China revises mapping law to bolster claims over South China Sea land, Taiwan

China claims they aren't military bases, but their actions say otherwise. 

From JapanTimes

China’s National People’s Congress Standing Committee, a top law-making body, passed a revised version of China’s surveying and mapping law intended to safeguard the security of China’s geographic information, lawmakers told reporters in Beijing.

Hefty new penalties were attached to “intimidate” foreigners who carry out surveying work without permission.

President Xi Jinping has overseen a raft of new legislature in the name of safeguarding China’s national security by upgrading and adding to already broad laws governing state secrets and security.
Laws include placing management of foreign nongovernmental organizations under the Security Ministry and a cybersecurity law requiring that businesses store important business data in China, among others.

Overseas critics say that these laws give the state extensive powers to shut foreign companies out of sectors deemed “critical” or to crack down on dissent at home.
The revision to the mapping law aims to raise understanding of China’s national territory education and promotion among the Chinese people, He Shaoren, head spokesman for the NPC Standing Committee, said, according to the official China News Service.

When asked about maps that “incorrectly draw the countries boundaries” by labeling Taiwan a country or not recognizing China’s claims in the South China Sea, He said, “These problems objectively damage the completeness of our national territory.”

China claims almost all the South China Sea and regards neighboring self-ruled Taiwan as a breakaway province.
The new law increases oversight of online mapping services to clarify that anyone who publishes or distributes national maps must do so in line with relevant national mapping standards, He said.
The rise of technology companies which use their own mapping technology to underpin ride-hailing and bike-sharing services made the need for revision pressing, the official Xinhua News Agency said Tuesday.

Foreign organizations that wish to carry out mapping or surveying work within China must make clear that they will not touch upon state secrets or endanger state security, according to Song Chaozhi, deputy head of the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping.
Foreign individuals or groups who break the law could be fined up to 1 million yuan ($145,000), an amount chosen to “intimidate,” according to Yue Zhongming, deputy head of the NPC Standing Committee’s legislation planning body.

 According to MoT, China cleared the wreckage of stranded fishing boat on Scarborough Shoal to ensure the security of navigation.

China’s Southeast Asian neighbors are hoping to finalize a code of conduct in the South China Sea, but those working out the terms remain unconvinced of Beijing’s sincerity.
Signing China up to a legally binding and enforceable code for the strategic waterway has long been a goal for claimant members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

But given the continued building and arming of its artificial islands in the South China Sea, Beijing’s recently expressed desire to work with ASEAN to complete a framework this year has been met with skepticism and suspicion.

The framework seeks to advance a 2002 Declaration of Conduct (DOC) of Parties in the South China Sea, which commits to following the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), ensuring freedom of navigation and overflight, and “refraining from action of inhabiting on the presently uninhabited islands, reefs, shoals, cays, and other features.”

The South China Sea Dispute – An Update, Lecture Delivered on April 23, 2015 at a forum sponsored by the Bureau of Treasury and the Asian Institute of Journalism and Communications at the Ayuntamiento de Manila.

The South China Sea Dispute: Philippine Sovereign Rights and Jurisdiction in the West Philippine Sea from Sam Rodriguez Galope

 

But the DOC was not stuck to, especially by China, which has built seven islands in the Spratly archipelago.It is now capable of deploying combat planes on three reclaimed reefs, where radars and surface-to-air missile systems have also been installed, according to the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative think tank.

Beijing insists its activities are for defense purposes in its waters. Malaysia, Taiwan, Brunei, Vietnam and the Philippines, however, all claim some or all of the resource-rich waterway and its myriad of shoals, reefs and islands.
Finalizing the framework would be a feather in the cap for the Philippines, which chairs ASEAN this year. Manila has reversed its stance on the South China Sea, from advocating a unified front and challenging Beijing’s unilateralism, to putting disputes aside to create warm ties.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has opted not to press China to abide by an international arbitration decision last year that ruled in Manila’s favor and invalidated Beijing’s sweeping South China Sea claims.

There will be no mention of the Hague ruling in an ASEAN leaders’ statement at a summit in Manila on Saturday, nor will there be any reference to concerns about island-building or militarization that appeared in last year’s text, according to excerpts of a draft.

 The Murillo Velarde 1734 map

The map’s most valuable and relevant feature is found on the upper left section where a cluster of land mass called “Bajo de Masinloc” and “Panacot” – now known as Panatag or Scarborough Shoal – located west of the Luzon coastline 
(see YouTube : An ancient map is reinforcing Manila's arbitration victory against China on the disputed South China Sea.)

Duterte said Thursday that he sees no need to gather support from his neighbors about the July 2016 landmark decision.
His predecessor, Benigno Aquino III, brought the territorial disputes to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in 2013 amid China’s aggressive assertion of its claims in the South China Sea by seizing control of Scarborough Shoal located less than about 300 km (200 miles) from the Philippines’ Luzon island, and harassment of Philippine energy surveillance groups near the Reed Bank, among others.
While the arbitration case was heard, China completed a number of reclamation projects on some of the disputed features and fortified them with structures, including those military in nature.
China did not participate in the arbitration hearing, and does not honor the award, insisting it only seeks to settle the matter bilaterally with the Philippines.
Duterte had said he will confront China with the arbitral award at a proper time during his administration, which ends in 2022, especially when Beijing starts to extract mineral and gas deposits.
He rejected the view that China can be pressed by way of international opinion, saying, “You are just dreaming.”

The Philippines, meanwhile, has completed an 18-day scientific survey in the South China Sea to assess the condition of coral reefs and draw a nautical map of disputed areas.
Two survey ships, including an advanced research vessel acquired from the United States, conducted surveys around Scarborough Shoal and on three islands, including Thitu, in the Spratly group, National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon said Thursday.
“This purely scientific and environmental undertaking was pursued in line with Philippine responsibilities under the U.N. Convention of the Law of the Sea to protect the marine biodiversity and ensure the safety of navigation within the Philippines’ EEZ,” Esperon said in a statement.

He gave no details of the findings from the reef assessments and nautical mapping of the area, which was carried out between April 7 to 25.

Links :

• Reuters : China revises mapping law to bolster territorial claims / China, Vietnam agree to keep South China Sea tensions in check
• BusinessMirror :  PHL rising to challenge in Benham Rise
• Bloomberg : Tillerson ‘Emphatic’ About Need to Halt South China Sea Buildup / Territorial Disputes
• Inquirer : Catch ancient maps exhibit ‘Mapping the Philippine Seas’
• IMOA : Historical truths and lies Scarborough Shoal in ancient maps 

Rock and Roll in the Roaring Forties - Dagmar Aaen of Arved Fuchs expeditions

Dagmar Aaen on her "Ocean Change" Expeditions by Arved Fuchs.

Here on the way from Ushuaia Argentina to Piriapolis in Uruguay.
Footage by Arved Fuchs, Felix Hellmann and Heimir Harðarson.

The Dagmar Aaen was built as a fishing cutter in 1931 in the Danish city of Esbjerg at the N. P. Jensen shipyard and was given the registration number E 510.
The hull was built out of six cm oak planks and oak frames.

The space between the single frames is sometimes so small, that a fist can hardly fit between them.
Because of this and due to the addition of extra waterproof bulkheads, the hull was given a remarkably high strength.

The ship was often used in the Greenland region because of its solid built and its choice building materials.

Journeys through ice-fields and months of overwintering in frozen fjords and bays meant daily routine to a ship of this type.

The famous Greenland explorer Knut Rasmussen chose just such a ship for one of his expeditions in the Arctic regions.
The Dagmar Aaen was employed for the fishing industry until 1977.

Niels Bach purchased her in 1988 together with the Peters shipyard in Wewelsfleth Germany and the Skibs & Bædebyggeri shipyard, owned by Christian Jonsson in Egernsund Denmark, built her into expedition ship with ice reinforcements.

Since this time there have been many repairs and changes done at the shipyard, in order to adapt the ship to the different conditions on each expedition.

NZ tech could reveal planet's largest waves

The RNZN vessel HMNZS Otago sailing through a storm in the Southern Ocean.
20m swells with 80KMph winds.

New Royal New Zealand Navy Offshore Patrol Vessel HMNZS Wellington sailed to Antarctica to undertake sea trials.

From NZ Herald by Jamie Morton

A Kiwi company expects to record some of the largest waves ever known - potentially reaching up to the height of an eight-storey building - after just deploying a wave buoy in the thick of the world's wildest ocean.

In a collaboration with the New Zealand Defence Force, science-based consultancy Metocean Solutions recently moored the high-tech instrument in the Southern Ocean off Campbell Island, nearly halfway between the South Island and Antarctica.

Persistent westerly winds and an unlimited area for waves to build combined to make Southern Ocean waves among the biggest in the world.

But because subantarctic waters were difficult to work in, reliable wave data for the area had been scarce.

Managing director Peter McComb said the moored buoy - the southernmost ever deployed - was designed strong enough to survive a monster wave with a height of 25m.

"And indeed, that's what we are hoping to measure if we get a big storm coming through."

The buoy, fixed in 150m of water, has already registered waves as high as 16m - taller than huge waves that were detected off the Bay of Plenty during Cyclone Cook.

However, this was still well short of the largest on the books: a 19m wave recorded rolling in the North Atlantic Ocean between Iceland and the UK last year.

"Anecdotally, we know that individual waves of 25m height can occur in this area; it might have to be out there many years before it could capture one, but we are hopeful."

By comparison, 25m is the height of 16 cars stacked on top of each other, or an eight-storey building.

The wave buoy is lowered into the Southern Ocean off Navy vessel HMNZS Otago. 

Photo / Supplied

It's also half the draught (vertical distance between waterline and bottom of hull) of an ultra large container vessel, and nearly half the distance between the waterline and the deck of cruise liner Oasis of the Seas.

McComb said these beasts tended to come not as a single wave rolling across the ocean, but one that emerges from a combination of different wave forms amid a heavy storm.

"You'd likely have a big trough occurring at the same time a large crest comes through - and having been at sea in big storms myself, it's a little bit like a big hole suddenly opening up in front of you.

 The buoy sits moored in 150m of water near Auckland Island.

"You don't always get the sense of an exceptionally large crest, but you do get one a large hole forming, and that's just terrifying."

Understanding more about how big waves in the Southern Ocean was crucial to improving the design of vessels that operate in that part of the world.

Ships tended to negotiate heavy seas by sailing head-on into the direction the waves were coming from - but, particularly in the Southern Ocean, this could prove challenging when vessels faced long, large swells from one side and shorter, steeper seas from another.

The buoy has been deployed roughly halfway between New Zealand and Antarctica.

Ships plying the ocean ranged from icebreakers and research boats to fishing vessels and small cruise liners.

"Of particular interest to our company is the next generation of Navy ships; we have a search and rescue responsibility that goes all the way to the ice, so, as a nation, it's on our patch and it's of interest to the Navy to understand that as well."

The buoy's open access data feed further had much wider benefits to the world's ocean science community, providing crucial information to improve forecasting and climate models.

"Currently, the models perform the worst in the Southern Ocean, so it's of fundamental importance to collect the data and then feed that new understanding of the physics back into the science."

It comes alongside separate plans for a multi-million dollar research station on subantarctic Auckland Island, which would allow scientists to study deep-sea currents in latitudes where projected changes in climate are expected to be seen most rapidly.

Rogue waves could help design better electronics, lasers

Meanwhile, Kiwi scientists are attempting to better understand fearsome "rogue" waves with fibre-optic experiments in an Auckland lab.

Appearing from nowhere, or at least amid a series of ordinary waves, these monsters have the mass and power to sink ships.

Rogue waves were once thought to be mythical, but satellite surveys have now confirmed the dreaded reality.

More recently, physicists have been studying their properties by studying waves of light, which similarly conform to physical laws.

"In the ocean, some rogue waves come at twice the height of what's called significant wave height: so, in a system where you normally get one-metre waves, all of a sudden you get a four-metre wave," explained Professor Neil Broderick of the University of Auckland.

"So it just comes from out of the blue and disappears again: and in fibre lasers, and in optics, you can often see the same thing."

In a Marsden Fund-supported study, his team has been investigating the behaviour of light pulses to understand the origins of rogue flashes.

Because pulses of light propagating along a fibre-optic cable are easier to control and quicker to study than waves of water, fibre-based lasers have become a major focus of current research into oceanic waves.

And by better understanding rogue waves, Broderick and his team have also been seeking how to prevent destructive laser bursts that can fry fibre-optic systems, while also feeding the new insights into oceanographic research and ship design.

"We also want to know how they form, because, if we can control them, then we can get a high-intensity pulse that lets us do things we currently can't do with low-intensity pulses.

"So the aim has been to try to make these things on demand, and then see what sort of applications they have."

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : 19-meter wave sets new record - highest significant wave ... / Storm force - Scotland experiences the highest seas in ... / Ireland's biggest ever wave recorded off Donegal coast

Canada CHS update in the GeoGarage platform

54 nautical raster charts updated 

see GeoGarage news

'Discovery' treasure hunter may have found Columbus’s anchor using a map from space

From Newsweek by Abigail Jones

The next sentence you are about to read might sound like a movie idea conjured up from the depths of oddball film star Nicolas Cage’s psyche: Professional treasure hunter, armed with a map from outer space, sets out to unearth hundreds of shipwrecks around the world—and finds a centuries-old artifact that just might be Christopher Columbus’s anchor.
Real life beat you to it, Mr. Cage: This actually happened.
That treasure hunter is Darrell Miklos, and a new Discovery docu-series, Cooper’s Treasure, has been following him as he searches for underwater treasure, guided by the ghost of his dear friend, the late NASA astronaut Gordon “Gordo” Cooper.

This is a picture of one of the maps used during the Discovery Channel exploration. It has been blurred by the network to keep part of the location a secret

Turks and Caicos islands in the GeoGarage platform

The maps (two of which are pictured) were kept a secret for almost 40 years before Gordon decided to share them with Miklos

In the 1960s, Cooper was one of NASA’s original space pioneers—the youngest of the “Original Seven” astronauts, the first to sleep in space, and the last American to make a solo trip to space.
On one of his missions, Cooper was using long-range detection equipment to search for nuclear sites when he claimed he noticed a series of anomalies—dark patches that showed up on photos he took of Earth.
He believed they were shipwrecks.
He spent decades tracking the coordinates on his space map against known shipwreck sites.
Cooper died in 2004, but not before bestowing hundreds of documents upon his longtime friend, Miklos, who set off with Discovery cameras in tow to find out if that map from space would lead to buried treasure.
It did.

Two days ago, Discovery leaked a 30-second clip of an upcoming episode with an extraordinary reveal: Miklos and his crew believe they may have found an anchor that belonged to one of Columbus’s ships that sailed between Spain and the New World.
“As soon as I saw it, I knew what it was: an early 1500s anchor. I knew in my mind that we were onto something so historically significant, just by the first line of site,” Miklos tells Newsweek in his first interview about the discovery.
“A lot of four-letter words came out of my mouth. I was shaking… And the beauty of [the anchor] laying there. It looked so elegant and ladylike to me. It seemed so fragile. There was something tender about that anchor.”

It sounds crazy... But this is a treasure map from space | Cooper's treasure

Miklos and his crew were searching off the coast of Turks and Caicos when they discovered the 1,200- to 1,500-pound bower anchor resting at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
They quickly set out to verify their discovery. Miklos says the size of the anchor and details about its shape and design line up with other ships from the Columbus era.
“If you think of the early Colonial period, there was only one group of people out there: Columbus, the Pinzon brothers, and the Columbus fleet,” he says.
Miklos also thinks the anchor met a violent end—the crown was bent and the anchor ring was broken, suggesting it was detached from its ship during a storm.
(He tells the story of a ship that Martin Alonso Pinzon, one of the Pinzon brothers who voyaged with Columbus, supposedly tried salvaging along that very route in the early 1500s.)
“The importance of the anchor…is its age and nationality,” says Jim Sinclair, a consulting archaeologist on the show.
“The anchor has all of the attributes or characteristics that early period Spanish ships of exploration carried. While it is impossible to say this is from any particular ship, it remains a tantalizing clue and a possible link to Columbus and the Pinzon brothers.”

The anchor discovered off the Turks and Caicos Islands

("Cooper's Treasure"/Discovery Communications)

Now, Miklos is focused on proving the provenance of his anchor.
“They didn’t build these things with stamps on them that say, ‘Built by Columbus,’” he says.
“We’re still assessing the area to see if we can find other wreckage, and the more you find from that period, the more substantial evidence you have. But everything we’ve seen thus far, I truly believe the anchor comes from one of the ships in Columbus’s fleet.”
He’s already found pottery shards believed to be an olive jar painted with indigo paint and a Majorcan pot, both of Spanish origin, that can be used to date the wreck to the Columbus era.
Several iron and bronze spikes found nearby also help date the materials to Columbus-era ships. This summer, Miklos heads back to Turks and Caicos to see what else he can find in that vast underwater cemetery.
“If we continue our search along that trail, I believe we stand a very good chance of finding shipwreck material related to that anchor,” he says.
“That’s what we’re hoping for: something momentous. That’s the point of finding anchors, they’re like underwater arrows, pointing in the direction of that lost ship.”

Miklos's father, Roger, also is a treasure hunter, and in the early 1980s he claimed he’d found the Pinta, one of the three ships in Columbus’s first voyage.
But the discovery, near the Bahamas, was controversial.
Even his own son now doubts it.
“ I do believe that the wreckage and material he found probably comes from that same era. I won’t say it is the Pinta—I don't believe that it is,” Darrell says.
“I don’t want to follow my dad’s footsteps. I want to make a substantive discovery done in my own way—a proper way, utilizing scientific methodologies everyone can respect. This is not ‘Miklos the Sequel.’ This is ‘Cooper’s Treasure.’ It’s me on a quest to find what it is Gordon sent me out there for.”

Columbus first voyage

Miklos was a boy when he started hanging out with Cooper, and over time they developed a close friendship (and mentorship), despite their 36-year age difference.
“I remember the way he talked: his pregnant pauses, his mild manner. You’d think someone so mild-mannered wouldn’t be a superhero, but he truly is a superhero. He’s an incredible human being, and I miss talking with him probably more than anybody can imagine. I met his daughter recently. Oh, it was emotional for me. She looks so much like her dad… She said, ‘I know why my dad picked you. You’re the right one for the job.’”
Miklos says it would take him 1,000 years to investigate all 60 anomalies on Cooper’s treasure map if he only had one crew.
If he had 50 boats, he’d need 50 years.
“I hear Gordon all the time in the back of my head: ‘You’re on the right trail!’”

Links :

• Digital journal : Astronaut's 'Space Map' leads to amazing discovery in Caribbean
• DailyMail : The Caribbean treasure map made from SPACE: Hunt for shipwrecks that astronaut 'found and charted while he was on a secret Pentagon spy mission to find Russian submarines' / Has an anchor left behind by Christopher Columbus been found in the Caribbean? Experts reveal find made using 'space map