First signs of a new swell

FIRST SIGNS OF A NEW SWELL from Matt Kleiner

WAY OF THE OCEAN is a five part movie series exploring the world's oceans and the surf they provide.

The Atlas of Coasts and Oceans

Announcing The Atlas of Coasts and Oceans: Ecosystems, Threatened Resources, Marine Conservation by Don Hinrichsen, published this month by the University of Chicago Press

"An extremely important contribution to marine science and a superb way of consolidating large amounts of complex information, and putting it into a format and language that can only enhance our understanding of the marine world around us."—Greg Stone, senior vice president for marine conservation and chief scientist for oceans, Conservation International

Oceans drive the world's climate, nurture marine ecosystems full of aquatic life, and provide shipping lanes that have defined the global economy for centuries.
Yet they are increasingly threatened by human activities such as commercial fishing, coastal real estate development, and industrial pollution.
Published this month by the University of Chicago Press, The Atlas of Coasts and Oceans by Don Hinrichsen documents the fraught relationship between humans and the earth's largest bodies of water—and outlines the conservation steps needed to protect the marine environment for generations to come.

The Atlas offers a fascinating and often sobering account of how urbanization, climate change, offshore oil drilling, shipping routes, global tourism, and maritime conflict have had a profound impact on the world's oceans and coasts.
Combining text and images in visually engaging, thematically organized map spreads, this volume addresses the ecological, environmental, and economic importance of marine phenomena such as coral reefs, eroding shorelines, hurricanes, and fish populations—and how development threatens to destroy the ultimate source of all life on the "blue planet."
Lavishly illustrated with global and regional maps, from the Arabian Gulf to the Great Barrier Reef, from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, and all the other major global waterways, The Atlas of Coasts and Oceans will be the definitive companion to any study of its subject for years to come.

About the author: Don Hinrichsen is the author of many books on the environment and development, including Coastal Waters of the World, Our Common Future, and The Atlas of the Environment.
Now senior development manager at the Institute of War and Peace Reporting in London, he has worked with UN agencies, governments, and NGOs in some sixty developing countries.

Arctic cruise company sues over stranded ship

A three dimensional survey of the spot where the MV Clipper Adventurer was grounded.

From CBC

The Canadian government is facing a multimillion-dollar lawsuit from the owner of a cruise ship that became stranded in the Northwest Passage last summer, CBC News has learned.
Adventurer Owner Ltd. of Nassau, Bahamas, is seeking at least $15 million US for costs related to its cruise ship, MV Clipper Adventurer, running aground on Aug. 27, 2010, according to a statement of claim that has been filed with the Federal Court.

The Clipper Adventurer was ferrying 128 passengers through the Arctic passage when it struck an uncharted rock shelf in Coronation Gulf, near Kugluktuk, Nunavut.
No one was injured, but the passengers and crew were forced to stay on the stranded ship for almost two days until a Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker arrived to take them to Kugluktuk.
The passengers were customers of Adventure Canada, a tour operator that had chartered the Clipper Adventurer for the Arctic cruise.
It took more than two weeks before the cruise ship was refloated on Sept. 14, 2010, according to Adventurer Owner's statement of claim.

The MV Clipper Adventurer cruise ship is shown in this Canadian Coast Guard photo from Aug. 29, 2010, the day when the ship's passengers were rescued. (Canadian Coast Guard/Canadian Press)

Ship was seriously damaged.
The company claims that the ship was seriously damaged, and it was taken to a shipyard in Poland for repairs in November and December.
The damages Adventurer Owner is seeking from the federal government includes $12 million in repair and salvage costs related to the ship's hull, $2.6 million for loss of business, and $350,000 in other costs.

The company says the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans failed to inform mariners about the rock shelf, which the department has known about since September 2007, according to the statement of claim.The nautical charts the Clipper Adventurer's captain had on board indicated there were 29 metres of water in that spot, when there were only three metres, the company claims.
Federal officials "failed to put in place and maintain, or to take reasonable steps to put in place and maintain … any reasonable system for disseminating such information," the company's claim states in part.

>>> geolocalization with the Marine GeoGarage <<<
CHS map 7777 Coronation Gulf Western Portion
LNM/D 04-JUN-2004 or 2004-06-04 DFO (6603630-02) :
Add depth of 2.3 metres (See Chart No. 1, I10)
67°58'16.3"N 112°40'20.4"W
This notice might affect Electronic Navigation Chart: CA373341 ENC (2007)

None of Adventure Owner's allegations have been proven in court.
The federal government has not yet filed a statement of defense.
A court motion indicates that lawyers have asked for more time.Links :

• UNB : Arctic rescue
• NunatsiaqOnline : Expert: Clipper Adventurer ran into a known hazard
• CHS : Central and Arctic Risk Area Chart
• Canada.com : Canadian rescue capacity questioned in wake of Arctic ship grounding
• CNN : Canada aids cruise ship stuck in the Arctic Ocean
• YouTube : CBC talks to passengers who were rescued from the ship after it was grounded in ice (2010-08-30)

Pure Bronte

PURE BRONTE from Marcus O'Brien

Track: Nothing Brings Me Down / Artist: Emiliana Torrini

Another massive winter swell hit Sydney's coast over the last week generating monster sized waves putting on an impressive display of power and beauty along the coastline.

People spend hours and hours perched atop the cliffs at Bronte (pronounced Bron-tee) marvelling at the sheer power of the waves crashing to shore whilst observing surfers taking on the big swells.
What do people think about as they look out onto the huge swells rolling in and crashing up against the shore?
Always wondered.... and how therapeutic it is for so many people.

As it was a southerly swell generated by a huge low pressure system off Tasmania only a couple of Sydney's city beaches are rideable for the surfers - Bronte, my favourite beach and local, being one of them.

>>> geolocalization with the Marine GeoGarage <<<

This is PURE BRONTE.....

Huge underwater volcanoes discovered near Antarctica

Sea-floor mapping technology reveals volcanoes beneath the sea surface
Credit: British Antarctic Survey.

From OurAmazingPlanet

A string of a dozen volcanoes, at least several of them active, has been found beneath the frigid seas near Antarctica, the first such discovery in that region.

Some of the peaks tower nearly 10,000 feet (3,000 meters) above the ocean floor — nearly tall enough to break the water's surface.

"That's a big volcano. That's a very big volcano. If that was on land it would be quite remarkable," said Philip Leat, a vulcanologist with the British Antarctic Survey who led a seafloor mapping expedition to the region in 2007 and 2010.

The group of 12 underwater mountains lies south of the South Sandwich Islands — desolate, ice-covered volcanoes that rise above the southern Atlantic Ocean about halfway between South America and South Africa and erupted as recently as 2008.

>>> geolocalization with the Marine GeoGarage <<<

It's the first time such a large number of undersea volcanoes has been found together in the Antarctic region.

Newly-discovered volcanoes.
The peak in the foreground is thought to be the most active, with eruptions in the past few years.

Leat said the survey team was somewhat surprised by the find.
"We knew there were other volcanoes in the area, but we didn't go trying to find volcanoes," Leat told OurAmazingPlanet.
"We just went because there was a big blank area on the map and we had no idea what was there; we just wanted to fill in the seafloor."

Seafloor surprise

The team did so, thanks to ship-borne seafloor mapping technology, and not without a few hair-raising adventures.

Leat said the images of the seafloor appear before your eyes on screens as the ship moves through the water.
"So it's very exciting," he said.
"You go along and suddenly you see the bottom start to rise up underneath you, and you don't know how shallow it's going to get."

At one point, in the dead of night, the team encountered a volcano so large it looked as though the RRS James Clark Ross, the team's research vessel, might actually crash into the hidden summit.
"It was quite frightening, actually," Leat said.

The researchers stopped the ship and decided to return in daylight.
The onboard instruments revealed that some of the peaks rise within 160 feet (50 meters) of the ocean's surface.

Volcanoes confirmed

Though the peaks are largely invisible without the aid of 3-D mapping technology, scientists can tell they're volcanoes.

Volcanoes! The team mapped an area about 100 miles wide and nearly the length of Britain

The missing parts of the image are where islands blocked the research vessel's mapping sonar.

Leat said their conelike silhouette is a dead giveaway.
"There's no other way of getting that shape on the seafloor," he said.
In addition, the researchers dredged up rocky material from several peaks and found it rife with volcanic ash, lumps of pumice and black lava.

The find backed up reports from a ship that visited the area in 1962, which indicated a hidden volcano had erupted in the region.

Leat's biologist colleagues discovered some interesting creatures living in the hot-spring-like conditions near the underwater mountains, and news on that will be forthcoming, Leat said.

Despite the frozen, isolated conditions, Leat said the expeditions were far from boring.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
Each moment, a hidden world never before seen by humans unfolded before their eyes.

"It's amazing," Leat said, "and you can hardly go to bed at night because you want to see what's happening."

Links :

• YouTube : Exploring undersea volcanoes around Antarctica