Tiger Shark attack in the South Pacific

Every year in June Tiger Sharks swim thousands of miles to the French Frigate Shoals, just in time to find Albatross chicks beginning their first attempts to fly.

>>> geolocalization with the Marine GeoGarage <<<

Breathe

Breathe - Documentary Trailer from FilmWorks Entertainment

This fascinating documentary truly goes to new depths in the search for man's physical and mental limits.

Breathe follows New Zealander, William Trubridge as he attempts to break his own world record in the extreme sport of Freediving.

William attempts to dive completely unaided to a depth of 300ft, almost to the bottom of the deepest blue hole in the world - "Dean's Blue Hole" in the Bahamas.

>>> geolocalization with the Marine GeoGarage <<< 

Featuring candid interviews with locals who live in fear of the hole, interviews with William's family members who are in constant fear for his life and stunning underwater footage of William in action, Breathe will literally leave you holding your own breath as William takes us on a journey to the depths of mankind's fascination with the underwater world.

Book in the spotlight : The Mortal Sea, fishing the Atlantic in the age of sail

UNH History Professor Jeff Bolster talks about his newest book, The Mortal Sea.

From MissionBlue

Convinced that the time has come for historians to take the living ocean seriously, University of New Hampshire history professor Jeffrey Bolster has written a new book—The Mortal Sea: Fishing the Atlantic in the Age of Sail.
In the book, Bolster takes readers through a millennium-long environmental history of human impact on the ocean.

Recently, Mission Blue caught up with Professor Bolster.
Read the Q&A below to find out about the inspiration behind the story, what interesting things didn’t make it into the volume, and how writing this book changed Professor Bolster’s own view of the ocean.

"The only noble thing a man can do with money is to build a schooner."
- Robert Louis Stevenson

Can you briefly describe what inspired you to write The Mortal Sea?

I've spent a lifetime messing around in boats, and as a young man I was a commercial seaman for ten years.
Back then, before I understood the plight of the living ocean, I caught a lot of fish.
More recently, as a historian of early America, I was convinced that the time had come for historians to take the living ocean seriously, and to include its stories in our work.
I wanted to reconstruct a vivid history peopled by individuals making what, they hoped, were the best decisions in the circumstances they faced.
But I also wanted to tell a story sufficiently large to show dramatic changes in the sea over time, a story that would peel back layers from a supposedly "traditional" past.

 Elsie I Gloucester fishing schooner

What was the most interesting or shocking thing you learned while writing this book?

The most shocking revelation was that serious conversations about the need to conserve the ocean's living resources had been occurring for a VERY long time.
In 1873, for instance, "the restoration of our exhausted cod fisheries" was a major concern of the U.S. Fish Commission, because commercial fishermen insisted that the government do something to preserve the stocks on which their livelihoods depended.
From the 1850s to about World War One, fishermen led the charge for conservation.
They wanted to keep fishing, but they wanted fish for the future, and they were very concerned about the depletions occurring right before their eyes.

 Cod fishing

Was there anything that you found to be interesting or important that didn't make it into the book? If so, what?

I had considered, as part of Chapter One, writing about human impact on the Mediterranean during the era of the Roman Empire.
But I decided that was going back too far, and that the Mediterranean was not part of the boreal North Atlantic -- my chief focus.
So I started the story in the Middle Ages, when Viking invaders became the fishmongers to Western Europe, bringing the technologies that would allow coastal Europeans to catch true sea fish.

What do you see as the biggest threat to the world's ocean?

The threats today are numerous, and include ocean acidification, plastic particulates suspended in the water column, and overfishing.
Governments and societies could do something about all three of those, but overfishing stands out as the problem with far-and-away the deepest roots.

Fog Warning by Winslow Homer
 Cod fishing the Grand Banks / Schooners, Dories and such

Who do you hope reads this book and why?

It's for everyone who cares about the ocean, and is moved by its moods and fogs, its mysteries, its diurnal tidal pulse, and its impact on peoples' imaginations.
Ideally, I would like fisheries managers and politicians to read it because it drives home several crucial points.
One: overfishing is by no means a recent phenomenon.
Two: Ecological time functions on a very different scale from the two-year and four-year political cycles that drive policy.
It took us centuries to make a colossal mess of North Atlantic ecosystems.
We shouldn't delude ourselves that we can "fix" the problem soon.

What do you hope people will take away from the book?

That without genuinely historical perspectives on changes in the sea we can have no idea of the magnitude of the restoration challenges we face.

Cod fishing, Pesca do Bacalhau, Newfound Land, Portugal, Canada, Creoula, 1966, The White Ship

Has writing this book changed your own view about the ocean? If so, how?

I have spent thousands of days and nights underway in the North Atlantic and Caribbean Sea, and I used to think I knew something about the sea.
Now I sense that my generation (I'm 58 years old) may have been the last to come of age influenced by the flawed assumptions that the sea was immortal.
As late as 1951 someone as perceptive as Rachel Carson could write that mankind "cannot control or change the ocean, as in his brief tenancy of earth, he has subdued and plundered the continents."
She called it wrong, and were she alive today she would want to know how we had been so myopic.
My book explains that story.
And the first line of the Epilogue conveys my current appreciation of the situation.
"In its immensity and fragility the sea has never been equaled."

Links :

• Wikipedia : History of fishing

Seabird atlas shows 3,000 key ocean conservation hotspots

Marine e-Atlas

From TheGuardian

A new atlas of the world's oceans issued on Tuesday shows more than 3,000 sites important to seabirds as part of a drive to improve conservation.

Northern Fulmar. Photo: Ben Lascelles

The free online atlas could help governments plan, for instance, where to set up wildlife protection areas at sea or where to permit offshore wind turbines or oil and gas exploration, they said.
The atlas, showing areas vital to birds including pelicans, sandpipers, cormorants and skuas, was compiled by BirdLife International, drawing on work by 1,000 bird experts, government ministries and secretariats of UN conventions.
"Seabirds are now the most threatened group of birds.
They present unique conservation problems, since many species travel thousands of kilometres across international waters," BirdLife International said in a statement.

It identifies more than 3,000 important bird areas (IBAs) worldwide, such as breeding grounds and migration routes, covering in total 6.2% of the world's oceans.
"Our initial target is to encourage governments to use this tool and use this data in their national planning," Ben Lascelles, BirdLife's global marine IBA co-ordinator, told Reuters.
He said that Japan, for instance, had recently consulted BirdLife about where to site offshore windfarms to avoid damage to migratory birds.

 Wedge-tailed shearwater ©BenLascelles

The atlas was unveiled at a UN conference on biological diversity in Hyderabad, India.
Areas such as off the tip of South Africa where or the Pacific off South America were among the most important "hotspots" for birds.
The atlas might also lead to the development of other global marine maps, for instance for turtles, whales or sharks, and encourage governments to identify where to site marine protected areas.
Governments have set a goal of protecting 10% of the entire area of the oceans by 2020.
"People have often cited a lack of data as a reason for inaction for protection and management of sites, particularly on the high seas," Lascelles said.
"This is showing that there is a lot of data out there."

NZ Linz update in the Marine GeoGarage

 NZ5322/5323 Auckland

29 charts have been updated in the Marine GeoGarage

(Linz July published 13 September 2012 updates) 

• NZ22 Kermadec Islands to East Cape
• NZ23 New Zealand, North Island
• NZ25 New Zealand, South Island
• NZ46 Cook Strait
• NZ53 Bream Head to Slipper Island including Hauraki Gulf
• NZ222 Kermadec Islands
• NZ463 Approaches to Wellington
• NZ521 Cape Brett to Bream Tail
• NZ532 Approaches to Auckland
• NZ614 Tasman Bay
• NZ615 Marlborough Sounds
• NZ864 Apolima Strait
• NZ885 Tokelau
• NZ4314 Manukau Harbour
• NZ4633 Wellington Harbour
• NZ4634 Entrance to Wellington Harbour and Plans of Wharves
• NZ5214 Marsden Point
• NZ5219 Approaches to Marsden Point
• NZ5322 Auckland Harbour East
• NZ5323 Auckland Harbour West
• NZ5324 Tamaki Strait and Approaches including Waiheke Island
• NZ5325 Tamaki River
• NZ5571 Poverty Bay and Approaches to Gisborne: Gisborne Harbour and Entrance
• NZ6153 Queen Charlotte Sound
• NZ6154 Tory Channel Entrance and Picton Harbour
• NZ14060 Australasia and Adjacent Waters
• NZ14061 South Pacific Ocean Western Portion
• NZ14600 New Zealand including Norfolk and Campbell Island / Motu Ihupuku
• NZ14605 New Zealand to Fiji and Samoa Islands

Today NZ Linz charts (178 charts / 340 including sub-charts) are displayed in the Marine GeoGarage.

Note :  LINZ produces official nautical charts to aid safe navigation in New    Zealand waters and certain areas of Antarctica and the South-West    Pacific.

Using charts safely involves keeping them up-to-date using Notices to Mariners