Polar code agreed to prevent Arctic environmental disasters

From The Guardian by 

International Maritime Organisation committee adopts measures to protect the environment in face of predicted polar shipping rush

The international body in charge of sea safety adopted measures on Friday to protect people and the environment during a predicted shipping rush in the Arctic.
But environment groups and insurers said the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) Maritime Safety Committee had failed to address key issues including a proposed ban on heavy fuel oil and how to safeguard against cowboy operators.

The committee, which met in London this week, signed off on the Polar Code and various amendments to the Safety of Life at Sea (Solas) convention.
These changes, which include mandatory requirements for ship design, crew training and search and rescue protocols, are expected to be ratified by the full IMO next year and come into force in 2017.
Melting sea ice due to global warming and pressure to cut costs makes the Arctic commercially enticing to shipping companies who want to avoid the circuitous, pirate-ridden voyage from China to Europe via the Suez Canal. Tourism, fishing and fossil fuel operations are also looking toward one of the world’s most fragile and extreme environments.

  As more ships navigate the Northern Sea Route the likelihood of something going wrong in such a fragile and extreme environment increases.

Photograph: Jenny E. Ross/Jenny E. Ross/Corbis

Evan Bloom, director of the US State Department’s Office of Ocean and Polar Affairs said: “More and more people are going to be in the Arctic for one reason or another. In the future there may be [more] fishing vessels... There will be more and more tourism. There will be more and more commerce.”
He says this increases the likelihood of something going wrong in a region where there is currently very little capability to respond in either a search and rescue or environmental clean-up capacity.
Just four ships navigated the Northern Sea Route over Russia in 2010, but by 2013 the number had reached 71.
This summer saw relatively heavy ice cover in the Arctic, causing numbers to drop.
But the long-term trend is towards greatly expanded shipping across the northern extremes of Russia, Canada and even straight across the North Pole.

 Northern Sea Routes Issue (1942)

According to insurer Allianz, Russia predicts a 30-fold increase in shipping by 2020 and an ice-free Northern Sea Route by 2050. China has suggested that by 2020, 5-15% of its trade value - close to $500bn - could pass through the Arctic.

Sven Gerhard, head of hull and marine liabilities for Allianz said these predictions may be exagerrated.
But there are going to be more shipping accidents in the Arctic.
The new Polar Code will require ships to develop a Polar Operations Manual (POM) for each voyage, which is then reviewed and approved within the flag state.
But cutting corners is tempting as the costs of ice-strengthening ships and training expert ice navigators are very large.
There are some flag states insurers will not work with because they are seen as reckless.
“The safety net is only as good as the POM and the POM is only as good as how it is enforced by the flag state. There are many who have both eyes closed,” said Gerhard.
“It’s good to have a framework,” said WWF marine manager Simon Walmsley.
“But how can you guarantee that those rules are adhered to?
The risk is absolutely huge. One oil spill of a decent size will knock out so much in the Arctic. If you have a heavy fuel oil spill there are no recognised methods to clean under ice or during 24 hours of darkness. There is no response.”

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Map shortcomings could hinder Northern Sea Route growth / The battle for the North Pole: Melting ice brings competition for resources / What happens when oil spills in the Arctic? / Oblique icebreaker gives better access to Arctic waters / Ships to sail directly over the north pole by 2050, scientists say / Gas tanker Ob River attempts first winter Arctic crossing / Arctic sea routes open as ice melts / Arctic passage / SCF Baltica tanker completed the Northern Sea Route / Arctic Ocean: history and now /
• The Guardian : Icebreaker captain: 'if you come to grief, you’re up there alone'

Strangers at sea

Without ever having sailed together before, Ryan Breymaier and Pepe Ribes crossed the Atlantic Ocean in a 60-foot monohull, one of five boats in the June 2014, IMOCA Ocean Masters New York to Barcelona race. 

From NYTimes

Video of the New York-Barcelona IMOCA Ocean Masters race from reporter, Chris Museler, who was 'embedded' aboard Hugo Boss with American sailor Ryan Breymaier and solo sailor Pepe Ribes - who both teamed up for the double-handed race : really caught the feeling of the race and what it takes.

The Ocean Masters founder, Sir Keith Mills, authorized a reporter to chronicle the race from aboard the boats.Only three of the five participating boats agreed to offer a spot. 

Ryan Breymaier is hardly known outside the national sailing community.

In the port cities Barcelona and Les Sables-d’Olonne, France, he is recognized as a skipper of some of the most challenging racing sailboats in the world.

Two different personalities focus to win

Breymaier’s training and ambitions are aimed at the Vendée Globe, a solo, nonstop, round-the-world race held every four years.

He is the first American in a generation to be considered a threat to the French stranglehold on that race and on the Barcelona World Race, the nonstop double-handed race on the same track.
Pepe Ribes of Spain, a decorated America’s Cup and ocean-racing sailor, shares Breymaier’s ambitions.

In June, Breymaier and Ribes took major steps toward fulfilling their solo sailing hopes by winning the International Monohull Open Class Association Ocean Masters New York to Barcelona Race.

An unlikely match, the two were thrown together on a boat that was purchased only months before. On the delivery to New York from Europe, the mast broke; the two sailors wound up waiting until the start of the race to work together as a double-handed team.

They proceeded to cross the Atlantic Ocean on a 60-foot monohull, one of five boats in the competition.

“We wound up racing hundreds of 15-minute races all the way across, with each one putting more pressure on us,” Ribes said.
Conditions in the New York to Barcelona Race included drifting, 40-knot winds and breaking waves. Only three of the five starters finished the race.

Planet Earth & Solar time-lapse

A timelapse of Earth in 4K resolution, as imaged by the geostationary Elektro-L weather satellite, from May 15th to May 19th, 2011.
Elektro-L is located ~40,000 km above the Indian ocean, and it orbits at a speed that causes it to remain over the same spot as the Earth rotates.

The satellite creates a 121 megapixel image (11136x11136 pixels) every 30 minutes with visible and infrared light wavelengths.
The images were edited to adjust levels and change the infrared channel from orange to green to show vegetation more naturally.
The images were resized by 50%, misalignments between frames were manually corrected, and image artifacts that occurred when the camera was facing towards the sun were partially corrected. The images were interpolated by a factor of 20 to create a smooth animation.

Our home planet on the day of the Autumnal Equinox.

To answer frequently asked questions; why are city lights, the Sun, and other stars not visible?
City lights are not visible because they are thousands of times less bright than the reflection of sunlight off the Earth.
If the camera was sensitive enough to detect city lights, the Earth would be overexposed.
The Sun is not visible due to mechanisms used to protect the camera CCD from direct exposure to sunlight.
A circular mask on the CCD ensures that only the Earth is visible.
This mask can be seen as pixelation on Earth's horizon.
The mask also excludes stars from view, although they would not be bright enough to be visible to this camera.

The surface of the sun from October 14th to 30th, 2014, showing sunspot AR 2192, the largest sunspot of the last two solar cycles (22 years).
During this time sunspot AR 2191 produced six X-class and four M-class solar flares.
The animation shows the sun in the ultraviolet 304 ångström wavelength, and plays at a rate of 52.5 minutes per second.
It is composed of more than 17,000 images, 72 GB of data produced by the solar dynamics observatory (http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/) + (http://www.helioviewer.org/).

The animation has been rotated 180 degrees so that south is "up".
The audio is the 'heartbeat' of the sun, processed from SOHO HMI data by Alexander G. Kosovichev. Image data courtesy of NASA/SDO and the AIA, EVE, and HMI science teams.

Image processing and animations by James Tyrwhitt-Drake. 
This animation has be rendered in 4K, and resized to the YoutTube maximum resolution of 3840×2160.

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.

 DHN coverage

1 charts has been updated and 6 charts have been added since the last update

DHN update September 26, 2014

• 305  DA ILHA DO CAPIM À ILHA DA CONCEIÇÃO
• 4361  DA BAÍA DO MARAPATÁ À ILHA DO JOROCAZINHO
• 4362  DA ILHA DO JOROCAZINHO A MOCAJUBA
• 4363  DE MOCAJUBA À ILHA ARARAIM
• 4364  DA ILHA ARARAIM À ILHA DA RAINHA
• 4365  DA ILHA DA RAINHA A MURU
• 4366  DA ILHA TAUÁ A TUCURUÍ

Today 442 charts (506 including sub-charts) from DHN are displayed in the Marine GeoGarage
Don't forget to visit the NtM Notices to Mariners (Avisos aos Navegantes)

Living under sea: Japanese visionaries unveil underwater city plan

Illustration of the whole complex,
from the sphere just beneath water's surface to the research station beneath the seabed.
(Shimizu Corp.)

From Washington Post by Ishaan Tharoor

It's the next frontier: Not long after scientists landed a probe on a comet millions of miles away in deep space, a Japanese construction company has announced that it wants to go in the other direction.
Shimizu Corp. revealed blueprints for an astonishing undersea city: a vast research and residential station some 10 miles in length that begins just below the sea's surface and burrows beneath the ocean floor.

 A full model of “Ocean Spiral,” from the ocean’s surface to its floor

Dubbed the 'Ocean Spiral,' the project is projected to cost $26 billion and take five years to complete, although the research for the technology required is still in its infancy.
If ever completed, it would make real visions of a latter-day Atlantis in the deep.

It has the support of a myriad research firms and Japanese government agencies.
A research station at the bottom of the structure would would study ways to excavate energy from beneath the sea floor.
A 15-kilometer length spiral would coil up from there to a giant sphere some 1,500 feet in diameter that would have hotels, apartments and commercial areas, and could accommodate as many as 5,000 people.

 Interior of the residential sphere. (Shimizu Corp.)

"This is just a blueprint by our company, but we are aiming to develop the technology that would enable us to build an underwater living space," a Shimizu spokesman told the Wall Street Journal.
The ocean water temperature differentials between the various parts of the structure would help generate power.

 The "blue garden" sphere at the top of the Ocean Spiral. (Shimizu Corp.)

Japanese construction companies are known for their outlandish aspirations.
Obayashi Corp., a Shimizu rival, has already announced it plans to engineer a near 60,000-mile-long "elevator" into space, scheduled to be ready by 2050.

Shimizu has already unveiled plans for a floating metropolis (see below) and a solar ring around the moon.

 Green Float : a Floating City in the Sky

The Ocean Spiral blueprint comes at a time when an increasing number of governments, multinationals and international organizations are scratching their heads about how to cope with rising sea levels and the effects of climate change on those most vulnerable to it.
Christian Dimmer, an assistant professor of urban studies at Tokyo University, thinks such planning should not just be the preserve of powerful private corporations.
He tells the Guardian:

We had this in Japan in the 1980s, when the same corporations were proposing underground and ‘swimming’ cities and 1km-high towers as part of the rush to development during the height of the bubble economy. It’s good that many creative minds are picking their brains as to how to deal with climate change, rising sea levels and the creation of resilient societies – but I hope we don’t forget to think about more open and democratic urban futures in which citizens can take an active role in their creation, rather than being mere passengers in a corporation’s sealed vision of utopia.

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : As seas rise, future floats / Artificial island could be solution for rising Pacific sea levels / Ocean living: A step closer to reality? / Underwater hotel to be built in Dubai : just don't open the window / Water-Scraper, self-sufficient city at sea / Meet the deep sea version of the Starship Enterprise
• Shimizu Corp.: Fukushima Experimental Offshore Floating Wind Farm Project