From April 9 to April 30, 2015, join us LIVE from the seafloor as NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer explores the largely uncharted deep-sea ecosystems and seafloor in the vicinity of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
While we think of the cosmos as being full of mystery, there are
plenty of unexplored places remaining on our own planet — under the
oceans.
Only about 5% of the Earth's sea floor has been explored.
But now, thanks to a robotic submarine deployed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research ship Okeanos Explorer, we'll all be able to go online and take a peek at some of that unknown territory in the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.
The just-started mission will send the robotic sub on 20 dives, some of them as much as 3.7 miles deep, according to a NOAA press release.
Many of those dives will take place in the Puerto Rico Trench, a
500-mile-long stretch of the sea floor that in some places is 5.4 miles
deep, making it the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean basin.
Other areas to be explored include the Muertos Trough, Mona Channel and Virgin Islands Trough.
The robotic sub — in NOAA lingo, a remotely-operated vehicle, or ROV —
will continuously capture high-definition video, which the public will
be able to view on this website.
While the area to be explored is uncharted, scientists know that it
has a lot of tectonic plate activity and is a potential source of
earthquakes and tsunamis.
They also suspect that it contains geological
figures such as seamounts and mud volcanoes. Okeanos Explorer recently finished mapping 13,600 square
miles of seafloor around the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico,
gathering data that will be used by biologists, geologists,
oceanographers and geophysicists.
Live video from a 2013 expedition to deep-sea canyons off the
northeast Atlantic coast of the United States garnered more than 875,000
views.
containing regularly used maritime information, for example:
charts
operations and regulations
tides, currents and characteristics of thesea
basic meteorology
navigation in ice, hazards and other restrictions to navigation
main elements of the IALA Buoyage system
In response to user feedback and an improved understanding of how the publication is used, the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office (UKHO) has published the Tenth Edition of the ADMIRALTY Mariners Handbook (NP100), which is available in both printed format and as an e-NP.
First published in 1962, the tenth edition is now easier to use and understand. NP100 has long been acknowledged as an essential, ‘must-have’ publication for all seafarers, maritime training schools and shipping company offices.
NP100 provides maritime information on charts and their use, the communication of navigational information, the maritime environment, including sea and ice conditions, restrictions to navigation and maritime pollution and conservation (MARPOL).
The handbook also contains COLREGS information, a comprehensive description of the IALA Maritime Buoyage System and an improved glossary of nautical terminology.
Key improvements include an improved structure and tabular layout to the handbook, making it quicker and simpler for mariners to locate the exact information that they need and the addition of QR codes throughout the publication to increase usability and ensure that the most current data is available.
The glossary section of NP100 has been re-written, laid out in tabular format and complemented by additional images and diagrams to provide seafarers with a better understanding of the relevant terminology, as well as improved comprehension for those who don’t speak English as their first language.
Susie Alder, Product Manager – Publications, UKHO commented:
“Our new edition of NP100 providers further support for mariners in their use of all ADMIRALTY Nautical Products and Services, as well as covering broader maritime topics. First published in 1962, the latest changes will make it easier and quicker for the mariner to assimilate complex navigation information and to find the exact information that they need. We believe these important updates will further strengthen the wide-ranging use of the Mariners Handbook across the shipping industry and ensure that it continues to serve as an essential tool for the mariner, whether in print or digital.”
This edition supersedes the Ninth Edition (2009), which is cancelled.
For more information on the NP100, visit the UKHO website or contact any ADMIRALTY Chart Agent.
Many dream of living in an ocean city, but what is it actually like? Rose Eveleth asks the ruler of Sealand, the unusual settlement off the
coast of England.
Michael Bates grew up seven nautical miles off the coast of England, on a
platform made of concrete and metal.
Michael, the son of Roy Bates, is
the Prince of the Principality of Sealand, a contested micronation that,
despite its size, has become a darling of adventurers and journalists alike.
Sealand has a football team, its flag has been run up Mount Everest, and it offers personalised knighthood for a mere £99 ($145).
Sealand
Today, as futurists, tech billionaires and libertarians start looking to the sea for the next stage of cities
and governance, Sealand serves as a tiny example, a strange and
intriguing case study of all the good and the bad of living on the
waves.
What can the experiences of the Bates family tell those who dream
about ocean living?
approximately 7 nautical miles from the coast of Suffolk, outside the then three-mile territorial water claim of the United Kingdom and therefore in international waters
The precise history of Sealand is contested,
but here is, essentially, how it came to be.
Sealand was originally
called HM Fort Roughs or Roughs Tower, one of four naval sea forts
designed by Guy Maunsell for the British Royal Navy to defend against
the Germans in World War Two. During the war, somewhere between 100 and
120 naval officers were stationed on the tower, but in the early 1950s
the tower was abandoned.
Fast forward to 1965.
Roy Bates is a pirate radio operator on another
one of Maunsell’s forts called Knock John.
But Knock John was located
closer to the shore, within the three mile radius that was, legally,
British territorial water.
In 1966 this fact finally caught up with Roy,
who was convicted for illegal broadcasting from Knock John.
His
solution was to simply move further out, and he packed up and headed to
Roughs Tower.
He never did restart his radio station, but he did
occupy Fort Roughs with his family.
A year later, on 2 September 1967,
Roy declared independence, raising a flag and making his wife “Princess
Joan.”
Thus the Principality of Sealand was born.
Since 1967 there have been all kinds of debates over whether or not
Sealand is in fact a nation.
Here’s what Michael told me when I asked:
“We have never asked for recognition, and we’ve never felt the need to
ask for recognition. You don’t have to have recognition to be a state,
you just have to fulfill the criteria of the Montevideo Convention which
is population, territory, government and the capacity to enter into
negotiation with other states. We can and we have done all these things.
We’ve had the German ambassador visit at one point to discuss
something: that was defacto recognition. We’ve had communication with
the president of France many years ago, but we have never asked for
recognition and we don’t feel we need it.”
BBC1 News report after the terrorist invasion and re-capture of the Principality of Sealand that saw Prince Michael taken hostage. After Michaels release the fortress was soon taken back by force by a team made up of Prince Roy, Prince Michael and a few loyal Sealand supporters.
The Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States that Michael is referring to was signed in 1933 at the International Conference of American States.
According to this, a nationhood requires four things: a permanent
population, a defined territory, a government, and the “capacity to
enter into relations with the other states.”
Sealand supporters argue
that Sealand has fulfilled all four of those requirements.
Technically,
only 16 states have ratified the convention, and all of them lie in the
Americas, but according to the American Society for International Law,
“the Montevideo Convention is generally regarded as the standard
definition of the state".
Sealand, a bona fide micronation? (Credit: Rex)
Things got a little bit more complicated
in 1987, when the United Kingdom extended its territorial waters from
three miles to 12.
Sealand, sitting six miles offshore, was suddenly,
technically, on British land.
The Sealand family argues that their
nation had fulfilled the requirements of the Montevideo convention
before the UK extended its territory.
The UK doesn’t seem to care.
When
asked about Sealand in 2000, a spokesperson for the Home Office of the
UK said that they didn’t see any reason to consider Sealand a nation.
"We've no reason to believe that anyone else recognises it either," the spokesperson told the BBC.
Today, few people live on Sealand (“normally like two people,”
Michael told me) but when he was growing up it was home.
“My family used
to spend all our time out there for 20 or 30 years.”
And when he was a
kid, Sealand was just as isolated as you might expect.
“When I was first
there I was 14 years old, there was no mobile telephones, no
communication at all. You would go there and be there until the boat
came back in two weeks to get you. And it might not come back for six
weeks. You would stare at the horizon waiting for it to come back.”
Luxury living?
Modern
Sealand is equipped with phone and the internet.
They have a gift shop,
have issued passports (they stopped after 9/11, but Michael said they
plan to start issuing them again soon), and even started a data haven called HavenCo in 2000.
HavenCo closed down in 2008 amidst numerous problems, but re-opened in 2013 with the help of internet entrepreneur Avi Freedman.
When
I asked Michael what Sealand does to make its estimated GDP of $600,000
(where this number comes from is unclear, since Sealand is not included
on most official lists of GDP by country), he said: “We’ve been
involved in different things over the years, including internet data
havens. We have our own stamps, coins, passports, right now we cover our
expenses with our online shop. We market titles of nobility and
T-shirts and mugs and stamps, coins, just about anything to do with our
little mini-state. I travel on other business as well, I have other
business interests involving shellfish and other internet stuff.”
Modern Sealand also has a futuristic ideological heir: seasteading.
The concept isn’t quite the same – seasteaders plan to build their own
floating nations rather than commandeer existing structures.
“So
seasteaders think a lot bigger and more glamorously,” said Joe Quirk,
the communications director for the Seasteading Institute, “we also like
to think we’re very pragmatic.”
But in many ways, they share the same
ideals – independence, freedom, adventure.
The Seasteading Institute
is probably the largest face of the seasteading movement – although
they are certainly not the only one.
The group was founded in 2008 by
economist Patri Friedman and Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel with a
pretty simple idea: create floating nations.
The logistics are a bit
more complicated of course – their structures will need to have energy
and food, ways to create and recycle water, and systems to deal with
waste.
And most of those logistics haven’t been quite ironed out yet.
Right now, the Seasteading Institute is in the research and design phase.
Last month, they launched an architectural design contest
for their Floating City Project – what is essentially a beta-test of
the seasteading concept.
Quirk said that as they work through the design
and technology required of the city, they’re also trying to find a
location – a nation that will allow them to build a floating community
offshore. “We’re in talks with several nations at this point, they’re
all in different stages of possibility.”
As the experience of Sealand
shows, a country like the UK might be unsuitable if it refuses to
recognise the new nation's sovereignty or independence.
Does the romantic dream of seasteading match the reality? (Credit: The Seasteading Institute)
Quirk couldn’t say which nations were in the running, but he said
that they had a few ways of narrowing down who to ask.
“I think what
makes a nation a good candidate is if they’re interested in creating
start-up cities within their own territories. So a lot of people don’t
know there are thousands of special economic zones created by countries
all over the world.”
Quirk pointed to places like China and Panama who
each have special zones where different trade rules apply.
“The key idea
is experiments with new government cities. So the Seasteading Institute
approaches nations like that.”
Once they have a location, and a
design, they’ll have to fill the city.
“We’re seeking people interested
in moving to the floating city project," said Quirk,
"We’ve had about
2,000 people fill out our survey telling us what they want from a
floating city.” Eventually, the plan is to move the floating cities away
from the coast and into the high seas.
“Once you get beyond 200 miles
out, you’re in the high seas,” and Quirk said their legal scholars have
advised that this guarantees true independence.
If the Maldives disappear, could their people turn to seasteading? (Credit: Thinkstock)
Quirk also pointed out that the idea of floating nations may become
more accepted as the impacts of climate change are seen.
Consider the
Maldives, he said, which is sinking below rising sea level.
“You can see
this nation could be transitioning to a floating nation, and the
question becomes, does the world recognise them as a nation?”
Rule breaker
Sealand
and the Seasteading Institute share some core aims and values, but
they’re also substantially different.
Sealand was a quirk of history, a
single man who flew in the face of rules he disagreed with.
Seasteading
has much of that in its heart, but with a more complex philosophy behind
it, rooted in the principles of the free market.
Unlike Sealand,
which isn’t trying to build a population, the seasteads would have to
compete with one another to attract people to live there.
Quirk imagines
a world in which citizens, unhappy with the infrastructure, laws or
systems of one nation, can break apart and float over to another.
“We
think a market of competing services will unleash innovation in
governance,” he said.
When I asked Quirk what he imagines when he
closes his eyes and thinks about a future seastead, he answered quickly.
“Venice. I love the history… people were chased out of the places they
lived in by warfare and they moved out into swamps and over time they
built a civilisation on stilts that eventually became one of the
wealthiest places on Earth.”
In many ways, Venice began as an aquatic city, settled by rootless citizens (Credit: Thinkstock)
Michael said he’s never actually talked to the seasteaders, and Quirk
confirmed.
“I’ve never talked to them,” Quirk said, “but Sealand is to
me an example that the desire to start a new nation is always present
among people. I think of seasteading as providing this escape valve for
people who want to innovate in governance. Even if you provide the worst
possible and isolated environment, people want to go out there.”
When
I asked Michael what he thought about the seasteading projects, he was a
bit sceptical, but encouraging.
“Great, good luck, we’ll see what
happens.”
But he also thinks Sealand is a novelty.
“Sealand is a one off
that could never be repeated in international law due to a unique set
of circumstance,” he told me.
“There’s nowhere else where you could do
what we did. I think you’ll find everything is claimed now.”
Today, Michael lives in the UK with his family.
When he had children
of his own, he wanted them to be educated in schools in the UK, and so
they moved the family to the mainland.
But the future of Sealand still
lies in the Bates lineage.
“With my new grandson Prince Freddy being
fourth generation Sealander its future will be assured,” Bates said.
And
so far, the family line has remained interested in their odd little
nation.
“My sons enjoy being involved in it, it gives them an
interesting life and they meet interesting people.”
Bates isn’t sure
exactly what will happen in the future, but he is confident that its
legacy and ethos will live on.
“I would hope there will be many more
adventures.”
Underwater salvage company Deep Ocean Search has successfully salvaged the treasure ship SS City of Cairo.
Found at a depth of more than 17,000 feet, the ill-fated World War II-era steamship was loaded with 100-tons of silver coins.
The SS City of Cairo (Captain William Rogerson) was a mixed cargo and passenger ship belonging to Ellerman Lines and was on a voyage from Bombay to England, via Cape Town and Recife, Brazil, unescorted, in late 1942.
She carried 296 souls of which 136 were passengers and a mixed cargo including some 100 tons of silver coins belonging to the UK Treasury.
She was spotted by U-68 on the 6th of November 1942 and torpedoed at 2030 hrs.
The engines were stopped and preparations made to abandon ship.
A second torpedo was fired 10 minutes after the first and the ship sank a few minutes later.
Shipwreck located in the West of Namibia (GeoGarage / UKHO)
about 450 miles south of St. Helena.
The surviving crew and passengers were in the lifeboats when the submarine approached to question captain Rogerson.
The U-Boat captain, Karl-Freidrich Merten, told him how far he was from Brazil and left saying, “goodnight, sorry for sinking you” (which became the title of a book on the loss of the City of Cairo, by R. Barker).
The survivors were soon separated into two groups.
One boat was picked up by a German blockade runner, which was subsequently intercepted by the HMS Scylla and was scuttled on 1st January 1943.
One lifeboat made it almost to Brazil before survivors were rescued.
The master and 154 of the survivors were picked up by the SS Clan Alpine and landed on St. Helena island and another 47 people were picked up by the British steam merchant ship Bendoran and landed at Cape Town. In all 104 people died, 79 crew, 3 gunners and 22 passengers.
The SS City of Cairo, built in 1915 (Treasure Club) On November 6, 1942, the SS City of Cairo, 8034 tons, Ellerman Lines Ltd, London, while on route from Bombay - Durban - Capetown - Pernambuco, Brazil - UK, was torpedoed by the U-68. She was carrying 7422 tons of general cargo, including pig iron, timber, wool, cotton, manganese ore, and 2000 boxes of silver coins (3 million ounces). A second torpedo caused the ship to sink by the stern.
Deep Ocean Research (DOS) decided to look for the wreck of the SS City of Cairo and in November 2011 started operations.
This was to be a difficult search as the water depth would exceed 5000m, the weather, swell and currents were known to be challenging and the presumed site was some 1000 miles from the nearest land in the foothills of the mid-Atlantic ridge.
Our research came up with the usual contradictions between the positions given by the submarine and that from the ships officers.
A large search box was put together to try to reconcile these diverse statements.
The seafloor was difficult with ridges and canyons throughout the area and the water depth varied between 5100 and 5500m.
A small target with little height and reflectivity was seen in amongst a hillside and was subsequently dived upon, with some reluctance, as it didn’t correspond to our expectations of what a wreck should look like at all.
However, DOS’s procedures require that all targets which appear not to be natural be inspected.
It turned out that it was a wreck and the identity was finally confirmed to be that of the City of Cairo. The ship was broken in two and buried deep in the seafloor silt.
Parts of the ship had meters of mud heaped upon it, which goes some way in explaining the lack of height and of reflectivity.
Under contract to the UK Ministry of Transport, DOS recovered several tens of tons of silver coins from a depth of 5150m – a world depth record.
The team quickly found that operating at this depth caused serious technical difficulties which were new to us and which had to be resolved, quickly.
The combination of pressure, temperature, repeated dives at this depth and other issues resulted in multiple breakdowns of systems such as we had not experienced before when working in 3000 - 4000m depths.
Some of these issues were new to our suppliers too.
However our team overcame them which resulted in our ability to make our equipment work non-stop for days on end at these extreme depths - an invaluable and critical lesson for DOS for the future.
Many items were seen on and around the wreck including the end section of the second torpedo, where the contra-rotating propellers could clearly be seen.
Apart from the silver cargo this was the only item recovered from the site.
DOS left a plaque commemorating their finding and visiting the ship before they left the site finally on the 25th September 2013.
As our public viewer is not yet available (currently under construction, upgrading to a new viewer as Google Maps API v2 is officially no more supported), this info is primarily intended to our universal mobile application users (Weather 4D Android -App-in- on the PlayStore) and also to our B2B customers which use our nautical charts layers in their own webmapping applications through our GeoGarage API.
So 796charts (1685 including sub-charts) are available in the Canada CHS layer. (see coverage)
Note : don't forget to visit 'Notices to Mariners' published monthly and available from the Canadian Coast Guard both online or through a free hardcopy subscription service. This essential publication provides the latest information on changes to the aids to navigation system, as well as updates from CHS regarding CHS charts and publications. See also written Notices to Shipping and Navarea warnings : NOTSHIP
