Days after it added stunning imagery of Mount Everest, Google Street View has been updated with beautiful photos from the other side of the world — the Brazilian islands of Fernando de Noronha and Atol das Rocas.
The new imagery includes both underwater and land photos of the UNESCO-protected islands, which tourists can only access in limited groups.
On Fernando de Noronha, a group of islands in the Atlantic some 220 miles offshore form the Brazilian coast, you'll find some of the most beautiful surf spots in the world, as well as some amazing beaches and interesting rock formations.
The Atol das Rocas is situated around 50 miles to the east of Fernando de Noronha.
It also offers some spectacular beaches, but the real thrills are located underneath the ocean's surface.
In the new Street View imagery, you can see dolphins swimming through the Canal de Sela Gineta (below) and sea turtles swimming at Buraco das Cabras.
As usual, besides taking the usual route of exploring through Google Maps' Street View feature, you can also check out the coolest sites from these locations in Google's highlights gallery.
Links :
Google LatLon : Mapping Brazilian islands, above ground and under the sea
The “monster” cyclone that hammered a tiny South Pacific archipelago over the weekend was caused by climate change, it was claimed today.
As aid began trickling into the devastated island community,
Vanuatu’s president Baldwin Lonsdale told gathered reporters that his
country – among the poorest in the world – would have to “start over” as
previous development had been “wiped out” by Cyclone Pam.
NASA's Terra satellite captured this visible image of Tropical Cyclone Pam showing her eye in the South Pacific Ocean on March 11 at 22:50 UTC.
Mr Lonsdale laid blame for the disaster, which has claimed at least six lives and injured more than 30, on “climate change.”
“We
see the level of sea rise … the cyclone seasons, the warm, the rain,
all this is affected … This year we have more than in any year …
yes, climate change is contributing to this,” he told reporters.
He was backed by the president of fellow South Pacific nation Kiribati,
Anote Tong, who claimed: “For leaders of low-lying island atolls, the
hazards of global warming affect our people in different ways, and it is
a catastrophe that impinges on our rights … and our survival into the
future. There will be a time when the waters will not recede.”
Global sea surface temperatures, showing an area of extremely warm water
near Vanuatu and Australia.
Image : NOAA/ESRL
Although the storm has passed over the islands, travelling in the
direction of New Zealand, officials are struggling to access the full
extent of the damage after winds of up to 168mph tore over the land,
home to 267,000 people, on Saturday.
"This is a very devastating
cyclone in Vanuatu. I term it as a monster, a monster," Mr Lonsdale said
from Sendai, Japan, where he had been attending a UN disaster
conference when the cyclone struck. He will return to his country today.
"It's
a setback for the government and for the people of Vanuatu. After all
the development that has taken place, all this development has been
wiped out."
Officials have been unable to contact outlying islands as
communications have fallen making a proper assessment of Vanuata’s 65
islands impossible.
"We do not know if our families are safe or
not. As the leader of the nation, my whole heart is for the people, the
nation," the president said, adding he had been unable to discover if
his own family was safe.
There have been reports of entire
villages disappearing.
An Australian Red Cross official claimed:
"Virtually every building that is not concrete has been flattened."
Today, the coordinator of Vanuatu’s National Disaster Management
Office Paolo Malatu said he plans to send what little light aircraft
possessed by the government to fly over the outer islands.
"The
damage to homes and infrastructure is severe," Mr Malatu said.
"The
priority at the moment is to get people water, food and shelter."
The
UK and France, previous rulers of the tiny nation until 1980, have
pledged aid.
Australia has promised A$5 million and also sent medical
experts, emergency supplies and a search and rescue team.
Links :
Mashable: Vanuatu's president makes a leap in tying Cyclone Pam to climate change
The humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean Sea is spiralling
out of control. Thousands of people lost their lives during 2014 while
attempting to cross the Mediterranean from North Africa. There is a risk
of further catastrophic losses of life as more desperate people attempt
this dangerous sea crossing.
The UNHCR
– the UN High Commissioner for Refugees stated, ‘At least 218,000
people, including migrants and refugees, crossed the Mediterranean by
irregular routes in 2014 and this trend is expected to continue in 2015.
About 3,500 boat people lost their lives trying to cross to Europe in
2014.’
That is approximately one in every 60 people.
EU Member States must act urgently to prevent the loss of thousands
more lives, as hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees seek to
escape to Europe in boats that are unfit for purpose and which are
largely operated by people smugglers.
This is the key message which the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS),
the principal global trade association for ship operators, delivered to
a high-level United Nations inter-agency meeting on the crisis, hosted
by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in London on 4th March.
Image: MOAS (the Migrant Offshore Aid Station)
Merchant ships rescued around 40,000 people during 2014, according to
the UNHCR.
But this number is predicted to increase dramatically during
2015 if the political situation in Africa and the Middle East further
deteriorates.
ICS says that the burden of responsibility placed on ships and their
crews to rescue migrants in distress has been further increased by the
replacement of Italy’s humanitarian ‘Mare Nostrum’ operation with the EU
funded ‘Triton’ operation, whose primary mandate is border protection
and which operates with very limited resources.
The shipping industry’s
concern is that, following the end of Mare Nostrum, other governments
are increasingly relying on merchant ships to undertake more and more
large-scale rescues.
ICS says it is also concerned by the more recent
phenomenon of ships full of migrants being left to navigate in congested
waters without qualified persons in charge, presenting a danger to
seafarers in other ships as well as the migrants themselves.
Coastal States have Search and Rescue (SAR) obligations under
international law but as the situation gets worse, ICS believes that
unless concerted action is taken to prevent criminals from using unsafe
craft to transport migrants there must be a massive increase in State
funded resources for SAR operations to meet the growing need in the
Mediterranean.
In practice, says ICS, this means that other EU Member
States need to share the burden in order to help prevent thousands more
deaths.
The international shipping industry fully accepts its legal obligations
to come to the assistance of anyone in distress at sea.
However, some
ships have had to rescue as many as 500 people at a time, with serious
implications for the welfare of ships’ crews given the health and
security issues involved in dealing with such large numbers.
While far more needs to be done to prevent the boats used by people
smugglers from being able to depart in the first place, the lawless
situation in nations such as Libya and Syria makes this very difficult.
ICS therefore believes there is an urgent need for European States and
the international community to develop a political solution.
In the short term, however, ICS insists that EU Member States need to
do far more to support the Italian Search and Rescue operation, as well
as nations such as Greece, Malta, Cyprus and Turkey which are also on
the front line of this problem.
The very large number of rescues being
conducted by merchant ships is a situation which ICS says is becoming
increasingly untenable.
ICS has published new Guidance on Large Scale
Rescue Operations at Sea, which can be downloaded free of charge via the
ICS website.
In 2014 merchant ships were tasked 882 times to rescue migrants
According to the UK based International Maritime Rescue Federation
(IMRF) this pressure on merchant vessels is unsustainable and coastal
States, and States responsible for search and rescue (SAR) in the
regions where the rescues takes place, must do much more to help.
The IMRF said the SAR community had major concerns considering that the
number needed to be rescued in this year is expected to escalate to
400,000. Funding of SAR services is reducing, meaning merchant ships had
to save 42,000 people during 254 rescues. Already this year 7500
people have been rescued.
Following the United Nations inter-agency meeting on the crisis, hosted
by the IMO in London on 4th March, IMRF CEO Bruce Reid said, ‘This was
never the purpose of the International Convention for the Safety of Life
at Sea (SOLAS) agreement and is of major concern to all our
members.
We fully appreciate the difficulties of the shipping
industry in this matter.
Ships’ masters are required, by international
maritime agreements and regulations, to rescue people in distress if
they can.
It does not – and must not – matter who those people are or
where they have come from.
That is the law and tradition of the sea, and
we must ensure that it is maintained, for there are many circumstances
in which only ships in the area will be able to carry out a rescue.
Yet
here we have a situation in which people are deliberately being placed
in a position of distress, to trigger a rescue response.
This obviously
places ships’ masters in an invidious position.
The IMRF supports our
colleagues in the shipping industry in their call for these issues to be
properly addressed.’
Mediterranean SAR operation seeks crowdfunding to save lives
As part of a rapid response to the situation in the Med an independent
Search and Rescue operation MOAS (Migrant Offshore Aid Station) has been
created with private funds to assist naval, commercial and private
mariners to carry out rescue and life saving at sea.
The Migrant Offshore Aid Station is a registered Foundation (VO/0939)
based in Malta.
MOAS was founded in 2013 by Christopher Catrambone (from
New Orleans, USA) and Regina Catrambone (from Reggio Calabria, Italy)
following the loss at sea of hundreds of migrants off the Italian island
of Lampedusa.
MOAS is headed by Brigadier (Retired) Martin Xuereb, who
was Malta's Chief of Defence until 2014.
He coordinates a team of
seafarers and SAR professionals.
The organisation is dedicated to preventing loss of life at sea by
providing assistance, coordination and support to maritime rescue
operations.
During just 60 days in 2014 MOAS provided life-saving rescue
and medical assistance to 3000 people at sea.
MOAS have no political affiliation or agenda other than the
professional saving of lives at sea.
Their mantra is ‘no one deserves to
die at sea’.
MOAS is a NGO (Non Government Organisation) funded by
donations.
Contributions show that many private individuals and
organisations want to be part of the solution to the humanitarian crisis
in the Med.
Depending on the level of public donations MOAS plans to
spend six months at sea in 2015.
MOAS is equipped with a 40 metre (130 feet) vessel 'Phoenix', two
Remote Piloted Aircraft (Schiebel camcopters) and two RHIBs, plus an
experienced team of rescuers and paramedics.
MOAS supports search and
rescue efforts in the Mediterranean Sea by locating vessels in distress.
First the appropriate official Rescue Coordination Centre is informed,
MOAS then assists as directed or as required by the situation.
All seafarers transiting the Mediterranean will be affected by the
numbers of refugees crossing from Libya to Italy.
Christopher Catrambone
said, ‘due to the sheer number of migrant boats and the lack of EU
assets to intercept them, commercial vessels have become the first line
of defence in rescues.
But cargo ships and private sailors are
unprepared for this kind of overwhelming emergency situation.’
Catrambone continued, ‘They do not have medical personnel so they are
unfamiliar on how to take care of the people involved. And this is a big
part of the process, not only rescuing them but taking care of them
after they’ve been rescued which can be critical to their lives, as
we’ve learned in Lampedusa.
300 migrants drowned and died of hypothermia in February
MOAS has launched an urgent appeal for funds following the February
2015 tragedies in which 300 migrants drowned and more died of
hypothermia after being rescued in the Mediterranean between North
Africa and Southern Italy.
According to reports, in February 2015 three rubber dinghies crammed
beyond capacity by smugglers with hundreds of migrants left Libya.
The
first responder was a small tug boat which waited some two hours for
naval help from Operation Triton, by which time many were already dead
or dying.
After around 100 people were rescued, at least 29 died from
hypothermia on their way to the island of Lampedusa.
Brigadier Xuereb said, ‘the weather was cold, the sea was rough, there
was wind chill and it had rained. It is also very likely that these
people had been out at sea already for a considerable amount of time.
Hypothermia will have kicked in very fast under these conditions when
people were exposed without any cover.’
MOAS Schiebel camcopter (first flight 25/08/2014)
High technology and preventing loss of life at sea
During May to October 2015, MOAS intends to position the vessel
‘Phoenix’ in major migrant shipping lanes.
Using Remote Piloted Aircraft
with sonar, thermal, and night imaging the crew will monitor the area
to locate migrant vessels in distress.
The appropriate Rescue
Coordination Centre will then be informed.
The MOAS crew will then assess the migrants’ needs using two
RHIBs stocked with water, non-perishable food, life jackets, blankets
and medical supplies.
If they encounter someone who needs urgent medical
care, or a vessel in danger of sinking, they will stabilize the person
or vessel until public authorities arrive and better care becomes
available.
MOAS consists of international humanitarians, security professionals,
medical staff, and experienced maritime officers who have come together
to help prevent further catastrophes at sea.
They are passionate about
the plight of those seeking a better life, despite the dangers they face
at sea.
MOAS acts as an aid station to support vessels in need of assistance,
coordinating its efforts with other search and rescue authorities around
the Mediterranean.
The ultimate aim is to mitigate loss of life at sea.
It will not act as a migrant ferry and it will not rescue migrants
exclusively, but it will use all its resources to assist appropriate
official Rescue Coordination Centres to locate and help reduce the
suffering of human beings and save lives where possible.
Separating politics from search and rescue
MOAS operates in full compliance with relevant EU law, including the
Charter of Fundamental Rights, and relevant international law.
Brigadier
Xuereb said, ‘What we would like as a foundation is for this to be a
realisation, for politicians and the EU to put search and rescue at the
top of their agenda and really come to terms with the fact that this is a
crisis. We need to have more assets out there to save and render
assistance to people in distress.’
Brigadier Xuereb added, ‘I think it’s very important to remove the
politics out of search-and-rescue and try and see the issue from the
perspective of those people who feel compelled to do the crossing. Last
year we saved family units and pensioners who would never have left
their homes unless they really had to. People leave because the push
factors are so great.’
Christopher Catrambone concluded, ‘If migrants are out there, taking
these journeys in this degree of weather, they are extremely desperate.
If they had any ability to stay, they would have stayed until there was
better weather, but they have taken this perilous journey irrespective
of the weather conditions.’
A mariners perspective
From the mariner’s perspective there are basic survival and
humanitarian issues at sea level.
There clearly are significant
political and regional security viewpoints that also need to be
considered.
There are parallels with maritime piracy, where many
different views from land are relevant, but at the end of the day action
has to be taken by captains and their crews at sea.
Any mariner transiting the Mediterranean in any size of vessel
including tankers, cruise ships, super yachts and even small private
boats could get caught up in this situation.
Rapid response is essential
to rescue people at sea and captains will be faced with hard decisions.
They are going to have to consider whether they take people onboard or
stand by to wait for professional rescuers, while still maintaining the
safety of their crew, plus the security of their vessel and cargo.
Mariners will need a clear course of action in their standard operating
procedures and a clearly defined SAR, coast guard or naval contact for
assistance in each sea area of The Mediterranean.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has stated, ‘The Mediterranean is
one of the busiest seaways in the world, as well as a dangerous sea
frontier for migrants and asylum seekers en route to Europe.In view of
the perils UNHCR again calls on all vessels at sea to be on alert for
migrants and refugees in need of rescue. We also renew our call to all
shipmasters in the Mediterranean to remain vigilant and to carry out
their duty of rescuing vessels in distress.’
NYCDFF 2015 DRONIE WINNER: FLOATING from NYCDFF It’s all about discovering. Isn’t it always about that? In this video we might think that we see everything at the beginning, but as we get closer there is a little detail which we didn’t see at first and which we can get very close to.
Ragamuffin 100 hitting 38 knots in 2014 Sydney Hobart Race
Ragamuffin 100 (photo Carlo Borlenghi)
Dramatic fixed camera footage of Derry~Londonderry~Doire knock-down in hurricane force gusts heading to Southern Ocean from South Africa in November 2013
