The longest straight line you can sail on Earth ?

The longest straight line only touching water ?

Note : the line does not appear straight on this image due to the Plate Carrée 2D projection. 
see Great Circle demo
 - map from gcmap -

source : wikipedia
From the south coast of Balochistan province somewhere near Port of Karachi, Pakistan (25°25′N 66°25′E) across the Arabian Sea, south-west through Indian Ocean, near Comoros, passing Namaete Canyon, near the South Africa coastline, across the South Atlantic Ocean, then west across Cape Horn, then north-west across the Pacific Ocean, near Easter Island, passing the antipodal point, near Amlia island, through the South Bering Sea and ending somewhere on the east-north coast of Kamchatka, near Ossora (59°38′N 163°24′E).
This route is almost 32,000 km (20,000 mi) long.

Actually, the video shows the best representation of “the way things are”:

kml file for use with Google Earth (17302 Nm / 32043 km)
GE “ruler” tool allowing you to calculate “straight line” distances over the globe

from Kamchatka Peninsula in Eastern Russia (south of the end of the Aleutian Islands archipelago)

to a point near to Graham’s Land (the long finger-like peninsula on Antarctica that points toward the Falkland Islands),

then directly between Madagascar and the African continent for ending in Pakistan

The longest straight line only touching water ? Really ?

Who would have guessed you could sail in a straight line from the Kamchatka peninsula in Russia to Pakistan ?
Actually not really because the straight line crosses over the Aldabra islands in the Indian Ocean...

 Aldabra atoll

 crossing line about 15 km inside the Alabra atoll in the North,
but only 7 km outside Anjouan island (Comoros) in the South

Note : by the way, if you tried to sail it you’d probably be sunk by drifting icebergs in the Southern latitudes, but that’s beside the point.

Southernmost passage (latitude : about 61°30' S)

True facts about sea life

True Facts About The CuttleFish

True Facts About The Mantis Shrimp

True Facts About The Sea Pig

True Facts About The Seahorse

True Facts About The Angler Fish

English seas get new marine conservation zones

JNCC interactive map

From BBC

The English government has announced it will create 27 new marine conservation zones (MCZs) to protect wildlife in the seas around the English coast.

The MCZs will help seahorses, coral reefs and oyster beds to remain safe from dredging and bottom-trawling.
The Marine Conservation Society welcomed the "significant milestone".
But it warned there were still fewer than a quarter of the number of MCZs recommended by scientists to complete an "ecologically coherent" network.

UKSeaMap 2010 interactive map : predicted habitat

'Better protected'

Last December a two-year £8m consultation involving the government's own science advisers recommended the creation of 127 MCZs to halt the rapid decline of fish, lobsters, oysters and seahorses.
But earlier this year, ministers announced plans to construct just 31 zones aimed at protecting life on the ocean floor.

At the time, campaigners described the plan as "pitiful" and a "bitter disappointment" - but the then environment minister Richard Benyon insisted that the scientific evidence for a large proportion of the zones was "just not up to scratch".
He said another £3.5m was being spent on gathering more evidence that could support more zones being designated in future.

Announcing the 27 new zones, marine environment minister George Eustice said the department was doing "more than ever" to protect England's marine environment and almost a quarter of English inshore waters and 9% of UK waters would be "better protected".
He said that the new MCZs - which would join over 500 marine protected areas that already exist - would cover an area roughly three times the size of Wiltshire and would span the waters around the English coast.
The scheme would ensure areas such as Chesil Beach and the Skerries Banks are safeguarded.
The minister said that the number of new sites had been reduced from 31 to 27 because two of the sites - at Stour and Orwell and Hilbre Island - were too costly,
A final decision on the two remaining sites - at Hythe Bay and North of Celtic Deep - will be made in the next phase of the project.

The areas within which are the new MCZs are:

Inshore sites:

• Blackwater, Crouch, Roach and Colne Estuaries, Essex;
• Aln Estuary, Northumberland;
• Beachy Head West, East Sussex;
• Chesil Beach and Stennis Ledges, Dorset;
• Cumbria Coast;
• Folkestone Pomerania, Kent;
• Fylde, Lancashire;
• Isles of Scilly;
• Kingmere, Sussex;
• Lundy;
• The Manacles, Cornwall;
• Medway Estuary, Kent;
• Padstow Bay and Surrounds, Cornwall;
• Pagham Harbour, Sussex;
• Poole Rocks, Dorset;
• Skerries Bank and Surrounds, Devon;
• South Dorset;
• Tamar Estuary, Devon/Cornwall;
• Thanet Coast, Kent;
• Torbay, Devon;
• Upper Fowey and Pont Pill, Cornwall;
• Whitsand and Looe Bay, Cornwall

Offshore sites:

• The Canyons, Cornwall;
• East of Haig Fras, Cornwall;
• North East of Farnes Deep, Northumberland;
• South-West Deeps (West), Cornwall;
• Swallow Sand, Northumberland

Mr Eustice also announced plans to designate two more phases of MCZs over the next three years, with a consultation on the next phase expected to be launched in early 2015.
"This is just the beginning," he said.

'Threatened sea bed'

Melissa Moore, senior policy officer at the Marine Conservation Society, said that the organisation broadly welcomed the new proposals.
"This announcement is a significant milestone for marine conservation", she said.
But she added: "We urge government to bring forward designation of future tranches to prevent many threatened seabed habitats being further damaged - these 27 sites represent less than a quarter of the number recommended by scientists to complete an 'ecologically coherent' network."

She also pointed to the need to "police" potentially damaging activities.
"The MCZs will be multi-use, so low-impact fishing such as potting will be permitted in most sites," she said.
"It is vital that within these sites there is a clear notion of what can and can't happen, and who is responsible for policing those activities, otherwise we're just creating paper parks."
Defra said it had received around 40,000 responses to their consultation to 31 March 2013, which asked for feedback on the proposals via their website.

Links :

• The Guardian : England names 27 new marine conservation zones
• Fish fight : a new network o MCZ around the UK can safeguard our seas
• Blue and Green tomorrow : Marine conservation could be worth ‘billions’ to UK economy
• Fugro : Fugro completes 2 year nautical charting survey for Maritime and Coastguard Agency

'Un-mappable' Great Barrier Reef finally mapped in 3D

From EOMap

German and Australian scientists launched a set of groundbreaking, high resolution, shallow water topography maps for the entire Great Barrier Reef.

These world-first digital maps of the coral reefs, using satellite derived depth (bathymetry) techniques, are a critical step towards identifying, managing and essentially preserving and protecting what lies within the waters of this global icon.

Project partner, Dr Robin Beaman of James Cook University, says the product is different to anything else available, as until this product, nearly half of the shallow water reef area on the Great Barrier Reef had not been mapped using modern digital surveys.
Dr Robin Beaman says the data provides a complete picture of the world's largest coral reef ecosystem.
"It's like a terrain map," he said.
"Google Earth is a good example, but in the ocean it's much harder to do.
"We use satellite images to look into the sea floor to about a 30-metre depth.
"Digital data is what's really critical in this day and age."
Dr Beaman says the data could provide policy makers and researchers with vital information needed to combat threats to the reef.
This includes measuring the impact of rising sea levels and helping to measure water quality and ocean currents.

A major study released in October 2012 found coral cover had been halved since the mid-1980s due to cyclones, bleaching and the crown of thorns starfish.

While these coral reefs are the most ecologically significant, they are also the most difficult to map due to being either too remote or because of their shallow nature, which makes them navigationally dangerous.

Instead of relying on traditional surveying vessels or aircraft to map the many 'un-mappable' areas of the reef, Germany-based aquatic remote-sensing company EOMAP used space-borne satellites to overcome these hurdles.

The result is the largest project of its kind ever conducted in Australia, and possibly the entire world. The 3D water depth maps have a 30m horizontal resolution over approximately 350,000 km2 of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area and Torres Strait, providing not only more detailed individual reef data, but also a complete picture of Earth's largest coral reef ecosystem.

"This information is regarded as essential for any government or company involved with managing the reef environment," states Professor Stuart Phinn, University of Queensland, another partner on the project.

The EOMAP product will aid the 'big picture' assessments of the Great Barrier Reef including water quality modeling, measuring responses to both man-made and natural impacts, such as sediment transportation and tropical cyclones, and helping to predict the likely impacts of climate change effects, such as sea level rise and increased tropical cyclone frequency.

It will also help target priority areas for more detailed data collection, for example with the vast improvements this promises to ocean current modeling, scientists can model crown of thorn starfish larval trajectories to where they are next likely to inhabit the Great Barrier Reef.

"There is often a disconnect between research and industry, where researchers generally look at changes on individual reefs and habitats," comments Dr Nathan Quadros from the Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information, also a partner on the project.

"But industry want the overall picture of the reef -- this product brings the two together."

All of the mapped areas, no matter how small, are available for purchase by anyone via the EOMAP website.

A coarser product (500m spatial resolution) is also available, free of charge, together with sample data of the high resolution products.
Looking ahead, EOMAP has already demonstrated the viability of the next generation product: a 2m resolution version using DigitalGlobe's Worldview-2 satellite.

"Based on our trials, this promises to be an even more astounding product," says Dr Magnus Wettle, Senior Scientist at EOMAP.

"To be honest, I'd like to see the Australian Government partner with us on this, our next endeavor, so that it would belong to Australia as a national resource," he said.
"Having said that, our priority is to make it happen, so we have to be prepared to be pragmatic."

EOMAP last week received an award from Copernicus (the European Commission remote sensing peak body) for its work on making affordable aquatic remote sensing products for industry and the public sector.

GBR - Project 3DGBR:
High-resolution Bathymetry for the Great Barrier Reef and Coral Sea (JCU)

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : 3-D maps reveal depths of sea floor
• Australian Geographic : Mapping Australia's sea floor
  

Marine GeoGarage : website temporarily down for maintenance

Version 2 of the Google Maps JavaScript API which was used for the Marine GeoGarage web application since 2010 has been deprecated by Google and officially turned down for existing applications on Tuesday November 19, 2013 (actually early this morning on Wednesday 20th).

The maintenance period is used to migrate the basic features of the Marine GeoGarage to the v3 API.

We are sorry for this inconvenience, please check back later.

Notes :
Maintenance only affects the User Interface of our route planning and viewing web app, but not the nautical charts stored in our Cloud Computing solution, so :
- universal iPhone & iPad mobile apps (which are not using Google Maps API) continue to work for viewing charts.
- no problem for our B2B customers who use our different chart layers in their own web applications.