Kids for sea

KIDS FOR SEA Le teaser from CardinaleOuest

Shackleton: death or glory

Navigation with sextant

Getting to grips with old methods of navigation is proving to be really tricky.

If the team miss South Georgia then they will be blown out into 3000 miles of open ocean.

Rough seas The team have a relentless battle to try and stay on course.

Battered by the wind and rough seas can the complete their mission or just get lost at sea?

Snow built up
Snow starts to fall as the temperature drops to below zero, it could mean trouble for the crew if the sails become too bogged down with the weight.

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Shackleton death or glory rough seas / Ernest Shackleton voyage to be retraced by modern-day Antarctic explorers
• LiveScience : Recreating an Epic Antarctic Journey: Q&A With Explorer Tim Jarvis

Brazil DHN update in the Marine GeoGarage

As our public viewer is not yet available (currently under construction, upgrading to Google Maps API v3 as v2 is officially no more supported),
this info is primarily intended to our Phone/iPad universal mobile application users (Marine Brazil on the App Store)
and also to our B2B customers which use our nautical charts layers in their own webmapping applications through our GeoGarage API.

13 charts have been updated since the last update + 1 new chart (PLANO4418 Plano Rio Trombetas)

DHN update December 19, 2013

• 2102   DE SÃO JOSÉ DO NORTE AO CANAL DA SETIA
• 231   DA ILHA DO MACHADINHO AO CABO MAGUARI (PROXIMIDADES DA BARRA SUL DO AMAZONAS)
• 1830   PROXIMIDADES DO PORTO DE SÃO FRANCISCO DO SUL
• 2101   PORTO DO RIO GRANDE
• 21800   DA PONTA DE ITAPAGÉ A FORTALEZA
• 21900   DA PONTA MACEIÓ AO CABO CALCANHAR
• 25110   ILHA ELEFANTE E PROXIMIDADES
• 25119   ILHAS SHETLAND DO SUL - BAÍA DE SERRATT (I. REI GEORGE)
• 25120   ILHAS SHETLAND DO SUL - BAÍA REI GEORGE (I. REI GEORGE)
• 202   DA ILHA DO BAILIQUE À PONTA DO CAPINAL
• 232   BARRA SUL DO RIO AMAZONAS
• 3357   DA VOLTA DO ACURIZAL AO RIACHO DO ABRIGO
• 3358   DA ORÇADA DE SÃO JOSÉ À ILHA CARAGUATÁ

Today 434 charts (482 including sub-charts) from DHN are displayed in the Marine GeoGarage
Don't forget to visit the NtM Notices to Mariners (Avisos aos Navegantes)

Has the Great Barrier Reef just been approved for destruction by the Australian government?

From The Guardian (by Alex White)

One of the natural wonders of the world is about to have 3 million cubic metres of seabed dumped on top of it.

Who could forget, back in 2009, the launch of the "Best Job in the World"?
The campaign by Tourism Queensland generated global interest in the Sunshine State and the role of park ranger and "caretaker" of Hamilton Island in the Great Barrier Reef.
Ben Southall was the inaugural winner, a Brit by birth and native of Hampshire, he beat 35,000 applicants for the coveted role.
Ben spent a year promoting the wonders of the Great Barrier Reef.
In the first four days, he visited the pristine Whitehaven Beach, stopped for lunch at Hayman Island, went on a tour of the Coral Sea and Daydream Island and ended up at the Seaworld adventure park and a game of Aussie Rules (Richmond vs Adelaide - Go Crows!).
Four days into his year-long stint in the Best Job in the World, Ben said: "My stay on the Gold Coast has been nothing short of spectacular; there really is something for everybody."

Unfortunately, soon a massively destructive coal port will be built just 50 km north of the magnificent Whitsunday Islands.
The port expansion was approved by the Abbott Liberal National government on Wednesday 11 December, and it will become one of the world's largest coal ports.
The coal export facility is ironically located on Abbot Point.
The construction of this port will involve dredging 3 million cubic metres of seabed.
The dredge spoil will be dumped into the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area.

http://getup.org.au/reef

To give you an idea of the scale of this dredging, if all of the spoil was put into dump trucks, there would be 150,000 of them lined up bumper to bumper from Brisbane to Melbourne.
This expansion is further proof that the Abbott government is hell-bent on turning Australia into a reckless charco-state that solely represents the interests of fossil fuel and coal companies.
Just around the corner from the port is a beach that is the nesting place for endangered green and flat back turtles.
Fun facts about the flat back turtle: they're officially classified as "vulnerable" by the Australian Government, and nest only in northern Australia.
They have the smallest migratory range of any marine turtle, so when their home in Queensland is destroyed, they've really got nowhere else to go.
Also in the spoil-dumping area are sea-grass beds, which are the home to dugongs.
The "sea cows" may not be the sexiest of marine animals, but they are at risk of extinction, and most of the world's remaining population lives in the Great Barrier Reef.

 Landsat picture

 Pleiades - Great Barrier Reef coverage. The Great Barrier Reef (100 km wide) ...

This is one of the reasons that the Reef has World Heritage listing.
An independent government report from August this year found that dredging sediment travelled a lot further than previously thought.
The risks include sediment being disturbed by severe weather.
Even a cursory look at Queensland's weather patterns near the Reef over the past decade would show that severe weather, including tropical cyclones and flooding, is a regular occurrence, even if you disregard massively destructive events like Cyclone Yasi.

The Great Barrier Reef generated around 69,000 full-time equivalent jobs, and boosted our economy by 5.68 billion in 2011/12, according to recent research.
Most of this is through tourism and reef-dependent industries like fishing.
Environment Minister Greg Hunt has mischievously claimed that "Some of the strictest conditions in Australian history have been placed on these projects".
This is mischievous because, obviously, massively increasing coal exports at this time will do irreparable damage to our climate.

Worryingly, Greg Hunt's briefing and decision, released on the 11th of December, is based on the assurance of the North Queensland Bulk Ports Corporation, the state-owned corporation that owns the project, that "the project area (dredging area) is not a notable or significant biodiversity site in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area" and "the potential impact area in the dumping ground (which is within the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park) is considerably small".
The brief also says that the "habitats were recorded to recover from similar events".
You are obviously free to come to your own views about Hunt's strange cognitive dissonance, where on the one hand there are the "strictest conditions" on the dredging, but on the other hand the "dredging area is not a notable... site" in the Reef.
Perhaps someone could leave a comment that explains why Hunt has required strict conditions if the area is not a significant site.
Unless of course, Hunt is simply trying to pull the wool over our eyes.
You be the judge.

The very real problems are not just the vast and untold damage that dredging will do to the Great Barrier Reef, or the risk of damage to the reef by the substantial increase in shipping through the World Heritage Area.
The Abbot Point development has been green-lit to funnel vast amounts of coal out of Australia.
The coal ports currently proposed, including Abbot Point and new coal terminals proposed at Wiggins Island, Raglan Creek, Balaclava Island, Dudgeon Point, and Cape York, would increase total coal tonnage by more than six-fold, from 156 Mt in 2011 to a capacity of 944 Mt by the end of the decade.
Australia's coal is one of the globe's fourteen carbon bombs.
Our coal export industry is the largest in the world, and results in 760m tonnes of CO₂ emissions annually.
The urgent goal of Tony Abbott's government, and his environment minister Greg Hunt is to ship as much climate-devastating coal as possible, as quickly as possible.
Every day, this Liberal-National government, led by Tony Abbott, provides new examples of its nastiness, its short-sightedness, and its willingness to destroy livelihoods, communities and the environment to enrich coal barons.

Links :

• SydneyMorningHerald : Mining dwarfs farming as threat to health of Great Barrier Reef, marine scientist warns

NZ Linz nautical charts to be more accessible

As our public viewer is not yet available (currently under construction, upgrading to Google Maps API v3 as v2 is officially no more supported),
this info is primarily intented to our iPhone/iPad universal mobile application users (Marine NZ on the App Store)
and also to our B2B customers which use our nautical charts layers in their own webmapping applications through our GeoGarage API.

From Scoop

From 22 November 2013, Land Information Minister Maurice Williamson announced mariners can now access free online navigational charts in a new, and more widely accessible, format as the government continues to make more publicly held information available for reuse.

Land Information New Zealand today made its Raster Navigational Charts available in an unencrypted BSB (.kap) format that’s more widely supported by software manufacturers.

“This is great news for recreational boaters, who are much more likely to have on board systems that support the new format.  The change also removes the need for special licensing or permits,” Mr Williamson says.

Charts will also be available to software developers to use in creating apps and other types of value added products.
“LINZ maritime information is already being used to create apps for mariners, and this latest initiative only opens up even more possibilities for developers.
“Making Raster Navigational Charts accessible is another example of the work the government is doing to make non-personal data easier for people to discover, use and share,” Mr Williamson says.

Regarding the GeoGarage, the quality of the display for the Linz charts both on the web or on the Marine NZ iPhone/iPad universal application is right now improved as the resolution of the BSB material (254 dpi) is better than the unencrypted previous format HCRF (127 dpi) used in previous digital charts material.

181 charts (318 including sub-charts) available in the GeoGarage (catalogue).


Note : the 11 following charts are not available (Fathom charts) in the NZMariner catalogue of NZHA (New Zealand Hydrographic Authority) :

• 82    Tonga
• 822    Vava’u Group
• 827    Approaches to Tongatapu including ‘Eua
• 861    Plans in Samoa
• 1414    Asau Harbour
• 8235    Ofolanga Island and Anchorage
• 8247    Ha’apai Group - northern portion
• 8248    Ha’apai Group - southern portion
• 8259    Nomuka Group
• 8266    Anchorages in Tonga
• 8685    Islands in American Samoa