Open Polar Sea (1872)
Source : NOAA
Author : Silas Bent  

From Wikipedia

The Open Polar Sea was a hypothesized ice-free ocean surrounding the North Pole.
This unproven (and eventually, demonstrated false) theory was once so widely believed that many exploring expeditions used it as justification for attempts to reach the North Pole by sea, or to find a navigable sea route between Europe and the Pacific across the North Pole.

History

The theory that the north polar region might be a practical sea route goes back to at least the 16th century when it was suggested by Robert Thorne.
William Barents and Henry Hudson also believed in the Open Polar Sea.
For a time, the theory was put aside due to the practical experience of navigators who encountered impenetrable ice as they went north.
But the idea was revived again in the mid-19th century by theoretical geographers such as Matthew F. Maury and August Petermann.
At this time, interest in polar exploration was high due to the search for John Franklin's missing expedition, and many would-be polar explorers took up the theory, including, notably, Elisha Kent Kane, Dr. Isaac Israel Hayes, and George Washington De Long.
It was believed that once a ship broke through the regions of thick ice that had stopped previous explorers, a temperate sea would be found beyond it.

 “Chart of Smith Sound Showing Dr. Hayes Track,” from “The Open Polar Sea,” 1867 1st edition.

courtesy of Oceanic Visions

Arguments for the theory

Given that we know today that the North Pole was covered with thick ice for much of the period, the idea of the Open Polar Sea seems patently ridiculous.
However, in the 16th-19th centuries, the theory was popular, its proponents made many arguments to justify it, including:
Since sea ice only forms in proximity to land (now known to be a false theory itself), if there were no land near the North Pole, there would be no ice.
Since there is perpetual sun during the Arctic summer, it would melt all the ice.
Russian explorers found large areas of open water north of Spitsbergen, so surely there were other areas of open water elsewhere.
Maury, Petermann, and other scientists who studied ocean currents in the 19th century hypothesized that warm northward currents such as the Gulf Stream and Kuroshio Current must rise to the surface and result in an ice-free sea near the pole.
Extrapolation of temperature readings taken in subpolar regions indicated that the region of greatest cold would be at about 80° north instead of at the pole.
Migration patterns of certain animals seemed to suggest that the polar region was a hospitable place for them to live.

Disproof and re-emergence

The Open Polar Sea theory was debunked gradually by the failure of the expeditions in the 1810s through the 1880s to navigate the polar sea.
Reports of open water by earlier explorers, such as Elisha Kent Kane and Isaac Israel Hayes, fueled optimism in the theory in the 1850s and 1860s.
Support faded when De Long sailed USS Jeannette into the Bering Strait hoping to find an open 'gateway' to the North Pole and was met by a sea of ice.
After a long drift, pack ice crushed the Jeannette and her survivors returned home with first hand accounts of an ice-covered polar sea.
Other explorers such as British explorer George Nares confirmed this.
By the time Fridtjof Nansen and Otto Sverdrup drifted through the polar ice pack in Fram in 1893–1895, the Open Polar Sea theory was defunct.

 This visualization shows the evolution of Arctic Sea Ice volume for every day since January 1979 to July 2013.

Based on the rate of change of volume over the last 30 years, the first ice-free summer day in the Arctic Ocean (defined as having less than 1 million km² of sea ice) is expected to happen between 2016 and 2022, and thereafter occur more regularly with the trend of ice-free duration extending into August and October.

Nevertheless, scientific studies in the 2000s of climate change project that by the end of the 21st century, the annual summer withdrawal of the polar ice cap could expose large areas of the Arctic Ocean as open water, and an ice-free Arctic is possible before 2015 due to Arctic shrinkage.
Although the North Pole itself could potentially remain ice-covered in winter, a navigable seasonal sea passage from Europe to the Pacific could develop along the north coast of Asia.
Cases of an ice free North Pole have already been discovered. 

Links :

• io9 : The Open Polar Sea, a balmy aquatic Eden at the North Pole?
• NYTimes : Pondering the Path To an Open Polar Sea
  

Gyrecraft

Gyrecraft from Studio Swine
Transforming ocean trash into beautiful art

A short film about crafting objects at sea, in the past with whale’s teeth and the future with caught plastic melted with a machine harnessing the sun.

In the past, sailors on whaling ships would carve whale teeth into works of art in a process called scrimshaw.
These pieces would be brought home to loved ones as mementos of the voyage.
Design incubator Studio Swine is attempting to recycle found materials and turn this aged art form into a more sustainable practice.
In this short film, travel to remote parts of the ocean, where “the closest people are in a space station,” and watch as the process of collecting ocean trash and transforming it into beautiful treasure unfolds.

Gyrecraft is an exploration into maritime crafts which exists in every coastal or island culture around the world each with its own unique identity, utilizing what the sea provides.
Many of these crafts took place onboard boats during long voyages as a way of making vital repairs or passing the time at sea.

Studio Swine went on a journey of 1000 nautical miles collecting plastic on the way from Azores to the Canaries through the North Atlantic Gyre with the Solar Extruder; a machine they designed and built which melts and extrudes sea plastic using the Sun.
A special thank you to Pangea Exploration for their kind support

The deepest dive (Obituary: Natalia Molchanova)

On September 25th of 2009, Russian Natalia Molchanova became the first woman in the world to dive to the previously elusive 100 metre mark in freediving competition.

In the Constant Weight discipline, Natalia gained her twenty-fifth world record with a dive to 101 meters at the Only One Apnea Centre in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt.

Her dive was completed in 3 minutes and 50 seconds.

Just 48 hours later, Natalia successfully gained her second world record for the Ruler of the Deep competition, and her twenty-sixth overall, completing a dive to 90 metres in the Free Immersion discipline.

When asked about her Constant Weight dive, Natalia said she decided to attempt the 101-metre dive rather than 100 metres because Sara before tried 100.

Nobody tried it before me. Now, I tried it.

" She certainly did! Sara Campbell held the previous Constant Weight world record of 96 metres, set in the Bahamas earlier this year. 

In freediving history, only eleven men have successfully managed to dive to 100 metres.

From The Economist 

Natalia Molchanova, the world’s greatest free diver, was presumed drowned on August 5th, aged 53

It often seemed strange to Natalia Molchanova, as she dived down and down through the blue water of the Mediterranean or the Red Sea, that the fish did not notice her.
Sharks hovered, but did not approach. Schools of small fish flickered past unconcerned.
She noticed one day, however, that a little band was imitating her: swimming not from right to left, but up and down vertically, following (as she was) a long rope let down from the surface.

She did not bother them because her own movements, as she swam, were those of a fish: her arms extended to a point before her, her legs straight, her chest and back sinuously curving, and attached to her feet a tail-fin like a mermaid’s that she flipped to propel her through the water.
Her diving suit, her own brand, was a mere 1.5mm thick, thinner than fish-skin.
Otherwise, she let the water clothe her.

Such techniques were essential because she was swimming and diving on a single breath, without gas.
In this extraordinary sport, free diving, she had 41 world records.
She could hold her breath, when floating motionless with her head under water in a pool, for nine minutes and two seconds. (see video)

 At the AIDA team world championships in Sardinia, Italy, on Friday the 26th of september 2014, Natalia Molchanova from Russia broke the world record dynamic with a dive of 237 meters.

Swimming horizontally underwater with a fin, she could cover 237 metres.
Diving with the fin alone (as she preferred), rather than aided by a metal weight, she could reach 101 metres.
When she resurfaced, between her measured and grateful gulps of air, she would wink, grin, whoop and wave as another record fell.
After she turned 50 she liked to break diving records on her birthday, to show other middle-aged women what they could do.

Not that many were likely to follow her.
The sport involved extraordinary dangers.
Currents could drag her away, and cold-water layers could hit her like an ice-bath.
Every morsel of energy and oxygen had to be conserved to penetrate the depths of the sea; yet for the first 20 metres or so she also had to fight her body’s natural buoyancy, using energy to do so.
After that, she sank; but, unless she was careful, the fast depletion of oxygen could build up lactic acid in her muscles to a toxic level.
If she tried to reascend too fast, she risked blacking out at the surface.
At the deepest point, her lungs would be compressed to a quarter of their volume and would feel completely empty.

An ocean trance

In short, this was not the obvious pursuit for a scooter-riding Moscow housewife with two children and a divorce to worry about; but, at 40, she read about free diving in a magazine and decided to try it.
When she was younger, she had enjoyed diving for seashells on holiday; she loved seafood, and she had always liked competitive swimming.
That was about the size of it.
No one was more surprised than her when she ended up as an assistant professor of extreme sports at Moscow University, the author of treatises on free diving, a full-time coach and the manager, with her son, of a diving-equipment company.

But then, free diving had surprised her too.
This was not just a sport.
To do it at all, she realised, required much more than physical training in swimming, breathing and timing.
She had to enter a different state, one in which “surface fuss”, as she called it, faded away, and she became one with the serenity of the water.

Her name for this was “attention deconcentration”: an ancient discipline, close to meditation, practised by samurai warriors and, more recently, recommended for Soviet workers with tedious jobs.
In it, the eye ceased to focus on particular objects; awareness shifted to the periphery of vision, or to an imaginary screen in front of everything.
The pulse and heart-rate slowed, and with them the tendency to panic (as when apparently drowning).
Spectators noticed that, before a dive, the usually bubbly Ms Molchanova seemed to be in a trance. She was.

As she dived down, she remained so.
She still knew, as a physiologist of the sport, every chemical reaction that was taking place in her body, but kept that in the background.
As for world records, much as she craved them on the surface, deep down they didn’t matter either:

Unite in silence With the blue tender flow, And come to know Your spirit-law.

 The arch on one breath

Natalia Molchanova and Alexey Molchanov swim through The Arch of Blue Hole, Dahab.

The most intense experience of her career came in 2004 when, on one breath, she swam through the Blue Hole at Dahab in Egypt, a tunnel 56 metres underwater and 26 metres long.
The sapphire water, the craggy grey of the rock roof and the sudden dazzle of the light were intoxicating.
A notice warned divers that it was dangerous; dangerous, that is, even for those with gas-tanks on their backs.

She was careful almost all the time: not diving alone or overdoing her dives, staying aware of wind and weather.
On the other hand, she much preferred the perilous ocean to the pool: the difference, she said, between working a treadmill and wandering in the forest.
She did not like being tethered to the guide-rope by a lanyard, slipping it sometimes.
And her many poems showed her in love with the blue deep.
She felt at one with creation there, in a sacred and primeval space.
Her personality, however merry and competitive, could not get her back to the surface, she wrote; only her spirit could.
Possibly, on that last dive, it felt no particular wish to.

The Internet of everything sets sail

On the deck of a regatta-winning yacht, the #InternetofEverything inspires innovation. 

From CISCO

Countries, cities, and industries around the globe are becoming digital to capitalize on the unprecedented opportunity brought about by the next wave of the Internet: the Internet of Everything. Today’s competitive marketplace demands informed collaboration and instant access to accurate information.
Real-time data collection and analytics are crucial for effective performance, as are the connections between people, processes, data, and things.
This is the Internet of Everything, connected by Cisco.

On the deck of a world-class regatta-winning yacht sponsored by the Cisco Powered program, the Internet of Everything gives the crew a competitive advantage.
Network sensors use real-time data gathered by the Internet of Everything.
The yacht’s ruggedized platform combines boat sensor data; GPS, wind, and weather information; and a local Wi-Fi network to help the crew make critical decisions quickly.

In sailboat racing, as in business, crews are constantly responding to changing circumstances. Unpredictable conditions call for situational tactics, plus a long-term strategy for the race. Environmental factors such as wind shift or unexpected currents can completely change the game.
Although a slow boat may occasionally win with a lucky break, successful crews finish a regatta on top because they can make smart decisions in real time.

Cisco recently took IoE to the decks of the Foxy Lady 6 – a fierce competitor in the Asia Yachting Grand Prix, which takes place over the span of six months.

In a timeframe of two weeks, a series of IoT sensors, routers and wireless set-ups, and IoE advancements were installed to help the boat’s skipper and crew guide their race strategy and differentiate the Foxy Lady 6 as the competitor to watch.

Sponsored by Cisco Powered, the yacht was outfitted with a sensor network of components that used real-time, IoT-enabled data.

Mast and rig pressure, wind strength, boat speed, tidal current strength, and water depth measurements were just a few of the Big Data measurements the team was able to use to monitor race conditions.

(see Cisco blog)

Everything is Connected

On the boat, an immense amount of sailing data is collected and analyzed.
In the past, data was pulled from a variety of sources with disparate interfaces, formats, and protocols, which was time-consuming to organize and cumbersome to analyze.
Today, the entire network is an Internet of Everything solution, and the yacht’s big data is generated from an efficient on-boat network that sends real-time data to the crew locally and over Wi-Fi and cellular networks.

The yacht's data is fed through a B&G main processor and loaded via a Cisco IR910 Wi-Fi/cloud router to a laptop in the chase boat.
Mobile routing technology links the sensors in the boat and pushes data to the edge of the network—what Cisco calls the fog layer.
Here, the sensor data is efficiently analyzed locally in real time.
The racing vessel is also connected to cloud applications for data analytics, storage, and reporting.

Once everything is connected everywhere, analytics become the focus for innovation.
Sensors collect, store, and analyze data to optimize the boat’s speed in varying wind, sea-state, and tidal conditions. This integrated Internet of Everything platform provides a combination of fog computing, local Wi-Fi access, sensor aggregation, and 3G backhaul.
Interestingly, this new onboard technology was implemented in just two weeks.
Hundreds of thousands of measurements have been captured since that time, which allowed for ongoing analysis that helps the crew optimize the boat’s speed, sail-trim, and hull efficiency.

Technology has always played a role in the America's Cup.
But in the 34th edition, technology could be the difference between winning and losing.
Discover how Oracle Team USA deploys extreme technology for extreme performance.

Dramatically changing business by sea

The future-forward technology that enables a racing crew to make the real-time informed decisions that enhance a yacht’s performance in a regatta can be implemented by organizations with assets that are on the move, whether by sea, land, or air.

Imagine not just one sailboat, but rather fleets of cargo ships, trucks, and trains.

The Internet of Everything connects the unconnected, bringing together people, processes, data, and things to create new revenue streams, compete with disruptive competitors, deliver better experiences, and deploy new operating models that increase both efficiency and value.

When organizations re-invent themselves and see what’s possible when technology and business strategies come together, digitization becomes reality and innovation accelerates, turning data from anywhere into insights everywhere at sea.

Internet at sea with LEO micro-satellites :
Samsung theorizes globally affordable 5G Internet using low Earth orbit satellites

In the same time, the Internet at sea might soon become a lot more accessible, thanks to a proposal issued by Samsung that would loan the world an extra zetabyte of bandwidth every month.

The proposal describes a system requiring the deployment of 4,600 inexpensive Low Earth Orbit micro-satellites (LEO) positioned about 1,500 kilometers from Earth’s surface, much lower than a typical geostationary satellite. (see DigitalTrends article)

Links :

• Microsoft : Royal Caribbean sets sail with IoT (YouTube)
• Terepac : One Marine
• Forbes : 7 Ways America's Cup champions sail like successful IT teams
• TechWorld : Hyundai building smart ships for data-driven sailing

Revolutionary tidal fence is set to trap the sea’s power

UK-designed turbines aim to harness tidal energy to produce cheaper electricity − without endangering marine life, reports Climate News Network 

From The Guardian by Alex Kirby

A British company has announced plans for an array of unique marine turbines that can operate in shallower and slower-moving water than current designs.

Kepler Energy, whose technology is being developed by Oxford University’s department of engineering science, says the turbines will in time produce electricity more cheaply than off-shore wind farms.

It hopes to install its new design in what is called a tidal energy fence, one kilometre long, in the Bristol Channel − an estuary dividing South Wales from the west of England − at a cost of £143m. 

 Illustration showing how Kepler Energy’s turbine rotor blades will look

installed in a tidal fence configuration.

Photograph: Kepler Energy

The fence is a string of linked turbines, each of which will start generating electricity as it is completed, until the whole array is producing power.

The fence’s total output is 30 megawatts (MW), and 1MW can supply around 1,000 homes in the UK.

Peter Dixon, Kepler’s chairman, told Reuters news agency: “If we can build up to, say, 10km worth, which is a very extended fence, you’re looking at power outputs of five or six hundred megawatts. And just to visualise that, it’s like one small nuclear reactor’s worth of electricity being generated from the tides in the Bristol Channel.”

 Conceptual model of Kepler’s tidal energy fence, via Kepler Energy

The new Transverse Horizontal Axis Water Turbine (THAWT) − whose design is compared to that of a water mill − will use the latest carbon composite technology, and should be suitable for the waters around Britain, as well as overseas.

Because the turbines sit horizontally beneath the surface of the sea, they can be sited in water shallower than the 30-metre depth typically required by current designs.

And because the water is slow-moving, the company says, fish can safely avoid the turbines’ blades.

Although the technology is regarded as environmentally benign, Kepler says it will still undergo a rigorous environmental impact assessment during the planning process to ensure that it poses no significant risk to marine life and to other users of the sea.

There is more good news for proponents of renewable energy after the UK government − which is no longer encouraging onshore wind and solar energy − gave the go-ahead for a large offshore wind farm that could provide power for up to two million homes.

The new wind farm is to be built near the Dogger Bank in the North Sea and will have 400 turbines. 

 Dogger Bank area and wind farms localization in the GeoGarage platform

World's biggest offshore windfarm approved for Yorkshire coast

Its developers say it could create almost 5,000 jobs during construction.

And, earlier this year, they obtained planning consent for another installation nearby which, with the new development, will form one of the largest offshore wind farms in the world.
North Seas assets

But the fossil fuel industry is far from abandoning its own interest in British waters as the energy giant BP has announced that it is to invest about £670m to extend the life of its North Sea assets.

It said it would be drilling new wells, replacing undersea infrastructure, and introducing new technologies to help it to produce as much as possible from the area, whose future would be secured “until 2030 and beyond”.

In November, delegates to the UN climate change convention annual negotiations will gather in Paris to try to conclude an ambitious and effective agreement on preventing the global average temperature rise caused by greenhouse gas emissions exceeding 2C above its pre-industrial level.

Last year, the Convention’s executive secretary, Christiana Figueres, said the world’s long-term goal was to reduce greenhouse gases to zero by 2100 − a target she said would require leaving three-quarters of fossil fuels in the ground. 

“We just can’t afford to burn them”, she said.

The future of shipping? Seafaring Mayflower drone will use renewable energy to sail across the Atlantic Ocean in 2020

Slick: A British university has revealed plans to build the world's first full size unmanned ship to sail across the Atlantic Ocean

From DailyMail by Richard Gray

The future of shipping? Seafaring Mayflower drone will use renewable energy to sail across the Atlantic Ocean in 2020

• Plymouth University will build Mayflower Autonomous Research Ship, which will be the first of its kind in the world
• Ship will demonstrate future of shipping and ocean research, being unmanned and powered by renewable energy
• Vessel will replicate the sailing of the 'pilgrim fathers', and project will be ready on the 400th anniversary Mayflower
• The pilgrims left Plymouth in September 1620 to start new life and arrived in 'New Plymouth' on December 21

If successful it could pave the way for fleets of floating drones carrying cargo, and perhaps even passengers, around the world.
The vessel, which is being developed at Plymouth Univesrity, will replicate the sailing of the 'pilgrim fathers', and the university aim for the project to be ready on the 400th anniversary of the sailing of the Mayflower, in 2020.
The pilgrims left Plymouth, Devon, on board the Mayflower in September 1620, to start a new life and arrived in 'New Plymouth', Massachusetts on December 21, 1620.
A statement on the project's website said: 'As a genuine world first and the largest civilian-based project of its kind, the Mayflower Autonomous Research Ship has the potential to transform and influence the future of world shipping, and inspire a new generation of ocean explorers and researchers.
'MARS will pave the way for the creation and development of new technologies in ocean exploration and navigation, technologies fit for the 21st century and beyond – facilitating marine-based research in areas deemed dangerous, dirty or dull.'

Meand powered by renewable energyan machine: Ship will demonstrate the future of shipping and ocean research, being unmanned and powered by renewable energy

The ship will replicate the sailing of the 'pilgrim fathers', and the university aim for the project to be ready on the 400th anniversary of the sailing of the Mayflower, in 2020.
The pilgrims left Plymouth, Devon, on board the Mayflower in September 1620

The vessel has been designed by yachting firm Shuttleworth Design and will operate as a research platform, conducting experiments during its voyage.

The ship will use solar panels, wave power and the wind to help power its crossing. It will also use new navigation software to allow the vessel to make the crossing without the help of humans.

The project's website said: 'The civilian maritime world has struggled to keep pace with technology due to a combination of cultural and cost factors.

Plymouth University has said the vessel will use state of the art technology to harness the sun, wind and waves to power the vessel on its voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. It will use autonomous navigation software to ensure it can navigate without human input

'The autonomous drone technology that has been used so effectively in situations considered unsuitable for humans has not been harnessed by the shipping industry, which continues to steer the conservative course, its diesel engines pumping out carbon emissions and its manned crews at risk from piracy.
'It begs the question, if we can put a rover on Mars and have it autonomously conduct research, why can't we sail an unmanned vessel across the Atlantic Ocean and, ultimately, around the globe.'

Big data maps world's ocean floor : geology of ocean floor revealed

www.portal.gplates.org/cesium/?view=seabed
First interactive map of seafloor geology : Seafloor Lithology allows you to explore seafloor lithologies based on nearly 14,500 samples taken from the world's seas and oceans.
The 3d globe view also allows you to explore the topography of the seafloor
(use ctrl & the left mouse button to rotate the camera view around a point).

From University of Sydney

Scientists from the University of Sydney’s School of Geosciences have led the creation of the world’s first digital map of the seafloor’s geology.

It is the first time the composition of the seafloor, covering 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, has been mapped in 40 years; the most recent map was hand drawn in the 1970s.
Published in the latest edition of Geology, the map will help scientists better understand how our oceans have responded, and will respond, to environmental change.
It also reveals the deep ocean basins to be much more complex than previously thought.
“In order to understand environmental change in the oceans we need to better understand what is preserved in the geological record in the seabed,” says lead researcher Dr Adriana Dutkiewicz from the University of Sydney.
“The deep ocean floor is a graveyard with much of it made up of the remains of microscopic sea creatures called phytoplankton, which thrive in sunlit surface waters. The composition of these remains can help decipher how oceans have responded in the past to climate change.”
A special group of phytoplankton called diatoms produce about a quarter of the oxygen we breathe and make a bigger contribution to fighting global warming than most plants on land. Their dead remains sink to the bottom of the ocean, locking away their carbon.
The new seafloor geology map demonstrates that diatom accumulations on the seafloor are nearly entirely independent of diatom blooms in surface waters in the Southern Ocean.
“This disconnect demonstrates that we understand the carbon source, but not the sink,” says co-author Professor Dietmar Muller from the University of Sydney.
More research is needed to better understand this relationship.

A still shot of the world's first digital map of the seafloor's geology.
The digital data and interactive map are freely available as open access resources.

"The map will help scientists better understand how our oceans have responded, and will respond to, climate change."

Dr Dutkiewicz said, “Our research opens the door to future marine research voyages aimed at better understanding the workings and history of the marine carbon cycle.

Australia’s new research vessel Investigator is ideally placed to further investigate the impact of environmental change on diatom productivity. We urgently need to understand how the ocean responds to climate change.”

The map key explains the colors used for the seafloor's different geologies.

The map key is a little small but if you click on the key it will open in a legible size in a separate window.

Some of the most significant changes to the seafloor map are in the oceans surrounding Australia.

“The old map suggests much of the Southern Ocean around Australia is mainly covered by clay blown off the continent, whereas our map shows this area is actually a complex patchwork of microfossil remains,” said Dr Dutkiewicz.

“Life in the Southern Ocean is much richer than previously thought.”

Dr Dutkiewicz and colleagues analysed and categorised around 15,000 seafloor samples – taken over half a century on research cruise ships to generate the data for the map.

She teamed with the National ICT Australia (NICTA) big data experts to find the best way to use algorithms to turn this multitude of point observations into a continuous digital map.

“Recent images of Pluto’s icy plains are spectacular, but the process of unveiling the hidden geological secrets of the abyssal plains of our own planet was equally full of surprises!” co-author Dr Simon O’Callaghan from NICTA said.

Links :

• Phys : Big data maps world's ocean floor 
• DailyMail : What the Earth would look like stripped of oceans: First ever digital map of the sea floor reveals our planet's 'alien' landscape

Sea Atlases project

Sea Atlases is a new interactive map showcasing some of the fabulous historical sea charts in the Harvard Map Collection.
Ten atlas volumes were digitized by the Harvard Map Collection, and then georeferenced in order to be able to place them on top of a modern day interactive map.
Being able to explore these fantastic vintage sea charts is of course the main attraction of Sea Atlases, but this is only made possible by the beautifully intuitive and well designed interface that allows you to explore the collection by date and by location.

www.sea-atlases.org/maps/?atlas=all

As long as people have ventured out in ships and exposed themselves to the vagaries of wind and tide, they have endeavored as much as possible to minimize the risks of life at sea.
The earliest mariners, of course, relied upon the oral transmission of instructions about the hazards of navigation, methods of orientation, and anchorages along particular routes.
The ancient Greeks and Romans often codified those details in manuscript logs (peripli), which listed sequentially the distances between ports and landmarks along coastal routes.
With improvements in the technology of orientation and navigation in late medieval Europe, these textual guides evolved into portolan charts which offered graphic tools for laying down a course and following a coastal itinerary.
Beginning in the late 16th century, the nascent cartographic publishing industry found a receptive market for pilot books and sea atlases, which provided collections of detailed charts and sailing directions for the most frequently traversed routes.
In the website we will introduce some of the most influential of these early guides to the realms of Neptune.

Links :

• Rumsey collection in the GeoGarage : ancient maps overlayed on Google Maps imagery
• Atlas obscura : 7 gorgeous sea maps from the age of exploration

Yvan Bourgnon completes remarkable round-the-world challenge alone on a beach catamaran

He started his grueling journey in October 2013, he capsized in the Atlantic, crashed his boat on rocks in Sri Lanka and experienced a terrifying near-miss with a cargo ship, but Yvan Bourgnon finally completed his round-the-world solo effort.

Making his journey even more impressive is the fact that the Swiss sailor circumnavigated the globe in a tiny 6.2 metre, cabin-less beach catamaran that had no GPS and computer-aided navigation.

Using the stars, a sextant and maps the adventurer took 20 months to complete his 50 000 kilometre challenge which included multiple stop overs for rest and repairs.

Two days after his arrival, his brother Laurent Bourgnon has been lost in a diving accident in French Polynesia.
He was reported missing on the 25th June and despite a comprehensive search no trace has been found.
Laurent was best known for his victories in the 1994 and 1998 in the solo Route du Rhum onboard the ORMA trimaran Primagaz.

Links : 

• GeoGarage blog : Around the world in a beach cat by Yvan Bourgnon / Cape Horn on a beach catamaran

NOAA WeatherView

www.nnvl.noaa.gov/weatherview/index.html

NOAA weatherView is a new tool designed by the NOAA Visualization Lab to provide an interactive experience with NOAA weather models : lets you display wind, temperature, precipitation and other models to see weather patterns around the globe.

 The NOAA gives us the example of Typhoon Soudelor, which passed over Taiwan yesterday.

All of these data are also available from the NOAA Operational Model Archive and Distribution System built by NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information - Climate.
http://go.usa.gov/3sKWz

 Example of  3-D animated image of downscaled Global Forecast System (GFS) model data showing Hurricane Katrina making landfall on August 29, 2005.

This image was generated with the Visualization and Analysis Platform for Ocean, Atmosphere, and Solar Researchers (VAPOR) tool and ImageMagick.

Links :

• Gizmodo : Watch summer's extreme weather move around Earth with this animated map
  

Image of the week : the dark side and the bright side of the moon

From NASA

A NASA camera aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) has captured a unique view of the Moon as it passed between the spacecraft and Earth.
A series of test images shows the fully illuminated “dark side” of the Moon that is not visible from Earth.

The images were acquired by NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), a four megapixel CCD camera and telescope on the DSCOVR satellite, which orbits about 1.6 million kilometers (1 million miles) from Earth.
EPIC maintains a constant view of the fully illuminated Earth as it rotates, providing daily scientific observations of ozone, vegetation, cloud height, and airborne aerosols.
About twice a year the camera will capture images of the Moon and Earth together as the orbit of DSCOVR crosses the orbital plane of the Moon.
The images shown above and in the movie below were taken over the course of five hours on July 16, 2015.
The North Pole is toward the upper left, reflecting the orbital tilt of Earth from the vantage point of the spacecraft.

The far side of the Moon was first observed in 1959, when the Soviet Luna 3 spacecraft returned the first images.
Since then, several missions by NASA and other space agencies have imaged the lunar far side.
(For instance, NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft captured a similar view of Earth and the Moon from a distance of 31 million miles in 2008.)
The same side of the Moon always faces an earthbound observer because the Moon’s orbital period is the same as its rotation around its axis.
EPIC’s natural-color images of Earth are generated by combining three separate monochrome exposures taken by the camera in quick succession.
EPIC takes a series of 10 images using different spectral filters—from ultraviolet to near infrared—to produce a variety of science products.
The red, green, and blue channel images are used in these color images.
But combining three images that are taken about 30 seconds apart produces a slight but noticeable camera artifact on the edges of the Moon.
Because the Moon moved in relation to Earth between the time the first (red) and last (green) exposures were made, a thin green offset (about 7–8 pixels) appears on the right side when the three exposures are combined.
This movement also produces a slight red and blue offset on the left side of the unaltered images.

The lunar far side lacks the large, dark, basaltic plains, or maria, that are so prominent on the Earth-facing side.
The largest far side features are Mare Moscoviense (Sea of Moscow) in the upper left and Tsiolkovskiy crater in the lower left.
Situated at a stable orbit between the Sun and Earth, DSCOVR’s primary mission is to monitor the solar wind for space weather forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Its secondary mission is to provide daily color views of our planet as it rotates through the day.

Egypt shows off $8billion Suez Canal expansion that the world may not need

 Map of the New Suez Canal compared with the Old Canal

It will save time for ships & Yachts in transit through Suez canal up to 10 hours in addition will allow ships with 66 feet draft to transit and up to 97 ships per day transit from both ways Suez and port said the total Suez canal length is 193 KM , the main entrance of Suez canal from Mediterranean sea is port said and from Red sea is port tawfik in the city of Suez .

From Bloomberg by Ahmed Feteha

The Suez Canal took 10 years to build and cost thousands of workers their lives.
When planners suggested three years for a second one, Egypt’s president balked.
“Not three years, just one,” he ordered.
Twelve months later, Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi is hosting a party to celebrate the biggest expansion of the canal since it first opened in 1869.
For the former army chief seeking to bolster his rule, the symbolism is impossible to miss.
Less clear are the economic benefits of what billboards in Cairo and New York’s Times Square dub “Egypt’s gift to the world,” which will raise capacity and shorten the time it takes to sail the 193-kilometer (120-mile) link between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.
Thursday’s ceremony, to be attended by dignitaries from French President Francois Hollande to North Korea’s deputy leader Kim Yong Nam, comes amid sluggish global trade growth to which the canal’s fortunes are linked.
“From a shipping industry point of view, this initiative to expand the Suez canal was a bit of a surprise,” said Ralph Leszczynski, Singapore-based head of research at Genoese shipbroker Banchero Costa & Co.
“There was no pressing need or requests for this as far as I’m aware.”
Suez has yet to fully recover since the global financial crisis caused shipping to plummet in 2009. Though total tonnage has increased, the number of vessels using the canal remains 20 percent below its 2008 level and just 2 percent higher than a decade ago, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Rather than a bottleneck, analysts say those statistics reflect slower global trade growth, which the International Monetary Fund expects to average 3.4 percent in the period 2007-2016, compared with 7 percent over the previous decade.
The Baltic Dry Index, which measures rates for shipping iron ore, coal and grain and is viewed as a bellwether for the global economy, slumped to a record low 509 points in February.
It remains about 90 percent below its all-time high of 11,793 reached in 2008.

The iconic project in Egypt is almost coming to an end.

On Saturday, the very first three vessels sailed through the new Suez Canal.

In the first week of August the new canal will be officially inaugurated.

A total of 200 million m³ was dredged in less than one year, which makes this iconic work the largest cutter project eve.

Lacking Details

“At the moment, speed is not a key factor for container shipping, the shipping sector which most utilizes the canal,” said Michelle Berman, the head of operational risk at BMI Research, a unit of Fitch Group.
A bigger issue is a “surplus of ships” relative to demand, with ever-larger vessels built for the Asia-Europe route compounding the problem, she said.
The government hasn’t made public viability studies to show how it will gain a return on its 64 billion Egyptian pound ($8.2 billion) investment.
The expansion will meet future demand, with traffic expected to double to 97 vessels a day by 2023, said Mohab Mameesh, head of the Suez Canal Authority.
“By creating a second lane of the canal we are able to reduce waiting times, which reduces fuel expenditures and costs, with no increase in our toll fees,” he said in an e-mailed response to questions.
Global trade volume would need to rise by around 9 percent a year for Suez to reach its traffic goal, Capital Economics said in a report on Monday, describing the target as “unlikely to say the least.”

New Suez Canal had a trial run today.

Vessels sailing the new canal are nicely visible on MarineTraffic.

Note: Google Maps imagery (last update 22/09/2014)
and nautical charts (UKHO) need to be updated
 as this is already done in OpenStreetMap

http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=11/30.5779/32.3204

Canal Distraction

That hasn’t stopped El-Sisi and his government from talking up the new canal amid political challenges to its rule.
Hundreds of Egyptians, most of them supporters of the deposed Muslim Brotherhood, have been killed and thousands imprisoned since El-Sisi, as army chief, pushed his Islamist predecessor from office in 2013 after mass protests.
El-Sisi was elected president last year.
The political turmoil has polarized Egyptians
El-Sisi supporters say it saved the country from the deadly strife affecting much of the Middle East, while opponents criticize the government’s human rights record and what they regard as brutality used to restore stability.

 A 1921 map of the Suez Canal, running South from Port Saïd on the Mediterranean, through Ismailia and the Great Bitter Lake, to the Gulf of Suez on the Red Sea

Suez Canal 1:250,000 Series 3753, Great Britain War Office, 1941  (Lib. Univ. Texas)

French Connection

Thursday’s party, with an estimated price tag of $30 million, is a chance for the government to send a more positive message by harking back to the events marking the canal’s 1869 completion.
French empress Eugenie attended -- her husband Napoleon III was deposed a year later -- and a performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s ’Rigoletto’ opened Cairo’s new opera house.
The canal has since transformed global trade.
About 8 percent of the world’s cargo now passes through the canal, according to the Suez Canal Authority. Traveling from Singapore to New York through Suez reduces the distance by 19 percent compared with the route via the Pacific and the Panama Canal.
From the Persian Gulf to Rotterdam, Suez saves 42 percent by removing the detour around the Cape of Good Hope.
“Even without any improvements, the canal would always be attractive,” said Neil Atkinson, head of analysis at Lloyd’s List Intelligence.

http://newcanal.suezcanal.gov.eg

The finish of the Suez Canal project is in sight.
The dredging of more than a million cubic meters of sand a day is unprecedented.
And this assignment has also pushed back the boundaries in terms of speed, and the deployment of equipment and manpower.

Wider, Deeper

The second canal -- actually a new 35-kilometer channel and 37 kilometers of widening and deepening of the original -- allows two-way traffic and reduces transit time to 11 hours from 18, according to the canal operator.

The expansion won’t allow larger vessels to use the route.

New ports and logistical services are expected to follow, and the project includes six tunnels under the canal.

The authority expects revenue to grow to more than $13 billion by 2023, up from $5.5 billion in 2014.

“‘Build it and they will come’ is not enough,” said Simon Kitchen, a strategist with Cairo-Based investment bank EFG-Hermes, adding that companies will require incentives to build factories and other facilities.

“The government needs to give ships a reason to sail through the canal,” he said.

Others are more positive.

Egypt’s economy grew at over four percent in the nine months to March for the first time since 2010, mainly due to infrastructure spending related to the canal upgrade, according to investment bank Pharos Holding for Financial Investments.

 Suez Canal Authority

 Actual dredged quantities according to progress of works : 258.8 million cubic meters
Duration of execution : 12 months, including mobilization of dredgers
Consortium's first dredger to be employed in the project : Dredger "Al-Marifaa" on Nov. 5th,2014
Quantities of Dry excavation works : 250 million cubic meters
Highest daily rate of dredged quantities was achieved by dredger "Ibn Batouta" on April 6th,2015    230,000 cubic meters
Highest daily output of dredged quantities was achieved on May 31th ,2015 : 1.73 million cubic meters
Number of dredgers employed in the project : 45 dredgers
Number of sedimentation basins : 20 basins


SC1, Suez Canal, (Edition 1, dated 15th July 2015)

SC2, Suez Canal, (Edition 1, dated 15th July 2015)

Following the establishment of the New Suez Canal, the Suez Canal Authority along with Egyptian Navy Hydrographic Department have produced two charts to help mariners sail safely in the New Suez Canal.
Accordingly, sailing in the Suez Canal and vessel inspection will be performed only through charts SC1 and SC2 and no vessel will pass Suez Canal without the above charts being on board starting 06 August 2015.

Saving Money

A shorter transit may save up to 4 percent of journey costs depending on the length, the Napoli-based economic research center SRM estimates.

 Shipping times : Northeast passage vs Suez Canal
 Arctic shipping routes unlikely to be 'Suez of the north'
The North Sea route has become free of ice, but the navigation season is still just two-four months 

The project “was a necessity to maintain the attractiveness of the Suez Canal,” said Michael Storgaard, a spokesman for Maersk Line, the world’s biggest container shipping company.

Even so, it’s too early to say whether Maersk will route more vessels through Suez, he said.

Still, any future economic payoff is trumped by the political implications for the government from building confidence in El-Sisi’s leadership, according to Amr Adly, a scholar with the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.

“El-Sisi is trying to gain legitimacy through his government’s achievements,” Adly said.

His thinking is that Suez “shows the government can deliver, it can commit to something and get it done,” he said.

Links :

• The Guardian :  Egypt to open Suez canal expansion two years early
• BBC : Egypt seeks to build confidence with second Suez Canal
• WashingtonPost : Egypt’s ‘gift to the world’ cost $8 billion and probably wasn’t necessary
• Statfor : The New Suez Canal: Egypt polishes its image 
• NYTimes : Delivering unwelcome species to the Mediterranean  
• Vimeo : Van Oord, Second Suez Canal - Icon of the Future
• GeoGarage blog : Suez canal transit in 30 seconds / Suez canal scheme ‘threatens ecosystem and human activity in Mediterranean’ / Egypt to build new Suez canal

Stop burning fossil fuels now: there is no CO2 'technofix', scientists warn

 No 'Plan B' for oceans, says study

 “The chemical echo of this century’s CO2 pollution will reverberate for thousands of years,” said the report’s co-author, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber

Photograph: Doug Perrine/Design Pics/Corbis

From The Guardian by Tim Radford

Researchers have demonstrated that even if a geoengineering solution to CO2 emissions could be found, it wouldn’t be enough to save the oceans

German researchers have demonstrated once again that the best way to limit climate change is to stop burning fossil fuels now.
In a “thought experiment” they tried another option: the future dramatic removal of huge volumes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
This would, they concluded, return the atmosphere to the greenhouse gas concentrations that existed for most of human history – but it wouldn’t save the oceans.
That is, the oceans would stay warmer, and more acidic, for thousands of years, and the consequences for marine life could be catastrophic.
The research, published in Nature Climate Change today delivers yet another demonstration that there is so far no feasible “technofix” that would allow humans to go on mining and drilling for coal, oil and gas (known as the “business as usual” scenario), and then geoengineer a solution when climate change becomes calamitous.

 Atmospheric concentrations of important long-lived greenhouse gases over the last 2,000 years. Increases since about 1750 are attributed to human activities in the industrial era, via Co2now.org

Sabine Mathesius (of the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research) and colleagues decided to model what could be done with an as-yet-unproven technology called carbon dioxide removal.
One example would be to grow huge numbers of trees, burn them, trap the carbon dioxide, compress it and bury it somewhere.
Nobody knows if this can be done, but Dr Mathesius and her fellow scientists didn’t worry about that.
They calculated that it might plausibly be possible to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at the rate of 90bn tons a year.
This is twice what is spilled into the air from factory chimneys and motor exhausts right now.
The scientists hypothesized a world that went on burning fossil fuels at an accelerating rate – and then adopted an as-yet-unproven high technology carbon dioxide removal technique.
“Interestingly, it turns out that after ‘business as usual’ until 2150, even taking such enormous amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere wouldn’t help the deep ocean that much - after the acidified water has been transported by large-scale ocean circulation to great depths, it is out of reach for many centuries, no matter how much CO2 is removed from the atmosphere,” said a co-author, Ken Caldeira, who is normally based at the Carnegie Institution in the US.

The oceans cover 70% of the globe.
By 2500, ocean surface temperatures would have increased by 5C and the chemistry of the ocean waters would have shifted towards levels of acidity that would make it difficult for fish and shellfish to flourish.
Warmer waters hold less dissolved oxygen.
Ocean currents, too, would probably change.

 Ocean acidification

But while change happens in the atmosphere over tens of years, change in the ocean surface takes centuries, and in the deep oceans, millennia.
So even if atmospheric temperatures were restored to pre-Industrial Revolution levels, the oceans would continue to experience climatic catastrophe.
“In the deep ocean, the chemical echo of this century’s CO2 pollution will reverberate for thousands of years,” said co-author Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, who directs the Potsdam Institute.
“If we do not implement emissions reductions measures in line with the 2C target in time, we will not be able to preserve ocean life as we know it.”

Links :

• The Carbon brief : Geoengineering is ‘no substitute’ for cutting emissions, new studies show
• Gizmodo : This is why carbon is now called pollution

What China has been building in the South China Sea

 From reef to island in less of one year
(Fiery Cross Reef)

Images by DigitalGlobe, via the CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, 

and CNES, via Airbus DS and IHS Jane’s

From NYTimes by Derek Watkins

China has been feverishly piling sand onto reefs in the South China Sea for the past year, creating seven new islets in the region.
It is straining geopolitical tensions that were already taut.  

The speed and scale of China’s island-building spree have alarmed other countries with interests in the region.
China announced in June that the creation of islands — moving sediment from the seafloor to a reef — would soon be completed.
“The announcement marks a change in diplomatic tone, and indicates that China has reached its scheduled completion on several land reclamation projects and is now moving into the construction phase,” said Mira Rapp-Hooper, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington research group.
 So far China has built port facilities, military buildings and an airstrip on the islands.
The installations bolster China’s foothold in the Spratly Islands, a disputed scattering of reefs and islands in the South China Sea more than 500 miles from the Chinese mainland.

Sources: C.I.A., NASA, China Maritime Safety Administration

The new islands allow China to harness a portion of the sea for its own use that has been relatively out of reach until now.
Although there are significant fisheries and possible large oil and gas reserves in the South China Sea, China’s efforts serve more to fortify its territorial claims than to help it extract natural resources, Dr. Rapp-Hooper said. 
The islands are too small to support large military units but will enable sustained Chinese air and sea patrols of the area.
The United States has reported spotting Chinese mobile artillery vehicles in the region, and the islands could allow China to exercise more control over fishing in the region. 

The Chinese were relative latecomers to island building in the Spratly archipelago, and “strategically speaking, China is feeling left out,” said Sean O’Connor, principal imagery analyst for IHS Jane’s.
Still, China’s island building has far outpaced similar efforts in the area, unsettling the United States, which sees about $1.2 trillion in annual bilateral trade go through the South China Sea.
At the end of May, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter criticized China’s actions in the region.  

Several reefs have been destroyed outright to serve as a foundation for new islands, and the process also causes extensive damage to the surrounding marine ecosystem.
Frank Muller-Karger, professor of biological oceanography at the University of South Florida, said sediment “can wash back into the sea, forming plumes that can smother marine life and could be laced with heavy metals, oil and other chemicals from the ships and shore facilities being built.”
Such plumes threaten the biologically diverse reefs throughout the Spratlys, which Dr. Muller-Karger said may have trouble surviving in sediment-laden water.  

 Image by DigitalGlobe, via CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative

What Is on the Islands?

South China Sea in the GeoGarage platform (NGA chart)

Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan have all expanded islands in the Spratlys as well, but at nowhere near the same scale as China. 

 Image by DigitalGlobe, via CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative

For China, the Fiery Cross Reef is the most strategically significant new island, with a nearly completed airstrip that will be large enough to allow China to land any plane, from fighter jets to large transport aircraft.
But China’s airfield is not the first in the region — every other country that occupies the Spratlys already operates one as well. 

 Image by CNES distributed by Airbus DS, via IHS Jane’s

China’s reefs hosted smaller structures for years before the surge in construction.

By preserving these initially isolated buildings, China can claim that it is merely expanding its earlier facilities, similar to what other countries have done elsewhere in the region. 

Image by DigitalGlobe, via CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative

China continues to expand islands at two locations, Mischief Reef and Subi Reef.

It is unclear what structures will be built on the islands, though each will have straight portions long enough for airfields. 

Image by DigitalGlobe, via CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative

Links :

• The Economist : Is China making the same mistakes as Japan did before the second world war?  
• WashingtonPost : What happens to a coral reef when an island is built on top?
• The Guardian : Preventing Ecocide in South China Sea 
• CSIS : Airpower in the South China Sea