250 m deep canyon found under Red Sea

A 3D image of the Grand Canyon-style ocean floor beneath the Red Sea

From Gov.uk

A Royal Navy survey ship has discovered a previously uncharted 250-metre-deep canyon on the floor of the Red Sea.

HMS Enterprise has produced a series of stunning images of a Grand Canyon-style ocean floor hidden deep under the Red Sea.

The vessel used her state-of-the-art surveying equipment to reveal the natural wonder during her nine-month mission to improve understanding of the waters east of Suez.

Discovering the 250-metre-deep canyon after leaving the Egyptian port of Safaga, the ship used her sophisticated multibeam echo sounder to create the 3D images, allowing the ocean floor to be seen for the first time.

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Commanding Officer of HMS Enterprise, Commander Derek Rae, said:
"These features could be the result of ancient rivers scouring through the rock strata before the Red Sea flooded millennia ago.
Some may be far younger - and still in the process of being created by underwater currents driven by the winds and tidal streams as they flow through this area of the Red Sea, carving their way through the soft sediment and being diverted by harder bed rock.
Or there is always the possibility that they are a combination of the two.
It is, however, almost certain to say that this is the closest that humans will ever get to gaze upon these truly impressive sights hundreds of metres beneath the surface."

 A 3D image of the Grand Canyon-style ocean floor beneath the Red Sea [Picture: Crown copyright]

The echo sounder, which is fitted to Enterprise’s hull, produces the images from the echoes returning from the sound pulses it sends out.
This is a highly accurate way to measure the sea bed to determine if the depth of water is safe for navigation and shipping.

This was the first time HMS Enterprise has visited Safaga, which lies on the western shore of the Red Sea - approximately 250 miles south of Suez.
Safaga is the headquarters of the Egyptian Navy’s Red Sea Command and the ship’s company attended both formal and sporting events to ensure regional links are strongly maintained.

[Picture: Crown copyright]

HMS Enterprise will remain in the Middle East until the summer, building on the successes of her sister ship HMS Echo, which discovered numerous wrecks and obstacles during a 19-month deployment to the same region.

As well as helping to update some of the 3,300-plus Admiralty Charts which are used by many of the world’s seafarers (including the Royal Navy), the survey ship will also support the wider international naval effort to prevent piracy and other criminal activities in the Indian Ocean and environs.

Entire Maldives nation becoming biosphere reserve

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From Discovery

The entire Maldives nation has pledged to become a United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Biosphere Reserve.
The Maldives, an archipelago southwest of India, plans to implement the reserve plan on more than half of its islands by 2017.

North and South Malosmadulu Atolls are in the Maldives, an island republic in the northern Indian Ocean, southwest of India.

Maldives is made up of a chain of 1192 small coral islands that are grouped into clusters of atolls.

It has a total area of 298 sq.

To become an official UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, the Maldives must follow guidelines set forth by the UN’s Man and the Biosphere Program and the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The Biosphere Reserve’s strategy must integrate management of natural resources with conservation and sustainable use.
The plan also must seek to ensure equitable distribution of natural resource wealth.
Currently, there are 610 biosphere reserves in 117 countries.

 One of the most beautiful underwater ecosystem in the world : coral reef atolls in Maldives

“This pledge from the Maldives is extraordinary in size and potential impact,” said CBD Executive Secretary Braulio Ferreria de Souza, in a press release.
“We should expect that it will be an inspiration to other CBD parties.”

The president of the Maldives, Mohammed Waheed Hassan Manik, was inspired to pledge his entire nation’s intention to become a Biosphere Reserve after the success of the reserve formed in the Maldives Baa Atoll, according to the UNESCO press release.

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The Maldives are a low-lying chain of islands and are seriously threatened by rising sea levels.
The highest point on the island chain is only 2.4 (7.8 feet) meters above sea level.
The capital of the Maldives, Malé, lies approximately 2 meters (6.6 feet) above sea level.
Other residential and commercially developed parts of the nation are less that 40 centimeters (16 inches) above high tide.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change‘s conservative estimates for sea level rise are 22 to 44 centimeters (8 to 16 inches) above 1990 levels by 2090.
However, a 2009 paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences warned sea levels may rise between 75 and 190 centimeters (30 to 75 inches).

Even the most conservative estimate will result in much of the Maldives going the way of Atlantis.

NOAA’s Coast Survey plans for new Arctic nautical charts

NOAA's planned charts of the Arctic

From NOAA

NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey has issued an updated Arctic Nautical Charting Plan, as a major effort to improve inadequate chart coverage for Arctic areas experiencing increasing vessel traffic due to ice diminishment.

 NOAA charts coverage in the Marine GeoGarage

The update came after consultations with maritime interests and the public, as well as with other federal, state, and local agencies.
“As multi-year sea ice continues to disappear, vessel traffic in the Arctic is on the rise,” said Rear Admiral Gerd Glang, NOAA Coast Survey director.
“This is leading to new maritime concerns about adequate charts, especially in areas increasingly transited by the offshore oil and gas industry and cruise liners.”
“Given the lack of emergency response infrastructure in remote Arctic waters, nautical charts are even more important to protect lives and fragile coastal areas,” Glang said.

Commercial vessels depend on NOAA to provide charts and publications with the latest depth information, aids to navigation, accurate shorelines, and other features required for safe navigation in U.S. waters.

But many regions of Alaska’s coastal areas have never had full bottom bathymetric surveys, and some haven’t had more than superficial depth measurements since Captain Cook explored the northern regions in the late 1700s.
“Ships need updated charts with precise and accurate measurements,” said Capt. Doug Baird, chief of Coast Survey’s marine chart division.
“We don’t have decades to get it done. Ice diminishment is here now.”

 NOAA Ship Fairweather at anchor near the Bering Strait in 2010, courtesy of NOAA

NOAA plans to create 14 new charts to complement the existing chart coverage.
For example, seven of the charts will complete chart coverage from the Alaska Peninsula to Cape Lisburne at the edge of the North Slope, and more charts support the future maritime transportation infrastructure in the coastal areas north of the Aleutian Islands.

NOAA has been taking stakeholder feedback since the first Arctic Charting Plan was issued in 2011. One improvement called for additional detail to the Kotzebue Harbor and Approaches chart, which was published as the first plan-inspired new chart, in April 2012.

Mariners and the interested public can submit comments through the Coast Survey Inquiry and Discrepancy System online.

These latest efforts also support the objectives of the National Ocean Policy that foster understanding of changing conditions in the Arctic, and focus on ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes observations, mapping, and infrastructure by strengthening mapping capabilities into a national system and integrating that system into international observation efforts.

NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey is the nation’s nautical chartmaker.
Originally formed by President Thomas Jefferson in 1807, Coast Survey updates charts, surveys the coastal seafloor, responds to maritime emergencies, and searches for underwater obstructions that pose a danger to navigation.
Follow Coast Survey on Twitter @nauticalcharts, and check out the NOAA Coast Survey blog at http://noaacoastsurvey.wordpress.com for more in-depth coverage of surveying and charting.
NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth's environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and to conserve and manage our coastal and marine resources. Join us on Facebook, Twitter and our other social media channels.

Links :

• Marine GeoGarage :  Arctic reconnaissance survey checks old soundings to prioritize future surveys / NOAA : New Alaska navigational chart makes increased Arctic shipping safer
  

Oceanic squid do fly

Image taken by Kouta Muramatsu of Hokkaido University on July 25, 2011 shows the oceanic squid flying in the air in the northwest Pacific Ocean.

It propels itself out of the ocean by shooting a jet of water at high pressure, before opening its fins to glide at up to 11.2m per second, the university said.

From AFP

A species of oceanic squid can fly more than 30 metres (100 feet) through the air at speeds faster than Usain Bolt if it wants to escape predators, Japanese researchers said Friday.
The Neon Flying Squid propels itself out of the ocean by shooting a jet of water at high pressure, before opening its fins to glide at up to 11.2 metres per second, Jun Yamamoto of Hokkaido University said.
Olympic Gold medallist Bolt averaged 10.31 metres a second when he won at the London Games last year.
"There were always witnesses and rumours that said squid were seen flying, but no one had clarified how they actually do it. We have proved that it really is true," Yamamoto told AFP.
Researchers say is the first time anyone has ever described the mechanism the flying mollusc employs.
Yamamoto and his team were tracking a shoal of around 100 squid, part of the Japanese Flying Squid family, in the northwest Pacific, 600 kilometres (370 miles) east of Tokyo, in July 2011.

Graphic on a species of squid that can fly more than 30 metres through the air to escape predators.

The squid are in the air for about three seconds and travel upwards of 30 metres, said Yamamoto, in what he believed was a defence strategy to escape being eaten.
But, he added, being out of the ocean opened a new front, leaving the cephalopods vulnerable to other predators.
"This finding means that we should no longer consider squid as things that live only in the water. It is highly possible that they are also a source of food for sea birds."
The study was published by German science magazine Marine Biology this week.
News of the finding comes after other Japanese scientists last month unveiled the world's first pictures of the elusive giant squid in its natural habitat, deep in the Pacific ocean.
Japan's National Science Museum succeeded in filming the huge creature at a depth of more than half a kilometre (a third of a mile) after teaming up with Japanese public broadcaster NHK and the US Discovery Channel.
Footage of the giant squid -- Architeuthis to scientists -- provided final proof of the quasi-mythical ocean-dwelling beast reported by sailors for centuries.
Researchers say Architeuthis eats other types of squid and grenadier, a species of fish that lives in the deep ocean. They say it can grow to be longer than 10 metres.

MV Lyubov Orlova's emergency beacon activated

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From TheTelegram

An emergency beacon registered to the MV Lyubov Orlova has gone off, according to an official with the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre in Halifax.

 photo The Telegram

Capt. Wayne Jarvis says the beacon first started off going off this morning at 12:49 a.m.
Emergency beacons can be activated manually or automatically by either being knocked or hitting the water.
The beacon is registered to the MV Lyubov Orlova but whether that means it’s on the ship itself or was on a lifeboat that was on the vessel is uncertain.
A life raft with the beacon could have gone overboard causing the beacons to activate, says Jarvis.
 “It could have banged itself into operation. On the other hand maybe the vessel sank. Everything is speculation at this point,” says Capt. Jarvis.
“We don’t know what caused it. The beacon just started going off. We’re just keeping an eye on the position for reports at sea just to make sure nobody runs into it but otherwise nothing is beng pursued on it.”

Navarea IV message in Google Earth (kml)

updated geolocalization in the Marine GeoGarage (24/02/2013 18:14 utc)

(source JRCC Halifax)

The location of the dead cruise ship has been a mystery since it drifted into international waters earlier this month.
Canadian officials haven’t had a positive location on the ship since February 4.
The Irish coast guard has been working with a number of satellite and geospatial companies to try and locate the ship out of fear it might be drifting towards their shores.
The Irish coast guard thought perhaps they had found the vessel and that it was heading more toward Iceland but whether what they found was the Orlova is now bing called into question.

On Friday 22, a document published by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, an agency of the US Department of Defense, said they had located the Orlova about 2,400 km off the west coast of Ireland.
Their position puts the Orlova at 49°22.70' N / 044°51.34' W.
The beacon’s location is 51°46' N and 035°41' W (distance 378.7 NM at 64° from the previous position)
Note : 24/02/2013 18:14 utc : 52°00.55' N / 035°42.86' W (see above)

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Lyubov Orlova to be used for testing marine monitoring system
• National Post : ‘Ghost ship’ spotted drifting toward the Irish coast after it was hauled out of Canadian waters
• Where is Lyubov Orlova ?