GeoGarage blog

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Blue Planet gives super-rich their new toys – submersibles

Learn what it takes to make Blue Planet II aboard the Alucia Premiere – Earth Lab

From The Guardian by Rupert Neate

World’s ultra-rich are buying subs for up to £30m to indulge in deep ocean exploring

Anew toy has surfaced on the must-have list of leisure options for the world’s billionaire class: private submersibles they can use to explore the oceans – or even use as James Bond-style means of escape if their superyacht should come under attack.

Doing a David Attenborough – Triton submersibles in deep waters off Lyford Cay, Bahamas.
Photograph: Nick Verola

The global super-rich last year bought about 30 submersibles – with price tags of up to £30m – according to manufacturer Triton.
These private submarines are known as submersibles because they are not independently powered, instead relying on batteries that have to be recharged by a support vessel.

Louise Harrison, Triton’s European sales director, said in recent months the BBC’s Blue Planet series, narrated by Sir David Attenborough, had led to a “huge spike” in demand from wealthy buyers wanting to explore the deep and get up close to coral reefs, stingrays and whales.

There is a growing number of super-rich, she said, who want more than to merely luxuriate in their good fortune.
“The super-rich aren’t happy to sit on the back of their yachts with a G&T anymore.
The modern ones and the young ones want to go to Antarctica and the Galápagos Islands,” she said.
“They want to see what’s beneath the surface as well as what’s on top.
They have seen Blue Planet, and they want to get down there and see it for themselves.”

Harrison told hundreds of delegates attending the Superyacht Investor conference in London this week that submersible manufacturers had their best year in 2017, as there has been “definitive change in direction among owners to use their superyachts for new experiences”.
“The industry sold 25-30 submersibles last year,” she said.
“It may not sound like a lot but they are priced at a minimum of £1m and up to £30m.
It is a lot of money.”

The Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich, Virgin’s Sir Richard Branson, the Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and the US hedge fund manger Ray Dalio are among billionaires who have already splashed out on underwater vessels.
Indeed, one may not be enough: Dalio said he was so “wild about ocean exploration” that he bought two submersibles, which were used in the filming of the second series of Blue Planet.
“The underwater world is much larger than the above-water world, has more unidentified species than the above-water world, is essential to our wellbeing, is incredibly interesting and valuable, and is mostly unexplored,” said Dalio, the world’s 90th richest person with a $14.6bn (£10.3bn) fortune.
“For those reasons, and for the thrill of it, I am wild about ocean exploration.
I explore the ocean personally while tagging along with great ocean scientists and explorers, and I financially support ocean exploration that goes on way beyond me – including sharing these thrills with the public through various media outlets and museum exhibits.”

Dalio’s submersibles – named Nadir and Deep Rover – are based on his $50m expedition-focused superyacht, Alucia.

The submersible ‘Nadir’ used by Blue Planet II team to film the Deep episode.

It was one of many subs used to film the series.

Photograph: Luis Lamar

The Nadir is a Triton 3300/3 model capable of diving to a depth of 1,000 metres with a pilot and two passengers on board and sells for about $3m depending on fixtures and fittings.
“Yes, it’s a lot of money,” Harrison said.
“But do you want to go diving in a cheap submersible?”

Harrison said the growth in submersibles had been driven by a rapid improvement in acrylic technology, which means they can be fitted with large clear bubble domes, giving a 360-degree views of the ocean.
“When you’re underwater the acrylic sort of disappears and you feel like you are actually in the ocean.
It’s a bit dreamlike when you’re down there,” she said.
“The acrylic is the expensive bit, as the technology has only recently got so advanced that you can go that deep.
It is very, very expensive stuff – you don’t want to scratch it.”
Harrison said most customers say they are interested in buying submersibles for exploration, but some have also inquired about using them as “panic rooms or escape vessels”.

M/Y Legend has recently completed a submarine expedition in Antarctica, during which the C-Explorer 3 private submarine was extensivley used to explore the deep waters of the South Pole.

Triton’s biggest competitor, Holland’s U-Boat Worx, has designed an ultra-lightweight submersible model specifically for superyachts.
Its Super Yacht Sub Three is piloted from the rear so the passengers can get the best view of the ocean from the front of the bubble dome.
The company said: “This submarine is aimed at the yacht market ...
[it] delivers both performance and luxury.”

Luxury carmaker Aston Martin has joined forces with Triton Submarines to make a stylish submersible.

Triton, which is based in Florida, has partnered with British luxury car group Aston Martin to work on a new $4m three-man submersible codenamed Project Neptune.
The subs, which are expected to hit the market later this year, will dive to 1,650ft and have a top speed of 3.5 miles an hour.
Marek Reichman, Aston Martin’s chief creative officer, said the company had decided to expand into submersibles following interest expressed by its richest customers.
“Those superyacht people, what they want to experience is changing,” he said.
“It’s no longer about just having a launch or having your tender.
It’s about having some other way of entertaining your guests.”

Links :

GeoGarage blog : Underwater aeroplanes: the new toy for the super ...

Monday, February 26, 2018

New maps show the utterly massive imprint of fishing on the world’s oceans

Fishing activity by vessels broadcasting AIS

photo : Global Fishing Watch

From Washington Post by Chris Mooney and Brady Dennis

Humans are now fishing at least 55 percent of the world’s oceans — an area four times larger than the area occupied by humanity’s onshore agriculture.

That startling statistic is among the findings of a unique, high-tech collaboration that is providing a massive amount of new data about global fishing operations.
The results, published Thursday in the journal Science, offer a powerful glimpse of the problem of overfishing on the hard-to-regulate high seas.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 31.4 percent of global fish stocks were overfished or fished unsustainably, as of 2013, while another 58.1 percent were “fully fished.”

Global footprint of fisheries

Thursday’s findings relied on data from Global Fishing Watch, a collaboration encompassing Oceana, SkyTruth and Google.
Researchers compiled billions of data points from tracking systems that the International Maritime Organization requires for about 70,000 fishing vessels.

The result was a picture of fishing that the study, led by David Kroodsma of Global Fishing Watch, says “has never been directly quantified.”
Because of data limitations, the percentage of the oceans fished could be as high as 73 percent, the study said.

The Dynamics of the Global Fiching Fleet - interactive-

“Fishing is happening almost everywhere and all the time,” said Jackie Savitz, chief policy officer for the advocacy group Oceana.
“I think people don’t really have a sense of how heavily fished our oceans are and how intensely they are fished.”
She said the intensity of global fishing documented by Thursday’s study is far greater than researchers have been able to track in the past.
“That means we’re putting more pressure on fish populations,” Savitz said, noting that increased fishing also means more inadvertent catching of other species, such as sea turtles.
“That means there’s more pressure on our oceans than we thought.”

There was particularly intense fishing off the southeastern coast of South America, the eastern coast of China, western Africa, and all around Europe and the Mediterranean, the research found.
The North Atlantic, far northeastern Pacific, Indian Ocean and Southern Ocean were far more devoid of fishing.

Here’s one image of the fishing pattern off the coasts of the northeastern United States/Canada and UK/France :

While Thursday’s study itself doesn’t delve into what areas are being overfished around the world, Savitz said experts have long documented overfishing in many places.
But she said the latest data helps illustrate that “the tragedy of the commons is very much at place in the oceans,” and that it underscores the need for a more thoughtful global approach to regulating fisheries.

“What we need to do is, both within countries and internationally, put in place sustainable fishery management policies,” Savitz said.
“Unless we get policies in place to protect fishery sustainability, what we’re essentially doing is undermining our food security.”

The study found that ships from just five nations accounted for more than 85 percent of global fishing — Spain, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and China.
China’s fishing footprint was by far the largest, however, based on data for the year 2016.
(The study used data from 2012 through 2016.)

This graph shows the number of fishing hours by flag state in 2016.

(Global Fishing Watch)

One leading fisheries scientist said that while the study’s methodology is novel, overall it reaffirms an existing picture of how much the oceans are being fished.

“The results are remarkably consistent with the catch data that have been traditionally employed to measure fishing effort,” said Jeremy Jackson, a marine sciences expert at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, by email.
“Ditto the fact that China, Spain, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea take 85 percent of it all on the high seas. Still, it’s good to see the strong confirmation, and of course it’s unsustainable without massive restrictions in effort.”

Daniel Pauly, a prominent expert on global fisheries and a professor at the University of British Columbia, added that Thursday’s study “adds a new dimension to the scientists’ and fisheries manager’s tool kit, a very effective one.”
“It can be seen as one of the first instances of high-tech being turned against illegal fishing (until now, it was the pirates who used it),” he wrote in an email from Hong Kong.
“What is new is that the [Global Fishing Watch] enables civil society to use satellites to monitor the activity of fishing vessels, and thus to fight against illegal fishing and to increase transparency.”

Global Fishing Watch uses data broadcast from ships at sea to map more than 60,000 industrial-sized fishing vessels.

In 2017, nano-satellite data from Spire increased resolution by nearly doubling the data in the platform.

In addition, Pauly said, the data help make a case that all fishing vessels — not only the large commercial ones operating far offshore — should be satellite-monitored.
“The next thing is thus to pressure the International Maritime Organization to close the loophole they have for smaller, coastal fishing vessels, which do not need to have [electronic tracking systems].”

The technology used by Global Fishing Watch to conduct the study relies on public broadcast data from the Automatic Identification System (AIS), which uses satellite and land-based receivers to track the movement of ships over time.
Not all fishing vessels willingly broadcast their location, of course — particularly those intent on breaking the law — and vessels can switch off their trackers, potentially hindering the usefulness of the technology.

But the United States and other countries already require vessels of a certain size to use the locator system, partly as a safety measure to avoid collisions at sea.
Global Fishing Watch allows users to access that information to track specific vessels over time.

This map shows fishing by trawlers, which drag fishing nets behind them.

They dominate fishing in coastal areas, such as fisheries near Europe and China

This map shows activity of fishing vessels that use drifting longlines.

They roamed the high seas, especially in tropical latitudes

The new satellite technologies are one part of a broader, ongoing international push to reduce overfishing in the oceans and cut back on illegal fishing.
One 2014 study found that between 20 and 32 percent of fish imported to the United States were caught illegally.

“The problem is just gigantic,” then-Secretary of State John F. Kerry told The Washington Post in an interview in 2016.
“A third of the world’s fisheries are overfished, and the ones that aren’t overfished are at max, with more and more demand. …
It’s an ecosystem that requires sustainability to survive, and we’re not treating it in a sustainable fashion.”

Despite the huge scale of the effort, the fishing captured in the study represented only 1.2 percent of all the calories produced for humans to eat, the study found.
However, as the Food and Agriculture Organization notes, these are particularly beneficial calories, because fish provide amino acids, fats, vitamins and other key nutrients and help prevent cardiovascular illnesses.

Thursday’s study also shed light on the sheer scale of global fishing, noting that in 2016 alone, the ships that were tracked spent 40 million hours at sea and traveled 460 million kilometers — “equivalent to traveling to the Moon and back 600 times.”

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