The Alaskan village set to disappear under water in a decade

America's first climate change refugees: Hundreds forced to flee their Alaskan village of Kivalina before it disappears underwater within a decade.

From BBC (Stephen Sackur)

Almost no one in America has heard of the Alaskan village of Kivalina.
It clings to a narrow spit of sand on the edge of the Bering Sea, far too small to feature on maps of Alaska, never mind the United States.

>>> geolocalization with the Marine GeoGarage <<<

Which is perhaps just as well, because within a decade Kivalina is likely to be under water.
Gone, forever.
Remembered - if at all - as the birthplace of America's first climate change refugees.

Four hundred indigenous Inuit people currently live in Kivalina's collection of single-storey cabins.
Their livelihoods depend on hunting and fishing.

The sea has sustained them for countless generations but in the last two decades the dramatic retreat of the Arctic ice has left them desperately vulnerable to coastal erosion.
No longer does thick ice protect their shoreline from the destructive power of autumn and winter storms.
Kivalina's spit of sand has been dramatically narrowed.

The US Army Corps of Engineers built a defensive wall along the beach in 2008, but it was never more than a stop-gap measure.
A ferocious storm two years ago forced residents into an emergency evacuation. Now the engineers predict Kivalina will be uninhabitable by 2025.

Kivalina's story is not unique.
Temperature records show the Arctic region of Alaska is warming twice as fast as the rest of the United States.
Retreating ice, slowly rising sea levels and increased coastal erosion have left three Inuit settlements facing imminent destruction, and at least eight more at serious risk.

The problem comes with a significant price tag.
The US Government believes it could cost up to $400m (£265m) to relocate Kivalina's inhabitants to higher ground - building a road, houses, and a school does not come cheap in such an inaccessible place.
And there is no sign the money will be forthcoming from public funds.
Kivalina council leader, Colleen Swan, says Alaska's indigenous tribes are paying the price for a problem they did nothing to create.
"If we're still here in 10 years time we either wait for the flood and die, or just walk away and go someplace else.
"The US government imposed this Western lifestyle on us, gave us their burdens and now they expect us to pick everything up and move it ourselves. What kind of government does that?"

North of Kivalina there are no roads, just the vast expanse of Alaska's Arctic tundra.
And at the most northerly tip of US territory lies the town of Barrow - much closer to the North Pole than to Washington DC.
America's very own climate change frontline.

Barrow's residents are predominantly from the Inupiat tribe - they hunt bowhead whale and seal.
But this year has been fraught with problems.
The sea ice started to melt and break up as early as March.
Then it refroze, but it was so thin and unstable the whale and seal hunters were unable to pull their boats across it.
Their hunting season was ruined.

For the first time in decades not a single bowhead whale was caught from Barrow.
One of the town's most experienced whaling captains, Herman Ahsoak, says the ice used to be 3m (9ft) thick in winter, now it is little more than a metre.
"We have to adapt to what's coming, if we're gonna keep eating and surviving off the sea, but no whale this year means it will be a long cold winter," he says.

Barrow is known as the Arctic's "science city".
In summer it hosts dozens of international researchers monitoring the shrinking of the Arctic ice and - no less important - the rapid thawing of the tundra's permafrost layer.

But it is the anecdotes that are as striking as the columns of data.
I join a team of scientists taking samples of the ice off Barrow Point.
We motor across the offshore ice on all terrain vehicles, but we are not alone.
"You'll be escorted by armed bear guards," my local guide, Brower Frantz, says before we set out.
"The ice is too thin for the polar bears to hunt on so they're stuck onshore searching for food. You don't want to be on your own when you meet a hungry bear," he adds.

 Protection: The inhabitants of the village have always been protected from ferocious storms by a think layer of ice.

Instead, they now rely on these sandbags

Alaska's role in the climate story is about cause as well as effect.
As America's Arctic territory warms it continues to be a vital source of the carbon-based fossil fuels seen by most scientists as a key driver of climate change.
Alaska's North Slope is the US's biggest oil field and the Trans Alaska pipeline is a key feature of America's drive for energy security.
As production from the existing field tails off there is enormous pressure to tap untouched Alaskan reserves.

Shell has launched an ambitious bid to begin offshore Arctic drilling despite a chorus of disapproval from environmental groups.
Concerns intensified when a rig ran aground off the Alaskan coast at the beginning of this year.
Operations are currently suspended, but the prize is too valuable to ignore.

Kate Moriarty, executive director of the Alaska Oil and Gas Federation, believes Alaska possesses 50 billion as-yet untapped barrels of oil.
"The reality is the Arctic is going to be developed," she says.
"And who do we want in the lead? I say we want it to be the United States because the reality is the world demand for oil and gas is not going to go away."

Pressure is mounting to open up Alaska's untouched oil resources
 

When President Obama pledged to redouble his efforts to reduce America's carbon emissions last month, his words met with little more than a shrug in Alaska.
The state owes its existence to oil.
Revenues from the oil industry make up more than 90% of the state budget.
Oil money means no income tax and an annual handout to every Alaskan resident.

And when it comes to balancing two conflicting pressures - a rapidly changing climate on the one hand, the demand to expand the state's carbon-fuelled economy on the other - there is little doubt where the priority lies.

The deputy commissioner of Alaska's Department of Natural Resources, Ed Fogels, makes no apology for Alaska's strategy.
"When everyone pounces on Alaska and says 'oh, the climate is changing, the Arctic is changing, things are out of control', we say wait a minute. We've been developing our natural resources for 50 years now. Things are going quite well thank you."

 An aerial photo taken July 16 shows extensive meltwater pools off the Alaskan coast

(A. Schweiger, UW)

Within a generation the Arctic ocean may be ice free during the summer.
The rate of warming in the far north is unmatched anywhere else on the planet.

In terms of resource exploitation, shipping access and human settlement Alaska is likely to become a more attractive proposition.
Scientists call that a positive feedback effect.
For Alaskans on the climate change frontline - and for our planet - it may not be positive at all.

Links :

• BBC : Arctic methane 'time bomb' could have huge economic costs
• Washington University : Santa’s workshop not flooded – but lots of melting in the Arctic
• DailyMail : Hundreds forced to flee their Alaskan village before it disappears underwater within a decade
• Kickstarter : Kivalina people

Superyacht GPS spoofing experiment on the high seas

A radio navigation research team from the Cockrell School's Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics successfully discovered they could subtly coerce a 213-foot superyacht off its course, using a custom-made GPS device.

The purpose of the experiment was to measure the difficulty of carrying out a spoofing attack at sea and to determine how easily sensors in the ship's command room could identify the threat.

The animation above shows how they did it.

From Cokrell school of engineering

This summer, a radio navigation research team from The University of Texas at Austin set out to discover whether they could subtly coerce a 213-foot yacht off its course, using a custom-made GPS device.
Led by assistant professor Todd Humphreys of the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the Cockrell School of Engineering, the team was able to successfully spoof an $80 million private yacht using the world’s first openly acknowledged GPS spoofing device.
Spoofing is a technique that creates false civil GPS signals to gain control of a vessel’s GPS receivers.
The purpose of the experiment was to measure the difficulty of carrying out a spoofing attack at sea and to determine how easily sensors in the ship’s command room could identify the threat.

The researchers hope their demonstration will shed light on the perils of navigation attacks, serving as evidence that spoofing is a serious threat to marine vessels and other forms of transportation.

Drone

In 2012, Todd Humphreys and his research team received national and internation attention for successfully demonstrated for the first time that the GPS signals of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), or drone, can be commandeered by an outside source — a discovery that could factor heavily into the implementation of a new federal mandate to allow thousands of civilian drones into the U.S. airspace by 2015.

The experiment was performed on a civilian drone owned by the university.

Last year, Humphreys and a group of students led the first public capture of a GPS-guided unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), or drone, using a GPS device created by Humphreys and his students.
“With 90 percent of the world’s freight moving across the seas and a great deal of the world’s human transportation going across the skies, we have to gain a better understanding of the broader implications of GPS spoofing,” Humphreys said.
“I didn’t know, until we performed this experiment, just how possible it is to spoof a marine vessel and how difficult it is to detect this attack.”

White Rose of Drachs

In June, the team was invited aboard the yacht, called the White Rose of Drachs, while it traveled from Monaco to Rhodes, Greece, on the Mediterranean Sea.
The experiment took place about 30 miles off the coast of Italy as the yacht sailed in international waters.
From the White Rose’s upper deck, graduate students Jahshan Bhatti and Ken Pesyna broadcasted a faint ensemble of civil GPS signals from their spoofing device — a blue box about the size of a briefcase — toward the ship’s two GPS antennas.
The team’s counterfeit signals slowly overpowered the authentic GPS signals until they ultimately obtained control of the ship’s navigation system.
Unlike GPS signal blocking or jamming, spoofing triggers no alarms on the ship’s navigation equipment.
To the ship’s GPS devices, the team’s false signals were indistinguishable from authentic signals, allowing the spoofing attack to happen covertly.
Once control of the ship’s navigation system was gained, the team’s strategy was to coerce the ship onto a new course using subtle maneuvers that positioned the yacht a few degrees off its original course.
Once a location discrepancy was reported by the ship’s navigation system, the crew initiated a course correction.
In reality, each course correction was setting the ship slightly off its course line.

The Electronic Chart Display and Information System, or ECDIS, shows the ship's GPS-based location and the planned route over a navigational chart.

The route is determined by a set of waypoints connected by straight lines.

The route shown here passes by Giglio Island, where the cruise ship Costa Concordia ran aground.

The ship's current location and direction of travel is indicated by the black target and arrow, respectively.

Inside the yacht’s command room, an electronic chart showed its progress along a fixed line, but in its wake there was a pronounced curve showing that the ship had turned.
“The ship actually turned and we could all feel it, but the chart display and the crew saw only a straight line,” Humphreys said.
After several such maneuvers, the yacht had been tricked onto a parallel track hundreds of meters from its intended one — the team had successfully spoofed the ship.

The experiment helps illustrate the wide gap between the capabilities of spoofing devices and what the transportation industry’s technology can detect, Humphreys said.
Chandra Bhat, director of the Center for Transportation Research at UT Austin, believes that the experiment highlights the vulnerability of the transportation sector to such attacks.
“The surprising ease with which Todd and his team were able to control a (multimillion) dollar yacht is evidence that we must invest much more in securing our transportation systems against potential spoofing,” Bhat said.
It’s important for the public and policymakers to understand that spoofing poses a threat that has far-reaching implications for transportation, Humphreys said.
“This experiment is applicable to other semi-autonomous vehicles, such as aircraft, which are now operated, in part, by autopilot systems,” Humphreys said.
“We’ve got to put on our thinking caps and see what we can do to solve this threat quickly.”
As part of an ongoing research project, funding and travel expenses for this experiment were supported by UT Austin’s Wireless Networking and Communications Group through the WNCG’s Industrial Affiliates program.

Links :

• Cockrell School Researchers Demonstrate First Successful "Spoofing" of UAVs 
• ArsTechnica : Professor fools $80M superyacht’s GPS receiver on the high seas 

Lost history of when Britannia ruled the waves

A map of the world in 1886 (author : Walter Crane) :

 areas under British control are highlighted in red.

From The Telegraph

English Heritage has drawn up a list of 88 vessels known to have sunk within territorial waters over the three centuries from the Tudor period until the advent of iron-hulled steam ships in the Victorian era.

Although the locations of some of the shipwrecks have already been established, others must first be discovered before marine archaeologists can dive onto them to carry out surveys.

 Shipwrecks positions on UKHO chart (SW of England)

>>> geolocalization with the Marine GeoGarage <<<

The vessels cover a period in which Britain emerged as the world’s most powerful maritime nation and range from sixteenth century armed merchant vessels to warships from the era of Lord Nelson.

The most recent on the list was an early paddle steamer which went down in 1838, in one of the country’s most famous sinkings.
The SS Forfarshire, which could also be sailed, ran aground and foundered in a storm off the Farne Islands while on route from Hull to Dundee. Forty two people drowned, but survivors were rescued by Grace Darling, a lighthouse keeper’s daughter, and her father, who rowed out to the stricken vessel.

Other notable ships which will form part of the project include:

HMS Royal George, the largest warship in the world when launched in 1756.

She sank during routine maintenance off Portsmouth in 1782 with the loss of more than 900 lives 

Photo: GETTY

– HMS Royal George, the largest warship in the world when launched in 1756.
It was the British flagship at the Battle of Quiberon Bay, in 1759, and took part in the Battle of Cape St Vincent in 1780, both victories over the French, before an ignominious end saw it sink during routine maintenance work whilst anchored off Portsmouth in 1782.
More than 900 people were killed, the biggest loss of life in British waters.
Part of the wreck has been cleared and cannon were melted down to form part of Nelson’s Column.

– HMS Venerable, which served as the British flagship in the victory over the Dutch at the Battle of Camperdown, in 1797, before being wrecked on rocks near Torbay, seven years later.

– HMS Royal Katherine, whose launch in 1664 was attended by Charles II and Samuel Pepys.
Later renamed HMS Ramillies, she fought in six battles before her loss, almost a century later, in 1760, when she was wrecked at Bolt Head, near Plymouth.
Only 28 survived from the crew of 850 men.

– HMS Anson, launched in 1781.
Another veteran of fighting against the French and Dutch, in 1799 King George III came aboard for a celebration in his honour.
During the course of the evening, he was found below decks, surrounded by the ship’s company.
The vessel sank in 1807, off the Cornish coast, after losing her anchors in a gale.
The poor treatment of the bodies of drowned sailors washed ashore, led to a public outcry and new legislation.

– HMS Primrose, a sloop of war which hit rocks near The Lizard, Cornwall, leaving only one survivor, a drummer boy.

– A wreck in the Isles of Scilly believed to be The Flying Joan, part of Sir Walter Raleigh’s fleet, which was lost in 1617, on the way to the West Indies in search of the mythical riches of El Dorado.

The earliest is an unidentified wreck on Walney Island, near Morecambe Bay, thought to be an armed merchant vessel from the Tudor period.
Other vessels include an eighteenth century cargo barge, known as a Mersey Flat, as well as an East Indiaman and a West Indiaman, both trading vessels.

 Shipwrecks around the Isle of Wight

Mark Dunkley, Maritime Designation Adviser for English Heritage said:
“English Heritage calls itself the custodian of England’s story and a major part of that is how we got our position on the world stage. It was made possible by these sorts of ships, over the centuries. It is worthwhile recording these wrecks, because they are such a big component of that story. They tell a fascinating story of England’s military, industrial and social history.”

 Over 44,000 shipwrecks, within the sea areas surrounding Great Britain and Ireland

(source : www.shipwrecks.uk.com) 

Interactive map of designated wreck sites (English Heritage)

The first dives will occur this summer, but it will take six years to study all 88 wrecks.
The team will complete a report of each case and those considered to be historically significant will be passed to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport for designated under the Protection of Wrecks Act.
The legislation, which is 40 years old this week, defends the wrecks from unauthorised diving and damaging fishing activities.
There are currently only 47 vessels covered by the Act – most of which sank after 1840.
The 88 wrecks are all within 12 nautical miles of the English coast.
They have been identified during preliminary research of archives.
Some are marked on charts, others have been located by amateur divers, or by sonar scans, but some have not been fully located and none have ever been archaeologically surveyed.
Wooden wrecks deteriorate faster than metal ships and in some cases, there may be little remaining of the vessels.
The team are planning to work their way around the coast in a clockwise direction, starting this summer in the north east.
The project is to be conducted in conjunction with a similar scheme to identify British and German shipwrecks of the First World War.

Links :

• The Guardian : Divers to hunt for shipwrecks including Sir Walter Raleigh's Flying Joan
• English Heritage investigates pre-1840 shipwrecks
• The Mirror : Real treasure island: Britain's most fascinating and valuable shipwrecks

Japan to preserve remote isles

From AsiaOne (Yujiro Okabe)

The government aims to start preservation work on about 400 remote islands that are the base points in setting the nation's territorial waters.

A liaison council comprising concerned government entities, such as the Finance Ministry, the Justice Ministry and the Japan Coast Guard, will soon be established to conduct a survey to collect such details as the islands' owners, their nationalities and the names of such islands.

Japan bathymetric maps

The purpose of the survey is to reinforce the nation's control over marine resources and security.
The government plans to complete the survey by the end of next year and take necessary actions, such as nationalizing remote islands without owners.

Japan comprises more than 6,000 islands that form a total of about 4.47 million square kilometers of territorial waters and exclusive economic zones (EEZ), about 12 times the nation's total land area of about 380,000 square kilometers.

Japan has disputes over its EEZ boundaries with all its Asian neighbors

(Russia, Republic of Korea, PRC and ROC).

The above, and relevant maps at the Sea Around Us Project both indicate Japan's claimed boundaries, and do not take into account neighboring powers' claims.

Remote islands are considered to be those other than Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku and the Okinawa main island.
About 500 are considered base points for Japan's territorial waters and EEZ.
The government has been working to preserve 99 islands that are EEZ base points through a policy outline compiled in 2009 regarding the management of oceans.

The planned survey will cover the remaining 400 islands, which serve as the base points of territorial waters.
The ownership and management of many remote islands remains uncertain.
Also, about 200 islands have not been named in a JCG nautical chart.

 Oki-no Tori Shima, southern island

>>> geolocalization with the Marine GeoGarage <<<

According to a government source, some islands have been included in nautical charts but remain uncharted in a map made by the Geospatial Information Authority.
The liaison council will reconcile the contents of such nautical charts and maps, as well as assign names to unnamed islands.

Japan's sovereignty extends to the air space above its territorial waters, as well as the sea and sea bottoms beneath them.
Preserving the remote islands will also contribute to the preservation of fishery and subterranean resources under the sea bottom of the nation's territorial waters.

Chinese maritime activity, including intrusions by submarines and other naval vessels, have intensified in sea areas near Japan.
The planned research is also aimed at selecting which remote islands can be utilized for building a network to monitor such activity.

Territorial waters are defined as sea areas 12 nautical miles (about 22 kilometers) from a nation's coastlines.
Coastal and island nations can set territorial waters under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

The base points for setting territorial waters are low-tide lines--shorelines where the sea and land meet during low tide.
If the base point is an island, it needs to fulfil such conditions as being naturally formed land located above sea level during high tide.

Minami-Tori Shima, Eastern island

>>> geolocalization with the Marine GeoGarage <<<

Survey to help maintain islands

The government will conduct a full- scale survey on remote islands because the importance of national land conservation as been highlighted by conflicts with China over the Senkaku Islands in Ishigaki, Okinawa Prefecture.

>>> geolocalization with the Marine GeoGarage <<<

The planned survey also reflects the opinion of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has repeatedly stressed, "We have to protect territorial waters at any cost."

Since it has a large number of remote islands, Japan cannot appropriately manage and preserve all of them.
Even if individuals own islands, insufficient management will cause the islands' shape to change through erosion.
If this happens, Japan may lose some of its territorial waters.

EEZ key : far flung Okinotori island, which Japan claims as its southernmost territory

(photo April 2005)

Some islands have even remained nameless, and many remote islands have names that may mislead the international community to believing that they are merely rocks.

The fishing industry has also expressed concern over the situation, particularly in Kyushu, which is close to China, South Korea and Taiwan.
Many fishermen have demanded that the government take action to preserve remote islands that can enhance the management of territorial waters.

The government has already compiled its basic policy for preserving remote islands, but will consider additional measures based on the results of the envisaged survey.

Links :

• Japan Times : U.N. OKs Japan claim to expand shelf
• GeoGarage blog : Ancient map irrefutable evidence that the Diaoyu Islands, the ancient belongs to China /

Between home : odyssey of an unusual sea bandit

Between Home: Odyssey of an unusual sea bandit - OFFICIAL TRAILER from Jack Rath 
Between Home is a high spirited, poetic adventure documentary, that chronicle's a young person's rites of passage, from novice sailor to expert in three years of life aged in salt, sun and wind.
Shot onboard and also on location around the globe, Between Home displays the panache of Nick Jaffe's ocean odyssey from Europe to Australia, and what happens when you dare to follow your dream.

When Nick Jaffe confessed to filmmaker Jack Rath that he was 'raw recruit' to sailing and needed to learn how because he was planning a 26.000 km passage around the world it was a clear subject for a film.

Filmed over four years, 'Between Home' documents the odyssey of this Australian whiz-kid programmer.

Beginning shortly after Jaffe purchases a second hand-boat in England, the film captures Jaffe's modulation of moods from high frequency stress to debased hilarity.

Jaffe lives 'hand to mouth' while sinking deeper into debt and so invites the world to experience his dream through a blog that will help fund his voyage.

And it works.

The generosity of people wanting him to succeed is overwhelming yet it creates a paradox of added pressure from the world he's trying to retreat from.

Alone at sea Jaffe keeps a video log, and answers questions given to him before departure.

His philosophy appears to be a combination of auto-didacticism and 'gung ho libertarism' as he sails without permits or insurance.

At certain points on Jaffe's voyage, Rath catches up to him in Berlin, England, the Canary Islands, the Caribbean, Long Island, on a road trip across the U.S. As Jaffe voyages through the Pacific he encounters love, loss, and the ferocity of nature with a tsunami.

As the sailor reaches his home shore Australia, the filmmaker meets him and captures Jaffe's abrupt confrontation with meaning of the term 'closure' in an unanticipated way.