Are traditional sail boats the future of trade?

Today, around 90% of world trade is currently carried by the shipping industry, contributing to 4% of global carbon emissions.

"The model we have now of shipping is unsustainable -- for business and the environment"
Captain Arjen van der Veen

From CNN

With their billowing sails, towering masts and long wooden hulls, 19th century clipper ships were staggering feats of design -- and Europe's lifeline to the world's most exotic goods.

 One of the best known trading companies of the era was Britain's East India Company. 

This historic painting depicts the company's Captain Henry Wilson shipwrecked on the Pelew Islands, later the Republic of Palau, around 1783.

Laden with spices, teas and chocolates from across the globe, the use of these wind-powered sailing vessels reached its peak during the late 1800's, a period often referred to as the "Golden Age of Sail."
Abandoned in the advent of steamboats, the centuries-old transport is now enjoying a revival among cargo traders, with a new breed of merchant ships returning to wind power in an effort to promote environmentally sustainable trade.

 The merchant ship Challenger, pictured in Bermuda in 1865.

Spices, tea and chocolate from across the globe were delivered in ever increasing quantities to the dining tables of Europe, as the ships became larger and more efficient.

This week, the 32-meter brigantine Tres Hombres set sail from the Netherlands to the Caribbean in an eight-month voyage transporting ale, wine, rum and chocolate -- much the same way as merchant ships would have done 150 years ago.

Named in honor of the three friends who founded the ambitious scheme, the 35-ton carbon-neutral vessel has no motor and relies on solar-powered fridges to keep its cargo cool.

"A lot of shipping companies are going bankrupt because fuel is so expensive," said one of the ship's founders and co-captain, Arjen van der Veen.

"The model we have now of shipping is unsustainable -- both for business and the environment. We chose a traditional rig because it's a beautiful design and we wanted to show people sailing can still be effective."

From its base in Den Helder in the Netherlands, Tres Hombres will head to Brixham in England where it will pick up 100,000 bottles of ale, delivering them to Douarnenez in France.

From there it will sail to ports across Europe and the Caribbean, transporting 500 liters of wine, 50,000 chocolate bars, 4,000 bottles of rum and 5-tons of cocoa beans in a round trip.

All the cargo is organic, making it eco-friendly from the moment it is produced to the moment it lands on the supermarket shelf, Van der Veen explained.

"The whole chain of production is sustainable," he said.

"For companies, it makes their goods unique. It's a little more expensive but people are willing to pay because it has no carbon footprint."

 The 19th century "Golden Age of Sail" could be experiencing a revival. Modern-day cargo ship, Tres Hombres (pictured), is relying solely on wind power for its eight-month voyage to the Caribbean.

The Sail Transport Network (STN), a green travel campaign group, is now looking to create a sustainable transport certificate, much like the "Fair Trade" and "Organic" stamps found on other foods.

STN founder Jan Lundberg predicts that wind-powered cargo ships will soon be the norm as the world's fossil fuel supplies continue to diminish.

"The accelerating rate of change in the economy and finance, the peak oil factor and the climate crisis are all tipping factors. If more people sense this soon, you could see a jump in sail transport investment," he said.

"Many smaller older cargo vessels are idle today and are also being recycled -- these are realistic candidates for conversion to sail."

Recent figures show there is much at stake when it comes to sustainable transport on the high-seas. Around 90% of world trade is currently carried by the shipping industry, according to the International Maritime Organization.

The industry contributes 4% of global carbon emissions, United Nations figures show. Indeed, it says that if shipping were a country, it would be the sixth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world.

But it could be that the winds of change are on the horizon. From January next year, new International Maritime Organization regulations will require shipping companies to cut emissions by 20% over the next seven years and a further 50% by 2050.

"By 2025 all new ships have to be 20% more efficient, so shipyards will also be compelled to produce more fuel-efficient vessels," Simon Bennett of the International Chamber of Shipping said.

"What's also important is that fuel costs have risen 400% since 2000 -- the operating costs are huge. In any case, every shipping company wants to reduce its emissions."

With these environmental concerns in mind, Van der Veen and his fellow Dutch captains Andreas Lackner and Jorne Langelaan set about building the Tres Hombres in 2007, using the hull of a former passenger ferry in the Aran Islands off the coast of Ireland.

Completed in 2009, this is Tres Hombre's fourth trade trip after previous voyages across western Europe, the Caribbean and even delivering relief aid to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.

 Tres Hombres managing company, Fair Transport, also hopes to build a 136-meter cargo ship which would use at least 50% wind power.

A diesel and electric motor would provide power in less windy conditions.

The trio are certainly not alone in their quest to find green alternatives to the gas-guzzling cargo vessels of the 21st century.

British wind power company B9 recently tested a model of its planned 100-meter, 3,000-ton carbon-neutral freighter.

The ship would use 60% wind power, relying on three computer-operated masts rising 55-meters -- as tall as a 14-storey building.

We're running out of fuel and we have to be a little bit cleverer about how we deploy our ships
Diane Gilpin, B9 co-director

This would be supplemented by a bio-gas engine converting food waste into methane; the food waste being anything from restaurant slops to out-of-date sandwiches.

B9 co-director Diane Gilpin said the design would best suit smaller vessels, and they are now looking for between $30 million and $45 million in funding to get it off the ground.

 British wind power company B9 recently tested a model of its 100-meter, 3,000-ton carbon-neutral freighter.

The ship would use 60% wind power, relying on three computer-operated masts rising 55-meters.

"In the last 100 years we've been absolutely besotted with what oil can do for us," she said.

"Now we're running out of fuel and we have to be a little bit cleverer about how we deploy our ships."

She admits it will be a challenge changing the traditionally conservative shipping industry, but added: "If we're looking at a new, green, industrial revolution, those early movers will benefit from being there at the outset."

As Van der Veen said when the Tres Hombres crew first floated the idea of a engine-less cargo ship: "Everybody thought it was crazy but we've proved them wrong.

"It's so satisfying -- it's part of our goal to make a transport revolution."

Links :

• The enduring allure of tall ships
• $16m solar boat sails into record books
• The luxury superyacht that doubles as a science lab
• GeoGarage blog : Age of sail boats inspires green solutions

Tiger Shark attack in the South Pacific

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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.

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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."