A total of 406 incidents of piracy and armed robbery have been reported in the 2009 annual piracy report issued by the ICC International Maritime Bureau’s Piracy Reporting Centre (IMB PRC).
The total number of incidents attributed to the Somali pirates stands at 217 with 47 vessels hijacked and 867 crew members taken hostage. Somalia accounts for more than half of the 2009 figures, with the attacks continuing to remain opportunistic in nature.
2009 has however seen a significant shift in the area of attacks off Somalia. While the 2008 attacks were predominantly focused in the Gulf of Aden, 2009 has witnessed more vessels also being targeted along the east coast of Somalia. Since October increased activity has been observed in the Indian Ocean with 33 incidents reported, including 13 hijackings. Thirteen of these last quarter incidents occurred east of the recommended east of 60° east – including four hijacked vessels. Many of these attacks have occurred at distances of approximately 1000 nautical miles off Mogadishu.
Some analysts argue about the other side of the story : Somalia piracy began in response to illegal fishing and toxic dumping by Western ships off Somali Coast ('The truth behind the Somali pirate situation' by Democracy Now videos #1 / #2 )
Links :
Thierry Joliveau, Professor of Geomatics at the University Jean Monnet of Saint-Etienne (France) is describing in his interesting blog :
"A systematic inventory of maps in The Adventures of Tintin has still to be be done, but, surprising though it might seem, the reporter and globetrotter does not use maps very often. Take just one example : the Red Rackham’s Treasure album, that Steven Spielberg is adapting for the cinema.
No map is shown in the book, if we don’t count the globe at the very end of the album (see below). The story is, nevertheless, fully geographical.
When Haddock and Tintin ship out in search of Red Rackham’s treasure, they have two clues: a pair of geographic coordinates and a mysterious reference to “The Cross of the Eagle”.
And their journey on the Sirius begins with a localization error.
Tintin finally understands that the coordinates provided by the ancestor of the Captain, the Knight of Hadoque, were calculated in reference to the Paris and not the Greenwich Meridian, which became the official international reference in October 1884, after a long French resistance for imposing the Paris Meridian.
Knowing that the Paris Meridian is located 2° 20‘ 16” further east than the Greenwich Meridian, we see that the Island is located at 20° 37′ 42″ North latitude, 68° 31‘ 59” West longitude.Actually to be exact 2° 20' 16.0058" is the offset with ED50 European Datum 1950. The right value is 2° 20' 11.4874" with RGF93 French Geodesic Network (very closed to WGS84).This episode is often used by teachers as a geometry exercise (example).
Nowadays we simply enter these coordinates into Marine GeoGarage (20.628333/-68.534444, longitude as a negative digital number, since we are located west of the Greenwich Meridian) and we observe that the wreck of the Unicorn is located near Saint-Domingue’s coast.
If you have Google Earth on your computer, you can also use this kmz file (spiced up with a little surprise picture).
Note that Hergé placed the island not far from the shoals of Navidad Bank and Silver Bank, famous places for the number of ancient shipwrecks.
This episode confirms the well-known fact that Hergé’s creation was a well-researched and a very documented process, at last since The Blue Lotus."
But despite this realistic dimension, in a website written by another Tintin's fan, Nicolas Saborin pointed some approximation relative to geographic coordinates and globe representation.
Actually, at page 61, this is a curious globe which stands at the feet of the statue of St. John the Evangelist.
If the meridian of Greenwich (or Paris) is indeed well represented, we can also see the meridian 70° W (longitude of the wreck) and the meridian 50° E (eastern point of Africa).
Some would rather have drawn meridians every 60°.
A parallel is represented at the height of the middle of Spain, 40° N.
So finally, the point representing the wreckage is placed too high.
Its latitude (20° N) should be halfway between the equator and the 40° N parallel. Of course !
An island located in the Bay of Bengal that were a cause of fighting between India and Bangladesh over the last thirty years, has been engulfed by waves two days ago.
So the rising sea levels caused by global warming was responsible for finally resolving the dispute between the two countries.
Named "New Moore" by the Hindus and "South Talpatti" by the Bengalis, the island of 2.5 km² ((27,000 sq ft) located in the Sunderbans, emerged in the aftermath of the Bhola cyclone in 1970, first discovered by a U.S. satellite in 1974, has been swamped by the waves.
Before, various remote sensing surveys showed that this unhabited island had expanded gradually to an area of about 10 km² (110,000 sq ft) at low tide -at most, about 3.5 km (2.2 mi) in length and 3 km (1.9 mi) in width-, including a number of ordinarily submerged shoals. The highest elevation of the island had never exceeded two meters above sea level.
Announced by oceanographer Sugata Hazra (a professor at Jadavpur University in Calcutta), this disappearance was confirmed by satellite images and marine patrols.
"The two countries failed to resolve during the years of talks was set by global warming" quipped Sugata Hazra warning before a dozen other islands of the archipelago could also disappear. Scientists at the Jadavpur University have indeed found an alarming rise in sea level over the last ten years in the Bay of Bengal. During the last decade, the increase has reached an annual average of 5 mm (3 mm until 2000).
Bangladesh is and will be one of the countries the most affected by global warming, its 150 million inhabitants living mainly in a delta close to the level of the sea. The Bangladeshi authorities think that 18% of the coastline will be submerged and 20 million people have to be displaced by 2050 if, according to expert forecasts of climate, sea level rises one meter over the next four decades.
Links :
Google has just finished pushing out an imagery update for Google Earth (see the updated areas highlighted in red and available in the kml file)
It's interesting to note that a large amount of bathymetric data has been included in this batch (mainly along the Southern California Coast and around Pacific islands)
This is the result of Google Earth's new ocean initiative leading multiple institutions and governmental organizations to supply bathymetry data for the three-dimensional backdrop required for Google Earth users to explore the ocean world.
Note : as bathymetry is not available in Google Maps (2D), Marine GeoGarage proposes to view bathymetry clicking Map content/background/'Physical' layer.
Links :
Marine impact kml (Google Earth)
The University of California, UC Santa Barbara, through its 'NECEAS National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis' department has mapped the impact of human activities on the oceans.
World map represents a synthesis of 17 different activities such as climate change, warming water, ocean acidification, coastal pollution, oil drilling, invasive species, certain fisheries, maritime transport and population density...
Researchers have also modeled integrated and marine ecosystems such as seagrass beds, marshes, mangroves, coral reefs and mudflats.
Hundreds of experts from various marine ecosystems have crossed their own data with the levels of these 17 factors, and all results have been modeled on a scale of 1 pixel per 1 sq km of ocean. The map gives a mathematical value (between 0 and 20) the environmental impact of each point without being able to specify the exact nature.
The coral reefs are among the most affected, but contrary to popular belief, the deep areas are sometimes more affected than the coastal area.
Among the most affected waters: ocean space located between Japan and China, the North Sea between the UK and Norway, the north-eastern United States, the Bering Sea. The area least affected are mainly near the poles.
This map highlights the need to take into account the cumulative effects of various pollutants.
The interviews given by the scientists behind this work are alarming but not negative: the collaboration between researchers and industrialists, fishermen, shipping, may lead to changes in practices conducive to improving the marine ecosystems .
Links :
