Uncharted waters: Mega-cruise ships sail the Arctic

The 820-foot, 13-deck Crystal Serenity North West Passage: 
the ultimate expedition for the true explorer...
source Crystal Cruises

From Reuters by Gwladys Fouche

A surge in Arctic tourism is bringing ever bigger cruise ships to the formerly isolated, ice-bound region, prompting calls for a clamp-down to prevent Titanic-style accidents and the pollution of fragile eco-systems.

Arctic nations should consider limiting the size of vessels and ban the use of heavy fuel oil in the region, industry players said, after a first luxury cruise ship sailed safely through Canada's Northwest Passage this summer.
The route, which connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans via the Arctic, was once clogged with icebergs but is now ice-free in summer due to global warming.

With a minimum ticket price of $19,755, the 1,700 passengers and crew on board the Crystal Serenity followed - in reverse - the route first navigated more than a century ago by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen.
They left Anchorage in Alaska on Aug. 15 and docked in New York on Sep. 16.

The ship's operator, Crystal Cruises, says on its website it will repeat the voyage in 2017. It declined a request for comment when contacted by Reuters.

Two shipping executives expressed concern that the one-off trip could become a trend, citing worries over safety, risks to the environment and the impact on small communities, in an area where there is no port between Anchorage and Nuuk, in Greenland.

"The Northwest Passage is thousands and thousands of nautical miles with absolutely nothing ... There is a need to discuss possible regulation," said Tero Vauraste, the CEO of Arctia, a Finnish shipping firm specializing in icebreakers.

Were a ship to be in trouble in the Northwest Passage, there would be little authorities could do given the lack of infrastructure, he said.
"So we must do everything we can do to prevent this," said Vauraste, who is also vice-chair of the Arctic Economic Council, a regional forum for business cooperation between Arctic nations.

Navigation in icy waters is made more difficult by poor satellite imagery.
"An ice field might move at a speed of 4-5 knots, but a ship will receive a satellite picture of it that is 10-20 hours old," said Vauraste.
"We need better quality imagery."

 In Awe in the Arctic - Crystal Serenity Northwest Passage

Heavy oil

Another concern is environmental. "Potentially, an accident involving a mega-ship could represent an environmental disaster," said Daniel Skjeldam, CEO of Hurtigruten, a cruise ship operator in the Arctic and the Antarctic, whose biggest ships can accommodate 646 passengers.

Cruise ships usually use heavy oil, a type of fuel that takes longer to break down in the event of a spill.
The Crystal Serenity did not use heavy oil during its trip, its operator has said.
"Heavy oil in cold conditions is sticky and takes much longer time to break down so it has a prolonged effect on the environment," said Marco Lambertini, director-general of World Wildlife Fund International.
"If something happens at the beginning of winter, no cleanup can be done. Oil can get trapped under the ice and travel for a hundred kilometers," he told Reuters.

A U.N. polar code will come into effect in 2017 which toughens demands on ship safety and pollution.
It bans heavy fuel oil in the Antarctic, for instance, but merely encourages ships not to use it in the Arctic.
"What I call for is stronger regulations coordinated between the Arctic nations," Hurtigruten's Skjeldam told Reuters. He suggested the size of ships should be limited, without specifying by which criteria, that the use of heavy oil be banned and shipping companies should aim to reduce their emissions by, for instance, using hybrid engines.
Vauraste said an update of the Polar Code, addressing some of these issues, could be on the agenda for the Arctic Economic Council.

The impact of the 'mega-ships' on small arctic communities is also becoming a concern.
Svalbard - an archipelago midway between Europe's northernmost point and the North Pole - is experiencing a tourism boom, with the number of overnight stays by visitors rising 14 percent in July year-on-year to 18,000.

Svalbard archipelago (formerly known by its Dutch name Spitsberg)

nautical chart : NHS Norway

"I stay home when the cruise ship tourists come. Too many people at the same time. It is really stressful," said Fredric Froeberg, 37, a Swedish guide who runs excursions on snow scooters and boats from Longyearbyen, Svalbard's main settlement, with around 2,160 inhabitants.
"This place should not become too big. Otherwise it will become overexploited, like so many other places around the world. What is fantastic here is the nature."

Links :

• Wbur : Melting Ice Allows Northwest Passage Cruise -- But At What Cost?
• Slate : The Upside of Global Warming: Luxury “Northwest Passage” Cruises for the Filthy Rich 
• The Telegraph : The world's most dangerous cruise? 1,070-capacity ship takes on the Northwest Passage
• Didital Journal : Arctic cruises — Enforcing the Polar Code in uncharted waters
• The Globe and Mail : Why Trudeau should move now to safeguard the Northwest Passage 
• ASIL : Can the Polar Code Save the Arctic? 
• GeoGarage blog : A brief history of voyages through the Northwest Passage

Brazil DHN update in the GeoGarage platform

2 nautical raster charts added & 56 added

see News

The place furthest from land is known as Point Nemo

 Wanna find Point Nemo? Look here

© zooom.at / Matea Zlatkovic

From BBC by Ella Davies

Where do you go to get away from it all?
When the stress of everyday life pushes you to search for the most remote point on Earth, you might be surprised to learn there are actually a few to choose from.
But if you have decent sea legs, nothing beats the furthest point from land, also known as the "oceanic pole of inaccessibility".

Since its official title is a bit of a mouthful, it has been nicknamed Point Nemo, after author Jules Verne's famous seafaring anti-hero Captain Nemo.
The name means "no-one" in Latin which is fitting for a place so rarely visited by man.
Point Nemo is located over 1,000 miles (1,600km) equidistantly from the coasts of three far-flung islands. Ducie Island (one of the Pitcairn islands) is to the north, Motu Nui (of the Easter Island chain) is to the north-east and Maher Island (off the coast of Antarctica) is to the south.
It is a rather peculiar place.

Experts had long discussed the geographical conundrum of finding the middle of the ocean, but it took modern technology to provide a full solution.
The oceanic pole of inaccessibility was officially discovered in 1992 by survey engineer Hrvoje Lukatela.
Instead of launching an expedition, Lukatela stayed on dry land and calculated the point's location using specialist computer software.
Rather than simply putting a pin in a flat projection of the Earth, the software incorporated the planet's ellipsoid shape for maximum accuracy.
It seems unlikely that the point will move significantly within the foreseeable future.

"The location of three equilateral points is quite unique, and there are no other points on the Earth's surface that could conceivably replace any one of those," says Lukatela.
It is possible that better measurements, or coastal erosion, would shift the location of Point Nemo, "but only in the order of metres".
Point Nemo is so far from land, the nearest humans are often astronauts.
The International Space Station orbits the Earth at a maximum of 258 miles (416km).
Meanwhile the nearest inhabited landmass to Point Nemo is over 1,670 miles (2,700km) away.

 The Mir space station, before it crashed into the Pacific (Credit: NASA Photo/Alamy)

In fact the whole region around Point Nemo is well known to space agencies.

The area is officially known to space agencies as the "South Pacific Ocean Uninhabited Area". In particular, the Russian, European and Japanese space agencies have long used it as a dumping ground, because it is the point on the planet with the fewest human inhabitants and the quietest shipping routes.
Over a hundred decommissioned spacecraft are thought to now occupy this "spacecraft cemetery", from satellites and cargo ships to the defunct space station Mir.

Rather than single monuments to the history of space travel, the remains are spread across the ocean floor in bits, says space archaeologist Alice Gorman of Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia.
"Spacecraft do not survive atmospheric re-entry whole," says Gorman. "Most of them burn up in the fierce heat. The most common components to survive are fuel tanks and pressure vehicles, which are part of the fuel system. These are generally made of titanium alloys or stainless steel, often encased in complex carbon fibres, which are resistant to high temperatures."
While smaller fragments burn up in the atmosphere, leaving nothing but an impressive light show, Gorman says the larger parts of the 143-tonne Mir were reputed to have washed up on Fijian beaches, while the rest sank to the ocean depths.
"Like shipwrecks, they create habitats that will be colonised by anything and everything that lives at that depth," says Gorman.
"Unless there is residual fuel that leaks out, there should not be a hazard to aquatic life."
Rumours have long swirled about what might live at Point Nemo.

Artist's impression of Cthulhu. It is best not to look

(Credit: Geo Images/Alamy)

Despite writing 66 years before its discovery, science fiction author HP Lovecraft chose a site eerily close to the oceanic pole of inaccessibility for R'lyeh, the home of his legendary tentacle-faced creature Cthulhu.
In 1997, oceanographers recorded a mysterious noise less than 1,240 miles (2,000km) east of Point Nemo.
This led to a great deal of excitement, and a fair bit of trepidation.
The sound, dubbed "the Bloop", was louder than even a blue whale – leading to speculation that it was made by some unknown sea monster.
However, the Bloop has since been confirmed to be the sound of ice by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
When large icebergs crack and fracture, they generate powerful, ultra-low-frequency sounds. Subsequent recordings of known icequakes have shared similarities with the Bloop.

So if Point Nemo is not really home to an octopus-man-dragon, what exactly does live there? According to oceanographer Steven D'Hondt of the University of Rhode Island in Narragansett, possibly not much.
This is because the oceanic point of inaccessibility sits within the South Pacific Gyre. This is a massive rotating ocean current: bound east and west by the continents of South America and Australia, north by the equator, and south by the strong Antarctic Circumpolar Current.

 no more info the Google Maps today....

(2014 printscreen)

The waters within the gyre are stable, with a surface temperature of 5.8C (42F) at Point Nemo according to data from NASA satellites.
The rotating current blocks cooler, nutrient-rich water from coming in.
What's more, because the region is so isolated from land masses, the wind does not carry much organic matter.
As a result, there is little to feed anything.
With no material falling from above as "marine snow", the seafloor is also lifeless.
D'Hondt describes it as "the least biologically active region of the world ocean."
Still, there are a few exceptional points where unique creatures can survive.

Point Nemo is near the southern end of the East Pacific Rise, a submarine line of volcanic activity that stretches up to the Gulf of California.
It marks the boundary of the Pacific and Nazca tectonic plates, which are gradually moving apart. Magma wells up in the gap between the plates, creating hydrothermal vents that blast out hot water and minerals.

It is an extreme environment, but bacteria thrive here, gaining their energy from chemicals released by the eruptions. In turn, the bacteria sustain larger creatures.
These include the "yeti crab", which was first observed in 2005 and named for its hairy appearance.
There is still much to be discovered in these depths, but its remoteness makes Point Nemo an expensive and challenging destination for research.
Apart from the occasional round-the-world yacht race, there are hardly any visitors.
That means it is unlikely to pop up on your social media, so you have to use your imagination to picture it.
"On a calm day, the sea surface in the heart of the South Pacific Gyre is simply beautiful – clear cornflower blue, with a violet tone – because it contains so little particulate matter and so little living material," says D'Hondt.
Or it would be, if it were not for littering.

When the virtual band Gorillaz released their 2010 album Plastic Beach, they created a fictional backstory: supposedly the music had been recorded at a recording studio built on marine debris at Point Nemo.
This is not as entirely far-fetched as it might sound. A study published in 2013 confirmed that there is a garbage patch within the South Pacific Gyre.
The biggest accumulation of waste was at the centre, around 1,550 miles (2,500km) north-east of Point Nemo.
The garbage is mainly plastic waste like polystyrene, film, fishing line, fragments and pellets washed from ships and coastlines.
The rotating current traps the trash, breaking it down into tiny pieces.
Biologists believe the rubbish could could throw the ecosystem out of balance by helping some species proliferate while others suffer.
Even in the most remote spot on the planet, it seems there is no escaping humanity's wasteful habits.

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Where is Point Nemo?
• Big Think : Solitude, Space Junk and Sea Monsters: the Eerieness of Point Nemo
• YouTube :  Inside Track: Leg 5 #6 Reaching Nemo | Volvo Ocean Race 2014-15 / (http://www.volvooceanrace.com/en/news/8644_8-Point-Nemo-facts.html)

Best Of - Les Voiles de St Barth 2016

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Les Voiles de Saint Barth by drone view / Rambler : les Voiles de Saint Barth

The Messina Rise cortex

see ESA globcurrent.oceandatalab.com

GlobCurrent aims to advance the quantitative estimation of ocean surface currents from satellite sensor synergy and to demonstrate the impact and advancements through user-led scientific, operational and commercial applications. 

This in turn, will highlight the advantages of satellite approaches and increase the uptake and exploitation of satellite ocean current measurements.
The GlobCurrent project is funded by the Data User Element, which is a programmatic element of the 4th period of the European Space Agency's Earth Observation Envelope Programme.