Two months breaking ice (in under five minutes)

Time-lapse of our icebreaker, the Nathaniel B. Palmer, traveling through the Ross Sea, Antarctica. Two months of sequences, condensed into less than five minutes, with a surprise at the end. 

From LiveScience

 

A gorgeous new video is the best way to experience Antarctica without even feeling chilly.

The time lapse clip, produced and narrated by Cassandra Brooks, a doctoral student at Stanford University, condenses two months on an Antarctic ice-breaker into less than five minutes.

Frame by frame, the video reveals how stunning sea ice can be — from polka-dot pancake ice to thick white flows. "It was so beautiful," Brooks told LiveScience.

"And it was such a neat experience to be on this crazy boat that was just screaming through the ice."
Brooks spent two months aboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer on a National Science Foundation expedition through the Ross Sea of Antarctica.

Her team was investigating the release of carbon from phytoplankton blooms, which are so huge in this area that they're visible from space.

During the expedition, Brooks also blogged for National Geographic.

The time lapse video was inspired, in part, by that blogging opportunity, and also by Brooks' husband, photographer John Weller.
"I happen to be married to an amazing photographer who insisted on sending me out on the boat with the right equipment," Brooks said.

In this case, that equipment was a GoPro camera and a Joby GorillaPod flexible tripod, which withstood 60-knot (60 miles per hour) winds and negative 40-degree-Fahrenheit (negative 40 degrees Celsius) temperatures, she said.

Almost every day, except when the weather was simply too harsh, Brooks went to the bridge of the ship to capture images as the Palmer steered through the Ross Sea ice.

The final scenes, though, were filmed from the back of the boat.

The Palmer had broken into an area called Cape Colbeck, home to a colony of emperor penguins.

Another research group aboard the vessel was tagging the penguins, so the ship remain parked for several days as they did their work.

"The longer we were there the more and more penguins came.

By the third day we just had it seemed like hundreds, if not thousands, of penguins just playing in our prop wash behind the boat," Brooks said.

She got the penguins on film, of course — and captured their raucous, squawking cries as well.
"The most amazing thing for me is that every time I go to the Antarctic, I make some sort of blog or some kind of media, and I felt like this is the first time I've been able to capture it well and also really share it well," Brooks said.

"It's incredibly rewarding to know that people are really feeling it and probably falling in love with the place."  

Arctic Ocean 'acidifying rapidly'

The Arctic seas are being made rapidly more acidic by carbon-dioxide emissions,

according to a new report.
Ice-capped Saunder Island is ringed by a layer of thin sea ice in Baffin Bay.

Photo : Reuters/Michael Studinger/NASA/Handout

From BBC

Scientists from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) monitored widespread changes in ocean chemistry in the region.

They say even if CO2 emissions stopped now, it would take tens of thousands of years for Arctic Ocean chemistry to revert to pre-industrial levels.
Many creatures, including commercially valuable fish, could be affected.
They forecast major changes in the marine ecosystem, but say there is huge uncertainty over what those changes will be.

A volcanic peak en route to Store Glacier Greenland)

photo Chris Packham

It is well known that CO2 warms the planet, but less well-known that it also makes the alkaline seas more acidic when it is absorbed from the air.
Absorption is particularly fast in cold water so the Arctic is especially susceptible, and the recent decreases in summer sea ice have exposed more sea surface to atmospheric CO2.
The Arctic's vulnerability is exacerbated by increasing flows of freshwater from rivers and melting land ice, as freshwater is less effective at chemically neutralising the acidifying effects of CO2.

The researchers say the Nordic Seas are acidifying over a wide range of depths - most quickly in surface waters and more slowly in deep waters.
The report’s chairman, Richard Bellerby from the Norwegian Institute for Water Research, told BBC News that they had mapped a mosaic of different levels of pH across the region, with the scale of change largely determined by the local intake of freshwater.
“Large rivers flow into the Arctic, which has an enormous catchment for its size,” he said.
“There’s slow mixing so in effect we get a sort of freshwater lens on the top of the sea in some places, and freshwater lowers the concentration of ions that buffers pH change. The sea ice has been a lid on the Arctic, so the loss of ice is allowing fast uptake of CO2.”

photo Chris Packham

• The Arctic region contains a vast ice-covered ocean roughly centred on the Earth's geographic North Pole 
• The Sun doesn't rise at all on the shortest day of the year within the Arctic Circle 
• Humans have inhabited the Arctic region for thousands of years, and the current population is four million
• Geologists estimate the Arctic may hold up to 25% of the world's remaining oil and natural gas

This is being made worse, he said, by organic carbon running off the land – a secondary effect of regional warming.
“Continued rapid change is a certainty,” he said.
“We have already passed critical thresholds. Even if we stop emissions now, acidification will last tens of thousands of years. It is a very big experiment.”

The research team monitored decreases in seawater pH of about 0.02 per decade since the late 1960s in the Iceland and Barents seas.
Chemical effects related to acidification have also been encountered in surface waters of the Bering Strait and the Canada Basin of the central Arctic Ocean.

photo : USGS

Scientists estimate that the average acidity of surface ocean waters worldwide is now about 30% higher than before the Industrial Revolution.
The researchers say there is likely to be major change to the Arctic marine ecosystem as a result. Some key prey species like sea butterflies may be harmed.
Other species may thrive.
Adult fish look likely to be fairly resilient but the development of fish eggs might be harmed.
It is too soon to tell.

Canada CHS update in the Marine GeoGarage

3411 Sooke

24 charts have been updated (April 30, 2013) :

• 1236 POINTE DES MONTS TO ESCOUMINS
• 1310 PORT DE MONTREAL
• 1311 SOREL-TRACY TO VARENNES
• 1315 QUEBEC TO DONNACONA
• 1317 SAULT-AU-COCHON TO QUEBEC
• 1350B RUISSEAU LAHAISE TO SAINT-ANTOINE-SUR-RICHELIEU
• 1350C SAINT-ANTOINE-SUR-RICHELIEU TO ILE AUX CERFS
• 1350D ILE AUX CERFS TO OTTERBURN PARK
• 1430 LAC SAINT-LOUIS
• 1433 ILE ST.REGIS TO CROIL ISLANDS A-B
• 3411 SOOKE
• 3419 ESQUIMALT HARBOUR
• 3495 VANCOUVER HARBOUR - EASTERN PORTION
• 3908 KITIMAT HARBOUR
• 4013 HALIFAX TO SYDNEY
• 4015 SYDNEY TO SAINT-PIERRE
• 4022 CABOT STRAIT AND APPROACHES
• 4025 CAP WHITTLE TO HAVRE-SAINT-PIERRE AND ILE D'ANTICOSTI
• 4045 SABLE ISLAND BANK TO ST. PIERRE BANK
• 4049 GRAND BANK NORTHERN PORTION TO FLEMISH PASS/PAS
• 4279 BRAS D'OR LAKE
• 4367 FLINT ISLAND TO CAPE SMOKEY
• 4468 ILE DU PETIT MECATINA TO ILES SAINTE-MARIE
• 4469 ILE PLATE TO ILE DU PETIT MECATINA

So 688 charts (1658 including sub-charts) are available in the Canada CHS layer. (see coverage)

Note : don't forget to visit 'Notices to Mariners' published monthly and available from the Canadian Coast Guard both online or through a free hardcopy subscription service.
This essential publication provides the latest information on changes to the aids to navigation system, as well as updates from CHS regarding CHS charts and publications.
See also written Notices to Shipping and Navarea warnings : NOTSHIP

Researchers calculate the global highways of invasive marine species

"Silent Invaders" Ballast Water 2013

From University of Bristol

Globalisation, with its ever increasing demand for cargo transport, has inadvertently opened the flood gates for a new, silent invasion.
New research has mapped the most detailed forecast to date for importing potentially harmful invasive species with the ballast water of cargo ships.

Scientists from the Universities of Bristol, UK, and Oldenburg, Germany, have examined ship traffic data and biological records to assess the risk of future invasions.
Their research is published in the latest issue of Ecology Letters.

Animals and plants can hitch a ride on cargo ships, hiding as stowaways in the ballast tanks or clinging to the ship’s hull. Upon arrival in a new port, alien species can then wreak havoc in formerly pristine waters.
These so-called invasive species can drive native species to extinction, modify whole ecosystems and impact human economy.

The risk of marine bio-invasion caused by global shipping around the world.

The brighter colour and thicker line indicates a higher bio-invasion risk
Image by Dr Michael Gastner

Some regions, such as the San Francisco Bay or Chesapeake Bay, have even reported several new exotic species per year.
The knock-on effects to fishermen, farmers, tourism and industry create billions of US dollars in damage every year.
Conservationists and ship engineers are now trying to prevent the next big invasion.
But without knowing when and where it may occur, their possibilities remain limited.

As part of the research project, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, the team obtained detailed logs of nearly three million ship voyages in 2007 and 2008.
Depending on the particular route travelled by each ship, the researchers estimated the probability that a species survives the journey and establishes a population in subsequent ports of call.
Although this probability is tiny for any single voyage, the numbers quickly add up because modern cargo traffic volumes are enormous.

Professor Bernd Blasius from the University of Oldenburg and one of the researchers involved in the study, said: “Our model combines information such as shipping routes, ship sizes, temperatures and biogeography to come up with local forecasts of invasion probabilities.”

The final tally reveals the hotspots of bioinvasion. Large Asian ports such as Singapore and Hong Kong but also US ports like New York and Long Beach are among the sites of highest invasion probability.
These waterways are notoriously busy, but, traffic is not the only important factor.

The North Sea, for example, does not rank among the top endangered regions despite intense shipping.
Temperatures here are lower, making it more difficult for alien species to survive.
However, arrivals from the other side of the Atlantic pose a serious threat to the North Sea.
Most invaders are predicted to originate from the North American east coast.

Hanno Seebens from the University of Oldenburg said: “We also compared our model results to field data. And, indeed, most of the alien species actually do originate from there.”

As severe as the risk of future invasions may be, the study also contains a hopeful message.
If ship engineers could prevent at least some potential invaders from getting on board, the total invasion risk could be substantially mitigated.

By successfully removing a species from 25 per cent of the ballast tanks arriving at each port (eg with filters, chemicals or radiation), the overall invasion probability decreases by 56 per cent.
The reduction is so disproportionately large because the effect of ballast water treatment multiplies at successive stopovers.

World waterways network (2008)

Ship movements in the past few years are well documented,
but there are many unknowns about future trade routes.

Bioinvasion is, as the researchers admit, a complex process, and records of past invasions are far from comprehensive.
Facing these uncertainties, they simulated various different scenarios.
Interestingly, the key results are comparable for different models, predicting the same hotspots and global highways of bioinvasion.
The traffic on the main shipping routes plays the greatest role for the calculation.

Dr Michael Gastner, Lecturer in Engineering Mathematics at the University of Bristol, added: “Ship movements in the past few years are well documented, but there are many unknowns about future trade routes.”

For example, the future of the world economy remains uncertain, and Arctic passages may become navigable as a consequence of global warming.
Future simulations will also have to take into account which engineering solutions for ballast water treatment will eventually be adopted by port authorities.

Paper: The risk of marine bioinvasion caused by global shipping, Hanno Seebens, Michael T. Gastner, Bernd Blasius, Ecology Letters, published online 24 April 2013.

Links :

• BBC :  Scientists map global routes of ship-borne invasive species

Ships threaten Australia's Great Barrier Reef

pilots at work navigating bulkers through the waters of the Great Barrier Reef

UNESCO has released its latest report on the state of the Great Barrier Reef, and has once again raised concerns about excessive port development along the coast, and the state of water quality around the reef.

This Envisat image features one of the natural wonders of the world – the Great Barrier Reef in the Coral Sea off the east coast of Queensland, Australia.
Australian researchers have discovered that Envisat's Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) sensor can detect coral bleaching down to 10 m deep.
This means Envisat could potentially map coral bleaching on a global scale.
MERIS acquired this image on 18 May 2008, working in Full Resolution mode to yield a spatial resolution of 300 m.
>>> geolocalization with the Marine GeoGarage <<<

Links :

• The Conversation : Without wetlands, what will protect the Great Barrier Reef?