Russia and China blamed for blocking Antarctic marine reserve

From Mongabay

Another year, another failed attempt to protect a significant chunk of the Ross Sea, which sits off the coast of Antarctica.
According to observers, efforts to create the world's biggest marine protected area to date were shot down by Russia and China during a meeting in Hobart, Tasmania of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR).
The protected area can only be established by a unanimous vote of the CCAMLR's 24 members and the EU.

"Since 1959, Antarctica has been recognized as a special place for peace and science.
It is regrettable that CCAMLR, faced with objections from China and Russia, cannot live up to that promise," said Andrea Kavanagh with Pew Charitable Trusts.
"Another year of inaction means another year that these near-pristine waters and their remarkable biodiversity are open to the threat of industrial fishing."

NGA nautical charts for Antarctica with the Marine GeoGarage

Some observers theorized that geopolitical tensions over Ukraine were to blame for the proposal's failure this year and not the merits of the project itself.
The Ross Sea has been dubbed the "last ocean" due to its relatively untouched conditions.
Its waters are home to penguins, whales, seals, and marine birds, including about half of the world's killer whales.
However, fishing has been ongoing in the sea for Antarctic toothfish (Dissostichus mawsoni) since the 1990s.
These fisheries have proven controversial with many scientists and conservationists, given that almost nothing is known about the species except that it's a slow-growing top predator—capable of reaching 300 pounds—and is often described as the shark of Antarctica.

The fish is often sold as Chilean sea bass and is one of the world's most expensive, making it largely available only to wealthier customers.
At the same time, fishermen are exposed to hugely dangerous conditions and often paid little.

 Ross Sea : protecting an ecological treasure (NOAA)

In total the Ross Sea covers 3.6 million square kilometers (1.9 square miles).
The current proposal would protect 1.34 million square kilometers (517,000 square miles)—about 37 percent of the total.
The proposal would ban fishing from most of the protected waters, but allow scientific fishing in certain areas.
It would also have a fifty year ban on fossil fuels and a forty year ban on mining.
The Ross Sea protected proposal stems from the U.S. and New Zealand, the latter is already fishing in the remote waters.

Coulman Island in the Ross Sea.

Photo by: Michael Van Woert/NOAA.

This is the fourth time the proposal has failed, even as countries have significantly shrunk the size of the protected area and loosened regulations.
The Ross Sea wasn't the only loser at the meeting.
A second proposal for a series four marine protected areas along the East Antarctic coast was also killed.
These marine reserves would have covered nearly a million square kilometers (386,000 square miles).
The region is also home to an Antarctic krill fishery.
Although krill are the base of the marine food chain, these tiny crustaceans are fished for Omega-3 supplements and fish food.
The one bright spot in the meeting, according to Kavanagh, was further restriction put on the krill industry to better protect penguins.

"We are pleased that CCAMLR took positive steps to keep some krill fishing away from nesting habitats of penguins, but disappointed that politics trumped the advice from the Scientific Committee to increase observer coverage on all fishing vessels," said Kavanagh.

Currently, observers—who independently monitor fisheries' catches and practices—are only found on half of the vessels used by krill fisheries.

Links :

• Phys : Australia confident of Antarctic marine reserve in 2015
• South Ross Sea Region map (USGS) / Linz

The 17 areas of Britain where whales, dolphins and sharks need help

From The Telegraph by Sarah Knapton

Whales, dolphins and sharks need protection from boats and over-fishing at 17 areas off the British coast, a new report suggests.

For the first time, the strips of water where large marine life, known as ‘megafauna’, gather to feed, breed and raise their young, have been identified by wildlife experts.
The sites range from the north east coast of England to Anglesey in Wales and the Irish Sea.
The Wildlife Trusts is calling for the areas to be awarded special protection because they are "acutely vulnerable" to pollution, commercial fishing and other human activities.

Joan Edwards, the Wildlife Trusts' head of living seas, said: "There's an urgent need to create protected areas at sea for our ocean giants and ensure a network of sites to safeguard these species for generations to come.
"The UK has made huge advances in marine conservation in recent years but there is still a significant job to do. Our marine megafauna - whales, dolphins, porpoises and basking sharks - are still under threat.
"Many are suffering from the impacts, whether direct or indirect, increased boat traffic, marine developments and the more persistent effects of pollution."

 Basking Sharks - Hebrides: Islands on the Edge

The UK's waters are home to 29 species of whale, dolphin, porpoise and the world's second largest shark, the basking shark.

Along with harbour porpoises and common and bottlenose dolphins, species including humpback whales, killer whales and sperm whales are seen in the UK's waters.

The Government is creating "marine protected areas" to secure the future of habitats and wildlife on the seabed, but the trusts are concerned that there are no protected areas for dolphins, whales and sharks in England and only one in Wales.
They are calling for the series of "hotspots" - highly productive areas which produce plenty of food - to be protected especially for whales, basking sharks and dolphins, to secure the "missing link" in marine conservation in English and Welsh waters.

The trusts propose creating new marine protected areas, extending the boundaries of ones that are already proposed, adding protection of dolphin, whale and shark species and undertaking more research to establish the importance of sites.
They suggest “designating areas of the sea which are known hotspots, we can provide safe havens for these species and some impacts can be limited or removed altogether".
The proposals include creating a new marine protected area in the south west part of Lyme Bay, which is an important foraging area for white-beaked dolphins as well as hosting important numbers of harbour porpoises.

They also include creating a protected area for common dolphins in the North of Celtic Deep, off the Welsh coast. The food-rich area is a critical habitat for the common dolphin, which gathers in large numbers in the summer to feed and calve, the trusts said.
Areas in Cardigan Bay, off the Northumberland coast and off the southern tip of the Cornish coast are all among the hotspots that the Wildlife Trusts want to see protected for dolphins, whales and basking sharks.

The Wildlife Trusts is made up of the 47 individual Wildlife Trusts covering the whole of the UK and the Isle of Man and Alderney.

Links :

• BBC : Sea giants need urgent protection / Sea life needs protecting at Welsh sites, experts warn

Science’s favorite deep-sea explorer gets high-tech upgrades

 It’s the only deep-diving research submersible in the United States, and nearly 50 years after its first expedition it’s getting an upgrade.

Take an exclusive tour of the Alvin submarine, and see how the updated vessel is continuing to push the boundaries of deep-water exploration

From Wired by Jeffrey Marlow

After 50 years of cutting-edge seafloor exploration, the Alvin submersible—renegade deep-sea explorer for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute—just got a long-deserved makeover.
Alvin is the United States’ only deep-diving manned submersible used for science, so its upgrades will have a serious impact on the discoveries we can pull off in the deep.

 For two generations, the human-occupied submersible Alvin has helped scientists expand human knowledge of the ocean and inspired countless to learn more about the ocean.

This year, Alvin turns 50, and we want you to help us celebrate.

To make a tricked-out sub, engineers first had to build a new personnel sphere, the titanium orb that protects the sub’s three passengers—one pilot, two scientists—from the crushing pressure of the water above them.

Metalworkers cast two perfect hemispheres, 6 feet in diameter, and welded them together with an electron beam.

Structural tests showed the sphere was safe to dive up to 6,500 meters below the surface, which opens up 98 percent of the seafloor to exploration.

Archive (1965) : new submarine to observe oceans depths

After the sphere was finished, engineers built a new chasse around it, outfitted with improved tech for the scientists inside.

Five HD cameras—up from three on Alvin’s previous iteration—record the scene for later analysis. Those cameras can see further, too, thanks to the high-intensity LEDs that ring the sub.

And more and larger viewports provide overlapping fields of view, which allow scientists and pilots to coordinate sample collection with the sub’s robotic arms.

Those arms, by the way, got an upgrade too: They have a new shoulder joint that extends their reach to grab awkwardly placed samples.

Once the team has snagged the right rocks, sediment, and animal specimens, they’re dumped on the bulked-up sampling platform, which can carry more than twice Alvin’s previous load to the surface.

The technological upgrades on the U.S. Navy-owned Alvin submersible allow the deep-sea diving vessel to go to new depths.

Reaching 98 percent of the sea floor, the submarine is able to explore complex hydrothermal vents and ecosystems.

After a full day’s work exploring the ocean’s depths, the new Alvin rises to the surface, anticipating a pick-up from its mother ship, the research vessel Atlantis.
With the new brighter hue on the sub’s carbon fiber sail—the same international orange used on the Golden Gate Bridge—the ship has no trouble spotting it in the water.
A faster recovery means a quicker route to the shipboard cold room, where precious samples are preserved.
On shore, a giddy group of scientists will be waiting to start their analysis.

Links :

• GeoGarage blog :  Ocean science giant Alvin set for upgrade / Probing the ocean's undiscovered depths / Unprecedented impact of Deepwater Horizon on deep ocean revealed / The last dive? Funding for human expeditions in the ocean may have run aground
• NPR : Alvin, the little submarine that could

Nautical charts to be revised to reflect unprecedented changes caused by tsunami

 Colorful lines on a nautical chart aboard the Tenyo hydrographic survey vessel show trajectories surveyed by its dinghy.

Black lines indicate trajectories yet to be surveyed.

(Yosuke Fukudome)

From TheAsahiShimbun by Yuri Imamura

About an hour into a Japan Coast Guard hydrographic survey mission, a crew member on lookout abruptly shouted for the dinghy to stop.
The starboard was about to touch a 200-meter-long rope floating about 1 meter beneath the sea surface near Onagawa Port, Miyagi Prefecture.
The rope was being used for an underwater operation to tie a work vessel to a buoy.
The previous day, the crew discovered about 10 caissons, the gigantic concrete boxes that constitute the foundations of a breakwater, in the area.
The boxes, measuring 20 meters per side and each weighing several thousand tons, were dumped there by the tsunami three and a half years ago.
“Even those hefty caissons were swept up by the tsunami,” said Tsuyoshi Takaesu, the chief hydrographic surveyor of the main Tenyo survey vessel.
“You will never know what you will encounter.”

A dinghy of the Tenyo, a hydrographic survey vessel of the Japan Coast Guard,

navigates Onagawa Bay. (Yosuke Fukudome)

The Japan Coast Guard continues to survey waters off the tsunami-affected Tohoku coast to revise nautical charts that take into account disaster-related rubble on the seabed, drifting objects and changing water depths that could pose a threat to safe navigation.

Map of 2011 Tohoku(Sendai) earthquake observed tsunami heights in Japan.

The mission primarily covers 24 ports and surrounding waters along the Pacific coast extending from Aomori Prefecture to Ibaraki Prefecture and is scheduled to be completed by the end of fiscal 2015.
The 2011 disaster caused changes to the seafloor on an unprecedented scale, Coast Guard officials said.
And the mission so far has been full of surprises and potential dangers.
“A big mess would follow if (the rope) were to be caught in the dinghy’s propeller,” Takaesu said in a strained voice about the rope.

 This image, obtained during the Tenyo’s seabed survey immediately following the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, is believed to represent a submerged vehicle.

(Provided by the Second Regional Coast Guard Headquarters)

The dinghy’s crew approached carefully and used a pole to get the rope out of the way.
The compact dinghy, which is only 2 meters wide and 10 meters long, was deployed from the 430-ton Tenyo survey vessel on Sept. 17 to survey the shallow interior of the port.
The Tenyo, with a crew of 23 and Koichi Nishimura as captain, was surveying all parts of the harbor off the town of Onagawa for the first time in 32 years.
Takaesu, 50, has served in the post since immediately after the Great East Japan Earthquake triggered the tsunami on March 11, 2011.

The tsunami changed water depths significantly in nautical charts in at least one location for every harbor, according to officials of the Second Regional Coast Guard Headquarters, which oversees the coasts of the six Tohoku prefectures.

The Changing Face of Onagawa (March 11, 2011 - March 11, 2013)

Nautical charts show water depths, coastal topography, locations of shoals and lighthouses, ocean flows and tide currents to ensure safe navigation of seafaring vessels and port use.
The new nautical charts will be used to set limits on the size of vessels and their cargo to ensure that seabed objects will not hit the ship bottoms.

Takaesu recalled the time he was in Kamaishi Port in Iwate Prefecture in May, when he came across a spot with a depth of only 1 to 2 meters, despite surrounding depths of 36 meters.
When he hastily brought out measurement equipment, he saw something in the water that looked like Tokyo Tower.
“What’s this?” he thought, and returned to the same spot.
He realized the object was a mess of entangled fishing nets.
“It gave me a shudder to realize that an object like that was still moving along,” Takaesu said. “Rebuilding efforts have proceeded visibly on land, but they probably still have a long way to go in the ocean.”

 This image is believed to represent a submerged vessel.

(Provided by the Second Regional Coast Guard Headquarters)

The dinghy can accommodate 10, but only five or six usually go on board because of the small interior.
A monitoring chamber in the center of the dinghy contains four computer monitors.
A multi-beam sonar on the bottom measures the seafloor topography and produces graphical output.
The constant movement of the dinghy can induce sea sickness.
“I have yet to get accustomed,” said Kenta Kobayashi, a 21-year-old rookie who was assigned to do hydrographic surveys in spring.

 JP79 Ishinomaki Wan (1:50,000) published 2014-09
JHA/Japan Coast Guard

The dinghy shuttled back and forth at a speed of 8-9 kph within a radius of about 100 meters near a tsunami breakwater under construction 1 km off Onagawa Port.
It shifted its trajectory slightly to one side each time, just as you do when you wipe a floor with a cloth.
“We are passing by the caissons,” Kobayashi said as the dinghy entered the waters where the objects had been spotted the previous day.
When the depths became shallower, the computer screens shifted from deep blue to orange.

Koji Saito, a 25-year-old assistant hydrographic surveyor, said he was working for the Second Regional Coast Guard Headquarters in Shiogama, Miyagi Prefecture, when the quake and tsunami struck.
He said he found a swept-up passenger car in Hachinohe Port, Aomori Prefecture.
“Whenever I am on a survey mission, I can’t help but look for a car that may contain missing people,” Saito said.

W65 Hachinohe Ko (1:12,000) published 2014-03

JHA/Japan Coast Guard

Tsunami breakwaters were destroyed in the ports of Ofunato and Kamaishi in Iwate Prefecture, where water depths lost a maximum of 10 meters.
But in a July 2011 survey, the water was 15 meters deeper than indicated in the nautical chart at one location in Hachinohe Port, Aomori Prefecture.
It is believed that the tsunami induced a big eddy that scooped out part of the seafloor.

 W1093 Ofunato Ko (1:10,000) published 2014-07

JHA/Japan Coast Guard

Coast Guard officials said local governments that administer ports are in charge of surveying any small changes, such as those resulting from wharf construction.
The Coast Guard uses those survey results to modify its nautical charts.

But the 2011 disaster created so many changes that the Coast Guard took the unusual step of conducting comprehensive surveys and republishing nautical charts for all 24 ports affected.
It takes workers two to eight weeks to survey a single harbor.
They work in three shifts around the clock.
Data analysis requires an additional six months to one year.
“There is a pressing need for port maintenance to help rebuilding efforts,” said Hirokazu Mori, the 47-year-old chief of the hydrographic surveys division in the Second Regional Coast Guard Headquarters.
“We hope to produce highly reliable nautical charts.”

 Japan’s first nautical chart was created in 1872 by the navy and covered Kamaishi Port.

Vessels of a certain dimension are legally obligated to equip themselves with nautical charts on a permanent basis.

Links :

• Hydro : Hydrography After Huge Earthquakes (2011)

Route du Rhum 2014

Yann Elies skipper on his MOD 70

From The Independant by Stuart Alexander

The biggest gathering of fans at any sports event in Europe this weekend will not be at a soccer or rugby match but crowding the dockside of St. Malo in Brittany at lunchtime Sunday to watch 91 singlehanded sailors start their 4,500-mile Route du Rhum race across the Atlantic to Guadeloupe in the French West Indies.

3542 nautical miles
www.routedurhum.com

A few of the competitors will be at the helm of giant machines, most will be steering smaller boats that can and will be tossed about just crossing the English Channel, they race in five different divisions, and there will be just three Brits among them.

 250,000 set to line the banks of Brittany

to wave off 91 singlehanded sailors on their wet and windy path to exhaustion

In the run-up to the start, up to 200,000 people a day, say the police, have crowded the walled city and its harbour to catch a glimpse of these crazy adventurers and a fleet festooned with flags in part celebrating its 10 edition.
Sunday, weather willing, there will be 250,000 to watch the kick-off and then to wonder, as they make their way back to warm homes and beds, what is waiting for the departed masochists.
Answer, in the first 24 hours a wet and windy path to exhaustion.

 Robin Knox Johnson, the oldest competitor

Fatigue and lack of sleep is one of the biggest dangers.
The sea is no respecter of age and reputation and the oldest competitor, the 75-year young Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, admitted worrying not a little about the task of hoisting his relatively big mainsail on Grey Power and not being able to sleep much until through the shipping lanes, across the Biscay, and then turning right into the warmer Atlantic .
Relative because on the two biggest boats, the 105-foot trimaran Banque Populaire and the even bigger 130-foot Spindrift, Loick Peyron and Yann Guichard have adapted a bicycle pedalling solution to the task.
Legs are stronger than arms.

Wind forecast (NOAA)

The fleet is predicted to be bashing into stiff breezes and lumpy seas as they exit the Channel but the quick boys – Sidney Gavignet estimates his 70-foot trimaran Musandam-Oman Sail will be past Finistère soon after breakfast on Monday morning – will then pick up a favourable shift in wind direction and enjoy some fast progress.
The Bay of Biscay could be free sailing as they head for the big right turn.

The record, 7d 17h 19m, was set by Lionel Lemonchois in the 60-foot trimaran Gitana in 2006 and odds are that it will be broken this year.
As he is in a stretched, 80-foot version, Prince de Bretagne, Lemonchois could break it himself, but others should be even faster.
But while the fastest eight or 10, assuming no disasters like capsizes, should make it in just over a week the class that constitutes nearly half the fleet, the Class 40, can look forward to 10 more days before enjoying the rum punches and Franco-Caribbean cuisine of Point à Pitre.

Among them are the two other British competitors, Conrad Humphreys, carrying from Plymouth the colours of Cat Phones, and Miranda Merron racing against instead of with her French partner Halvard Mabire.
“It will be like doing half a dozen Figaro singlehanded races in succession,” says Humphreys, whose goal is a second crack at the Vendée Globe singlehanded non-stop round the world race in 2016 or 2020.

Ninety-one boats and 91 goals but two in complete contrast are those of Peyron and Gavignet.
For Gavignet the mission was almost accomplished before he left the dock.
It was strictly commercial as thousands trooped through the Oman tourism marquee picking up leaflets – or having their children’s hands hennaed.

There are various strands to the initiative which is Oman Sail from youth development and sail training/schools at home to tourism and inward investment abroad and its Yorkshireman ceo David Graham is quietly proud about seeing the programme, which includes having an Omani sailor in the Olympic opening ceremony, knit together and expand.
He is more animatedly proud of having built a team in Muscat which continues to promote Omani women to senior management positions.
And he is working on having a Volvo round the world campaign to run alongside the Olympic goal. The dots of what may turn out to be a permanent national strategy built around sailing are being joined up.

For Peyron, well, what can you say?
He is a phenomenon who can straddle all types of sailing, solo or in a crew, and he picked up this gig at the last minute because Armel le Cléac’h suffered a bad injury to his right arm.
It means that Peyron’s own Rhum project, a yellow 30-foot trimaran called Happy, is for sale up on the hard at La Trinité with part of the sale contract including the stipulation that Peyron can borrow it back to do the quadrennial Rhum in 2018.
That will be after the America’s Cup in 2017, date to be confirmed, venue to be confirmed.

Peyron is a key part of Sweden’s Artemis AC team, run by British gold medallist Iain Percy and recently joined by fellow China Games gold medallist Paul Goodison, who had been sailing with Ben Ainslie.
The Artemis team will be travelling mob-handed to Melbourne at the beginning of January with Peyron as both coach and competitor in the Moth World Championship.
“My job is to control the back of the fleet,” he says self-deprecatingly about an event which will attract several America’s Cup team personnel. Before that “I am in a war, for sure. Especially with this weapon.”
Every major manoeuvre takes at least an hour but the platform is more stable.
“I wouldn’t have given up my project to do the Rhum in a MOD70 [the boat in which Gavignet is racing] and I already have a lot of grey hair from sailing small trimarans,” says Peyron ruefully

Yann Guichard, whose at other times co-skipper and partner is Dona Bertarelli, has the kit to deliver a new record.
Peyron is a canny and doughty competitor.
Both have weather experts working around the clock to calculate the fastest route.
And so do many of their rivals.
But competitors without the grandee budget touch just have to work things out for themselves.
Which is what Columbus had to try to do.