NOAA’s latest Android mobile app provides free nautical charts for recreational boating

MyNOAACharts, a mobile app beta test for Android tablets, can easily integrate the user’s location, the nautical chart, and all the navigational information from the U.S. Coast Pilot.

From NOAA 

As recreational boaters gear up for a summer of fun on coastal waters and the Great Lakes, NOAA is testing MyNOAACharts, a new mobile application that allows users to download NOAA nautical charts and editions of the U.S. Coast Pilot.
The app, which is only designed for Android tablets for the testing period, was just released.

MyNOAAChart, which can be used on land and on the water, lets users find their positions on a NOAA nautical chart.

They can zoom in any specific location with a touch of the finger, or zoom out for the big picture to plan their day of sailing.
The Coast Pilot has geo-tagged some of the major references and provides links to appropriate federal regulations.

Easy and workable access to nautical charts is important for boating safety, says Rear Admiral Gerd Glang, director of NOAA Office of Coast Survey.
He recalls a funny, but poignant, reference to charts.

“A popular t-shirt has a ‘definition’ of a nautical chart splayed across the front: ‘chärt, n: a nautical map that shows you what you just hit,’” Glang explains.
“As creative as that is, a boating accident can kill. Keeping a nautical chart on hand – before you hit something – can save lives.”

The beta test for MyNOAACharts will end on Labor Day, September 2, 2013.

Coast Survey will then evaluate usage and user feedback, which will be pivotal in any decision to move forward.

“Expanding the app across a multitude of platforms, ensuring easy accessibility to over a thousand charts and nearly 5,000 pages of U.S. Coast Pilot, will take considerable resources,” Glang notes. “We truly want users to let us know if the app meets their needs.”

Boaters who don’t have an Android tablet shouldn’t despair.
The Office of Coast Survey provides free BookletCharts, which are 8 ½” x 11” PDF versions of NOAA nautical charts that can be downloaded and printed at home.
The U.S. Coast Pilot is also available in a free PDF version.

Important notice for commercial mariners:
The mobile app MyNOAACharts and the BookletCharts do not fulfill chart carriage requirements for regulated commercial vessels under Titles 33 and 46 of the Code of Federal Regulations.

Interactive: the 50 largest ports in the world

Investigate for yourself the mechanisms of global trade

From SmithsonianMag

Container-laden ships traverse countless supply chains from continent to continent, a method of transportation that accounts for more than 90 percent of the world trade by volume.

The world’s top 50 largest ports see millions of Twenty-foot Equivalent Units each year, the name given multi-colored, cargo-carrying containers.

Most containers are 20 feet long and eight feet wide, hence the term TEU.

Such standardization is necessary so that containers can be efficiently stacked one of top of the other, a tight network visible for each port on this map.

A bird’s eye view of these ports and channels shows it’s clear China leads the way in TEUs; in fact, six of the world’s 10 busiest ports are located along the mainland.

Since the 1990s, the tons of cargo passing through the Port of Shanghai has quadrupled.

But nearly every port on the map exhibits a steady increase of traffic in the last decade, mirroring a trend in global seaborne trade[PDF], which has expanded by 3 percent every year since 1970, reaching 8.4 billion tons in 2010.

Various countries are gearing up to meet this demand by building new terminals to accommodate bigger ships than ever before.

So too, are the channels these “mega vessels” will cruise through: a $5.25 billion expansion of the Panama Canal, which carries 5 percent of the world trade, will double capacity by 2015, allowing access for larger (and more) ships.

East Coast ports are installing larger cranes and dredging channels to fit these ships, which are 2.5 times the capacity of the current largest ships that pass through the canal.

Surfing the heaviest wave in the World - Teahupoo

May 13th, 2013 will go down as a memorable day in the Tahitian history books.

Mark Visser knows an impossible situation when he sees one,

and and was quick to hit the eject button on this one.

photo Tim McKenna

others photos on Surfline

 photo Ben Thouard

Watch as Tahitian demi-god Raimana Van Bastolaer rode on some of the swell's best and biggest waves, along with professional surfers Maya Gabeira, Carlos Burle and others that were brave enough to take off on what's knows as the heaviest wave in the world.

Wave of the day : Koa Rothman

Hydrographic survey

In this podcast how the MCA surveys the seabed around our coast using the latest available technology,
making seafaring safer and revealing extraordinary new landscapes.

Timelapse of large calving event at Helheim Glacier, Greenland

In July 2010, researchers Timothy James and Nick Selmes were installing instruments
on the south shore of Helheim Fjord in Greenland when they heard the most unbelievable sound.
This is what unfolded before their eyes.
>>> geolocalization with the Marine GeoGarage <<<

From LiveSciences

A deafening rumble alerted two scientists to an amazing sight: the collapse of one of Greenland's biggest and fastest-moving glaciers.

And because the scientists were already in place with a time-lapse camera, they were able to capture the calving event — one of the biggest of these glacier collapses ever recorded on film.

Before the collapse, Timothy James, a researcher at Swansea University in the United Kingdom, was in southeastern Greenland in July 2010 to set up a remote camera to spy on Helheim Glacier where it meets the sea.
This meeting of glacier and ocean is called the calving front, and marks the zone where icebergs break off (or calve).

"This is an area that is very difficult to measure because [it is] so dynamic and unstable," James said in an email interview.
By using time-lapse photography, James and his colleagues hope to better understand changes at the calving front, and the factors that control how glaciers and ice sheets change over time, especially in response to climate.

"While providing important information about these events to scientists, we are hoping that our video will help people understand the scale of these calving events," James told OurAmazingPlanet.

Since 2001, Helheim Glacier has thinned by more than 130 feet (40 meters) and beat a hasty retreat, shrinking landward by more than 5 miles (8 kilometers).

Right place, right time

During the July 2010 calving event, about 0.4 cubic miles (1.5 cubic km) of ice — which would fill Central Park to a height of almost 1,000 feet (300 m), James calculated — crumbled off the glacier in 15 minutes.

"Even this, in the context of the ocean, isn't very much water, but there are thousands of glaciers like this around the world," James noted.
"This is how glaciers influence sea level.[However], it is important for people to understand that an individual calving event is not evidence of climate change. Large glaciers produce icebergs of this magnitude all the time. What's important is how the size and frequency of these events change over time and what causes them to occur," James said.

In summer 2010, James and Swansea colleague Nick Selmes had been dropped off by helicopter in Helheim Fjord to install cameras that would take digital photographs of the calving front every hour until the researchers picked up the cameras in autumn.

"After six days, we had installed two cameras that were running nicely, and we were installing the third camera when, out of nowhere, we heard this really deep rumble that was shooting down the fjord," James told OurAmazingPlanet.

Boom, then bleep

"The first thing we saw was the ice breaking off cross the fjord — we were quite excited about that," James said. "
As this progressed, my colleague, Nick Selmes, thought he could see a crack forming along the whole width of the glacier. Indeed, there was!
So I turned the camera, and we watched in awe.
It was absolutely amazing and something I will never forget.
There was so much noise we could hardly hear each other.

“This calving event was absolutely huge, and we were so excited,” he added.
“In retrospect, I'm glad we didn't have audio because there was a lot of shouting and quite a lot of swearing, if memory serves," James said.

The massive crack across Helheim Glacier was approximately 13,000 feet (4,000 m) long. And much of the giant glacier's height is hidden underwater, so about 2,600 vertical feet (800 m) of ice crashed into the water — much more than the 325 feet (100 m) visible in the film.
The falling ice created a giant wave.

"There is a huge face of ice that has to push through a lot of water," James said.
"The time-lapse gives the impression that the calving event happened quite quickly, but it was really surprising how slow it was."