Regatta filmed by a drone

2014 Heineken Regatta filmed by a Drone
from Pigeon Vision

Links :

• other video

Tomorrow’s cargo ships will use Augmented Reality to sail the seas

Rolls-Royce presents the future of tug bridge controls :
Rolls-Royce created this concept under FIMECC (Finnish Metals and Engineering Competence Cluster) user experience and usability program, UXUS.

This future bridge operation concept for tugs is envisioned together with VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and Aalto University of Arts, Design and Architecture in 2012-2013.

From Wired

By 2025, the first batch of autonomous vehicles will be driving through your neighborhood.
But what about cargo ships?
They’ll still have humans at the helm–at least most of the time–and this is the augmented reality bridge they’ll use to traverse the high seas.

The tug boat bridge of the future will be fully customizable and feature augmented reality.

Photo: VTT

The massive tiller and towering consoles are gone, replaced with minimalist workstations facing floor-to-ceiling windows that serve as a vast head-up display.
The ship’s navigation information is overlaid in front of the crew, along with other vessel’s routes and obstacles that could be obscured by fog or rain.
At night, thermal cameras display live video over the window to let watchmen keep tabs on what’s ahead.

After inputting the ship’s destination, the navigation system determines the most economical route and uses a sea ice analyzer to avoid a Titanic redux.

The bridge concept was developed by the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and Rolls-Royce.
Beyond its multi-ton, high-dollar luxury barges, Rolls has a storied history in maritime development, building and developing engines, along with a host of other marine and aviations systems.

The bridge of the future also extends to tug boats, with the OX concept that automatically detects the captain and then configures the workstation to both their size and needs.
The user interface is fully adjustable for usability and visibility, and places augmented reality markers on the ship it’s towing to help with deckhand placement, predict the route of the vessel, and get real-time winch information.

But autonomous systems are going to make their way into large vessels in the near future, and VTT and Rolls-Royce are already working on the first round of systems, which initially include remote controls that can be commanded from the bridge or on land.
“In terms of the technology required, operating a container vessel by remote control is already a real possibility,” VTT says in a release.
“However, before fully unmanned vessels can be launched on seas, widespread public approval is also required.”

That’s going to happen before Rolls and VTT make the bridge of the future a reality, with plans to deploy the first remote-controlled ship in the coming years.

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : No hands on deck: Dawn of the crewless ship / Rolls-Royce’s drone shipbots will rule tomorrow’s oceans, shipping containers
  

France SHOM update in the Marine GeoGarage

7 charts have been withdrawn since the last update :

• 4696    Baie de Diego-Suarez   
• 5636    Du Nez de Jobourg à la Pointe de Nacqueville   
• 5983    Archipel des Comores   
• 6369    Estuaire du Gabon   
• 6378    Port de Libreville   
• 6679    Cours de l'Odet De Bénodet à Quimper  
• 6852    Abords de Touho et du Cap Bayes    

and 7 charts have been added :

• 7232    Du Nez de Jobourg à la Pointe de Nacqueville
• 7249    Ports et Mouillages en Finistère Sud
• 7490    Archipel des Comores
• 7582    Estuaire du Gabon
• 7680    Approches de la Baie d'Antsiranana (Diégo-Suarez)
• 7756    De Touho à Ponérihouen 

so 597 charts from SHOM are displayed in the Marine GeoGarage

Balancing the sea-level budget

Sifting data from 11 satellites, experts have determined that nearly a 1/2 inch (11mm) of sea level rise can be attributed to melting of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica since 1992 .

This accounts for 20% of sea level rise during that period.

From ESA

Water from melting glaciers and ice sheets, along with thermal expansion of ocean water due to rising temperatures, are causing global sea-level rise.
Scientists are exploiting satellite data to understand better just how much each component contributes to this devastating consequence of climate change.

 Reference mean sea level since January 1993 from altimetry

Latest estimates show that global sea level is rising by about 3 mm a year, and this is one of the major threats of global warming, especially for low-lying coastal areas.

 Aletsch Glacier

Identifying the individual contributors to sea-level rise is one of the most complicated challenges in climate science.
This involves tracking water as it moves in all its forms – solid, liquid or gas – around Earth.
While Earth-observing satellites continuously map global and regional sea-level change, they can also be used to quantify the amount of water coming from various sources.
Under ESA’s Climate Change Initiative (CCI), experts in the domains of oceans, land, atmosphere and the cryosphere are working together to quantify the various sources of sea-level change – known as balancing the sea-level budget.
“We have been reprocessing altimetry data from seven satellites to improve estimates of the global mean sea level and its regional variability,” said Anny Cazenave, Senior Scientist at the Laboratoire d’Etudes en Géophysique et Océanographie Spatiales (LEGOS) of France’s CNES space agency and leader of the CCI Sea Level project.
“Bringing results together from other CCI projects, such as the Ice Sheets and Glaciers projects, is helping us to better understand the sea-level budget."

  Sea-level rise from ice sheets

Changes in the mass of ice sheets and glaciers can be mapped using satellite radar altimeters, like the one flying on ESA’s CryoSat that was specially designed to survey ice.
By monitoring these changes, scientists can gauge how much water they contribute to the ocean.
“Within the Ice Sheets CCI project, our aim is to monitor the polar ice sheets as they respond to changes in climate, measurements that will help us to better understand the origins of global sea-level rise and to improve the certainty of future sea-level projections,” said Andrew Shepherd from the University of Leeds, UK.

The ice sheets that blanket Greenland and Antarctica have contributed about 0.6 mm a year to global sea levels since 1993, making them responsible for about 20% of all sea-level rise.
Although this may seem small, their annual contribution has increased almost threefold during that period.
While glaciers have been responsible for a larger fraction – 27% – their losses have been relatively stable over the past two decades.
“We just recently compiled a new assessment of the glacier contribution to sea-level rise using the first globally complete glacier inventory and a wide range of input data either from satellite or field-based and other measurements,” said Frank Paul, senior scientist at the Department of Geography at the University of Zurich and leader of the Glaciers CCI project.
“More than 90% of the contribution comes from only five regions: Alaska, the Canadian Arctic and glaciers on Greenland as well as high-mountain Asia and Patagonia.”

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Cryosat mission's new views of polar ice / Mountain glacier melt to contribute 12 centimetres to world sea-level increases by 2100 / Greenland and Antarctica 'have lost four trillion tonnes of ice' in 20 years
• Phys.org : New study shows major increase in West Antarctic glacial loss

Crude oil causes developmental abnormalities in large marine fish

An Atlantic bluefin tuna strikes.

Credit: ©Gilbert Van Ryckevorsel/TAG A Giant

From NOAA

Crude oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico causes severe defects in the developing hearts of bluefin and yellowfin tuna, according to a new study by a team of NOAA and academic scientists.

Oil in the wake of a boat in the Gulf of Mexico. Credit: NOAA

Atlantic bluefin tuna, yellowfin tuna, and other large predatory fish spawn in the northern Gulf during the spring and summer months.
In 2010, their spawning season directly coincided with the Deepwater Horizon spill.
Their embryos, which float near the ocean surface, were potentially in harm’s way as crude oil rose from the damaged wellhead to form large surface slicks.
“We know from the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Prince William Sound that recently spawned fish are especially vulnerable to crude oil toxicity,” said Nat Scholz, Ph.D., leader of the ecotoxicology program at NOAA's Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle.
“That spill taught us to pay close attention to the formation and function of the heart.”

What Did We Find?

Crude oil contains mixtures of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs.
These PAHs adversely affect heart development in the two species of tuna, and an amberjack species, by slowing the heartbeat or causing an uncoordinated rhythm, which can ultimately lead to heart failure.
According to the study, the thresholds for developmental defects are very low, in the range of approximately 1-15 parts per billion—within the PAH concentration range of water samples collected during the spill.

Image shows a normal yellowfin tuna larva not long after hatching (top), and a larva exposed to Deepwater Horizon crude oil during embryonic development (bottom).

The oil-exposed larva shows a suite of morphological abnormalities including fluid accumulation from heart failure and poor growth of fins and eyes.

Credit: John Incardona/NOAA

Severely affected fish with heart failure and deformed jaws are likely to have died soon after hatching.
The NOAA team has shown in previous work that fish that survive transient crude oil exposures can suffer subtle and transient changes in heart rhythm during development.
These changes can permanently impair cardiac function and swimming performance at later life stages.

Bluefin tuna larva, 16 days post-hatch. Credit: Adam Miller, Cleanseas Tuna

“This creates a potential for delayed mortality,” said Dr. John Incardona, NOAA research toxicologist and the study’s lead author. “Swimming is everything for these species.”

How Did We Do It?

A major difficulty facing the researchers was access to live animals.
Due to their fragile nature, it was next to impossible to assess the effects of Deepwater Horizon crude oil on live embryos and larvae collected in the vicinity of the spill.
Also, there are only a few facilities in the world capable of spawning adult tunas in captivity.

 Embryos of bluefin tuna, 18 hours post-fertilization. Credit: Adam Miller, Cleanseas Tuna

Instead, the team brought the oil to the fish.
Samples of crude oil were collected from the field and transported to land-based hatcheries in Australia and Panama with spawning broodstocks of bluefin and yellowfin tuna.
This provided access to embryos and larvae, allowing the scientists to emulate environmentally realistic crude oil exposures for both species.

Learning from the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

This study is a culmination of more than two decades of NOAA research on crude oil toxicity to fish early life stages.

Image from an overflight on May 25, 2010, approximately 12 miles east of Pass a Loutre, Louisiana, showing dark brown and red emulsion inthe convergence zone with dull and silver­colored sheens. Credit: NOAA

In the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez spill 25 years ago, NOAA discovered that PAHs from crude oil are highly toxic to the embryos and larvae of Pacific herring and pink salmon that spawned in oiled nearshore habitats.
In more recent years, investigators at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center have shown that these developmental deformities are primarily caused by heart defects.

The effects of Deepwater Horizon crude oil on tunas were very similar to effects previously observed in other fish species exposed to oil.
Given this consistency, the authors suggest there may have been cardiac-related impacts on swordfish, marlin, mackerel, and other fish in the northern Gulf.
“If they spawned in proximity to oil, we’d expect these types of effects,” said Incardona.

Links :

• NOAA : Scientists Discover the Underlying Mechanism of Heart Failure in Fish Exposed to Oil Spills
• NYTimes :  Fish Embryos Exposed to Oil From BP Spill Develop Deformities, a Study Finds