The greatest rides from maxing Cloudbreak May 26th-27th, 2018

Minds were blown as the highlight clips trickled in during the mega swell that hit Fiji this past weekend.

From the viral moments like Ramon Navarro’s massive tube and Makua Rothman’s foamball pitch, to unseen footage of the heavy paddle sessions, watch three minutes of the hard-charging glory and carnage that transpired at maxing Cloudbreak.
Featuring Ramon Navarro, Billy Kemper, Landon McNamara, Kelly Slater, Luke Shepardson, Nathan Florence, Evan Valiere, Laurie Towner, Makua Rothman, Koa Rothman, Sai Smiley, and a handful of other chargers.

 Swellnet : Analysis: New buoy records Fiji swells

Homo delphinus : Jacques le dauphin

From Maritime Herald

In 1988 there was a ‘boom’ in the French cinemas with ‘Le grand bleu’ by Luc Besson, a film that established a way of watching and filming the sea.
He was inspired by the submariner Jacques Mayol, the first man to reach 100 meters in apnea (that is, lung).
The documentary ‘Dolphin Man’ by Lefteris Charitos rescues his figure and marine philosophy.
And it opens in the Docs.


“At the bottom of the sea the water is not even blue anymore and the blue of the sky is only a memory”, explained submariner Jacques Mayol, the first man to reach 100 meters in apnea.
A world record that he established in 1976 when he was 49 years old (at 56 he reached 105). But Mayol did more than set records.
He opened the way to a certain marine philosophy, wrote several essays – such as the mythical Homo Delphinus (1986) – to remind us that man was born of water, that the ocean is part of our being and that “there is a dolphin in all of us”.

Luc Besson immortalized him forever in Le grand bleu (1988), a cult film inspired by Mayol and his rivalry with the Italian freediver Enzo Maiorca (who played a young and bronzed Jean Reno).
Since its premiere in Cannes, the film was a phenomenon in France, where it reached 9.2 million viewers, and that lasted more than two hours and the tempo of certain scenes was dilated in almost mystical images of the Mediterranean.
Yves Klein patented his own shade of blue.
For Besson invented a cinematic blue, a way of filming the sea, almost as a place of inner discovery.

The Greek director Lefteris Charitos returns to that way of approaching the sea in his documentary Dolphin Man, which premieres today at the Docs Festival.
The film is preceded by awards at the festivals of Thessaloniki, Adelaide (Australia), Tokyo and, most recently, Miami, where in March he celebrated his American premiere, followed by a Le Grand Bleu pass in which actor Jean was present -Marc Barr, who played Mayol 30 years ago and now puts his voice as a narrator in Dolphin Man.
Curious. Because in Le grand bleu he hardly spoke: it was Mayol with the dreamy look and his abstracted air, thus he built the myth and an enigmatic character, almost of tragedy.
And whose life ended tragically: in 2002 he committed suicide in his house on the island of Elba.

Le grand bleu is an underwater fable based on biographical fragments and Dolphin Man forms almost a diptych, an ode to the sea, but diving into a more complex reality.
Because Mayol had many layers.
And it is not easy to reconstruct a character who was a globetrotter, a bon vivant despite economic shortages, a somewhat absent father (especially after divorce), a showman and a seducer; but also a loner, a tireless seeker, an ecologist, a spiritual diver.

For Mayol, the descent into the depths was something spiritual, an integration in the water, being the sea.
When submerging in the marine abyss, everything slows down, the weight of the body practically ceases to exist and the heart hardly beats (it goes down at 20 or even 12 beats per minute).
A Zen state without oxygen.
Literally. Mayol spent some seasons in Buddhist monasteries, where she learned to meditate and practice yoga, transferring breathing techniques (such as uddiyanior restraint of breathing) and emptying the mind to her dives.

DOLPHIN MAN VR is a series of three films of 6 minutes shot in 360° offering a unique dive into the world of freediving with three great names in the discipline in the lineage of Jacques Mayol, pioneer of freediving who marked a generation of divers.

The digital experience invites the viewer to share a sensory and disturbing experience of deep diving.
Here, let's meet cetaceans in the company of Fabrice Schnöller, engineer and biologist who develops a unique computer program in the world to decipher their language.

“The man who becomes homo Delphinus will have understood that he is not separated from nature or from the sea. You will know that from the microbe to the whale there are no inferior or superior beings. Everything is linked, “wrote Mayol.
He talked about the homo Delphinus, but the writer Jean-Albert Föex, also a diver, advocated at the same time for homo aquaticus.
Föex is one of the authors that has devoted most pages to the deep sea, from myths such as Atlantis – which, incidentally, was located in the Canary Islands, passing through the marine sites of the Bible or historical trials that trace divers from the ancient Mesopotamia.

In its mythical underwater history of men he established a peculiar chronology: first, it was the caveman, then the forest man, followed by the man of arms and horses, the man of modern cities and business …
He did not foresee the digital man, but yes to the underwater man: “In a world of masses, speed, noise and violence, hear better the call of a world of solitude, slowness, silence and deep tranquillity”.

Links :

• YouTube : Jacques le dauphin

NOAA announces launch of crowdsourced bathymetry database

The crowdsourced bathymetry database, displayed in the IHO Data Centre for Digital Bathymetry Data Viewer, has an updated user interface.

From NOAA by Lt. Cmr. Adam Reed, Integrated Oceans and Coastal Mapping (IOCM) Assistant Coordinator

Today NOAA announces the end of a testing phase in the development of a new crowdsourced bathymetry database.
Bathymetric observations and measurements from participants in citizen science and crowdsourced programs are now archived and made available to the public through the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) Data Centre for Digital Bathymetry (DCDB) Data Viewer.
The operationalized database allows free access to millions of ocean depth data points, and serves as a powerful source of information to improve navigational products.

NOAA began database development in 2014 with the IHO Crowdsourced Bathymetry Working Group.
The database is part of the IHO DCDB and is hosted at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), which offers access to archives of oceanic, atmospheric, geophysical, and coastal data.
Sea-ID, a maritime technology company, provided early testing and support and is currently working to encourage data contributions from the international yachting community.
Ongoing participation from Rose Point Navigation Systems, a provider of marine navigation software, helped kickstart the stream of data from a crowd of mariners.

The crowdsourced bathymetry database now contains more than 117 million points of depth data, which have been used by hydrographers and cartographers to improve chart products and our knowledge of the seafloor. NOAA, working with George Mason University, is using the database depths to assess nautical chart adequacy, determine when areas require updated survey information, and identify chart discrepancies before an incident occurs.
The Canadian Hydrographic Service used this dataset to update several charts of the Inside Passage, a network of coastal routes stretching from Seattle, Washington, to Juneau, Alaska.

Data are contributed to the database through a variety of trusted sources (e.g., partner companies, non-profit groups)—referred to as “trusted nodes”—that enable mariners to volunteer seafloor depths measured by their vessels.
Contributors have the option to submit their data anonymously or provide additional information (vessel or instrument configuration) that can enrich the dataset.
The trusted node compiles the observations and submits them to the crowdsourced bathymetry database, where anyone can access the near real-time data for commercial, scientific, or personal use.

 Mariners provided millions of bathymetry data points to the crowdsourced bathymetry database by voluntarily submitting the depth data collected by their vessels.

NOAA invites maritime companies to support this crowdsourcing effort in their systems by making it simple for users to participate.
For example, Rose Point Navigation Systems further promoted the IHO crowdsourced bathymetry initiative by moving the option to collect and contribute bathymetry data to a more visible section of their program options menu.

By submitting crowdsourced bathymetry data, mariners provide a powerful source of information to supplement current bathymetric coverage.
Nautical charts need to be updated as marine sediments shift due to storm events, tides, and other coastal processes that affect busy maritime zones along the coast.
Crowdsourced bathymetry data helps cartographers determine whether a charted area needs to be re-surveyed, or if they can make changes based on the information at hand.
In some cases, crowdsourced bathymetry data can fill in gaps where bathymetric data is scarce, such as unexplored areas of the Arctic and open ocean and also shallow, complex coastlines that are difficult for traditional survey vessels to access.
Crowdsourced bathymetry data is also used to identify dangers to navigation, in which case NOAA can issue a Notice to Mariners about the navigation hazard within 24 hours.

The utility of crowdsourced bathymetry data extends beyond the territory of the United States and into international mapping efforts.
Seabed 2030 is a global mapping initiative to produce a complete, high-resolution bathymetric map of the world’s seafloor by 2030.
GEBCO (which operates under the IHO and International Oceanographic Commission) and the Nippon Foundation launched the initiative in 2017, and received NOAA-wide commitment of resources and support.

Seafloor mapping is integral to many NOAA products, and crowdsourced bathymetric data supports NOAA’s Integrated Oceans and Coastal Mapping (IOCM) initiatives to maximize potential sources and use of mapping data.
Crowdsourced efforts are poised to become a major source of information for improving nautical chart coverage and accuracy, and the crowdsourced bathymetry database contributes to national and international seafloor mapping efforts as a growing repository of bathymetric data.

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Why the first complete map of the ocean floor is ... / Beta test of crowdsourced bathymetry holds promise ... / Smart ocean planning using crowdsourced data / GEBCO2015 Bathy Crowdsourcing
• MEDIN : UKHO data archive centre

Discover fascinating vintage maps from National Geographic's archives

This 1922 map of the world was the first general reference map created by National Geographic magazine’s in-house cartography shop, which was founded in 1915.

From National Geographic by Betsy Mason

More than 6,000 maps from the magazine's 130-year-long history have been digitally compiled for the first time.

Cartography has been close to National Geographic’s heart from the beginning.
And over the magazine’s 130-year history, maps have been an integral part of its mission.
Now, for the first time, National Geographic has compiled a digital archive of its entire editorial cartography collection — every map ever published in the magazine since the first issue in October 1888.

1928 map of discovery
This 1928 map depicted the current political boundaries of the time, but was created in the style of sixteenth-century mariner’s charts, with pictorial depictions of feats of exploration decorating the corners.

The map is one of a series of five original murals by renowned illustrator N.C.

Wyeth that still hang in the National Geographic Society’s Washington D.C. headquarters.

The collection is brimming with more than 6,000 maps (and counting), and you’ll have a chance to see some of the highlights as the magazine’s cartographers explore the trove and share one of their favorite maps each day.
Follow @NatGeoMaps on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to see what they discover.
(The separate map archive is not available to the public, but subscribers can see them in their respective issues in the digital magazine archive.
“It’s inspiring,” says Martin Gamache, National Geographic’s director of cartography.
“There's tons of stuff in there that struck me as being innovative and interesting.”

1963 Antarctica
This revealing depiction of Antarctica from the February 1963 issue was based on more than 5,000 depth measurements that scientists took by exploding charges and recording how long it took for the sound to travel through the ice, bounce off the bedrock below, and return to the surface.

We’ll be digging through the collection as well to bring you stories about some of the most intriguing maps we find.
The gallery above includes some tantalizing examples, such as the first composite map of the United States created out of color satellite photographs, and a clever way to get around Moscow’s ban on aerial photography in order to create a birds-eye view of the Kremlin.

1888 first map
This map from National Geographic magazine’s inaugural October 1888 issue depicts the violent meteorological conditions of the “Great White Hurricane,” one of the worst blizzards to ever hit the United States.

The very first maps published by National Geographic in 1888 depict one of the most severe blizzards to ever hit the United States (below).
Nicknamed the Great White Hurricane, the three-day storm crippled the Atlantic coast from the Chesapeake Bay all the way into Canada, dumping almost 5 feet of snow in some places and creating 50-foot snowdrifts.
National Geographic used a set of four maps to document temperature, pressure, and wind patterns on successive days as the storm lashed the coast.

The maps accompany a blow-by-blow description of the conditions that fed the storm, written by Edward Everett Hayden, a meteorologist and one of the 33 founders of the National Geographic Society.
Hayden’s article also included a gripping account of the travails of one ship as it struggled to survive the violent blizzard.
“Just before midnight a heavy sea struck the boat and sent her over on her side,” he wrote.
“Everything moveable was thrown to leeward, and the water rushed down the forward hatch. But again she righted, and the fight went on.”

1967 Indian Ocean floor
Based on the work of geologists Marie Tharp and Bruce Heezen, this gorgeous map of the Indian Ocean floor was painted for a supplement to the October 1967 issue by Austrian artist Heinrich Berann, who also painted many mountainscapes for National Geographic.

Berann worked with Tharp and Heezen to create three more ocean floor map supplements in the 60s and 70s.

It was the start of a long tradition in National Geographic magazine of enhancing storytelling with maps.
The maps of the storm were likely made by the U.S. Navy Hydrographic Office, and the magazine continued to work with various outside mapmakers like the U.S. Geological Survey until it established its own cartography shop In 1915.
Over the next century, the National Geographic cartography department made thousands of maps for the pages of the magazine and hundreds of poster supplement maps.

The goal of the cartography team, Gamache says, is to capture readers’ imagination by conveying a sense of place, to give the viewer an idea of how a place might look and feel.
“I think when we're successful, it resonates with people," he says.

1961 London panorama
It took seven National Geographic artists to hand paint the individual buildings for this six-page fold-out panorama of London, published in 1961.

It shows the view that would be seen from a plane flying south of the Thames.

It took months to extract all the maps from the magazine’s digitized back catalog and compile them into a separate collection.
Gamache says the resulting trove will help the current staff cartographers connect to the magazine’s legacy as they continue to try new things.
“It's always good to look at what we've done in the past on any subject,” he says.
“It gives us ideas.”

As they share a curated selection of maps from the archive, the cartography team will be highlighting some of the maps that have served as inspiration for new maps, says research editor Irene Berman-Vaporis.

1957 map of the Heavens
The December 1957 issue of National Geographic came with a pull-out poster-size map of the night sky.

The map shows the stars and constellations as they would appear to someone standing at Earth’s north and south poles.

One of the things that defines National Geographic magazine’s cartography is the way it is integrated into the rest of the magazine’s editorial process.
Each map tells its own story, but also works alongside text and photography to bring another dimension to the article, Gamache says.
“A map is able to connect with somebody in a different way than a text will or a photo will,” he says. “They engage with a different part of our psyche or our brain."

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : The greatest maps in history, collected in one ... / Maps provide another view of South Florida history / Why ancient mapmakers were terrified of blank spaces / The case for beautiful cartography in a world of digital maps / From Ptolemy to GPS, the brief history of maps

Amid ice melt, new shipping lanes are drawn up off Alaska

courtesy of Audubon Alaska

From Scientific American by Margaret Krie Hobson

Special protections have also been granted for wildlife and coastal communities potentially threatened by oil spills

Early this month, the Colorado-based National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that winter sea ice levels in the Bering Sea had dropped to a record low level for this time of year.

That wasn’t surprising news to the Alaska Native villages along the state’s western coast. For the last decade, those communities have been enduring the impacts of a warming climate, from the melting tundra that’s causing waterfront homes to fall into the ocean to a lack of coastal sea ice, which traditionally protected those communities from winter storm surges.

Now the increasingly open waters are attracting new ship traffic to the Bering Strait, Bering Sea and Chukchi Sea, noted Austin Ahmasuk, a marine advocate for Kawerak, an Alaska Native regional tribal consortium.
“If you look at the ship tracts in the Bering Sea over the last 10 years, it’s been like a big bowl of spaghetti, with ships going all over the place,” said Ahmasuk, who lives in Nome, Alaska.
“The shipping industry is increasing, and all of the other things that are potential harmful threats from shipping are increasing,” he said.

 Bering Strait with the GeoGarage platform (NOAA chart)

Last week, the International Maritime Organization, the United Nations’ global regulatory body for international shipping, took steps to bring some order to the growing ship traffic streaming through the Bering Strait.

At a London meeting, the IMO’s senior technical body, the Maritime Safety Committee, accepted a proposal to create six two-way sea routes for ships traveling between the Arctic and Pacific oceans.
The plan, developed jointly by Russia and the United States, is intended to be voluntary and to only apply to all domestic and international vessels weighing 400 tons or more.

The IMO safety committee also identified six precautionary areas located along Russia’s Chukotskiy Peninsula and Alaska’s Seward Peninsula to help ships avoid shoals, reefs and islands that lie close to the two-way routes.

At the same time, the IMO provided special protections for the communities living on three Bering Strait islands that are in harm’s way from vessels in the Bering Strait.

The group accepted a proposal from the U.S. Coast Guard to designate new environmentally important “areas to be avoided” by ships traveling near Alaska’s St. Lawrence Island, Nunivak Island and King Island in the Bering Strait.

 The steep, rocky cliffs on the eastern shore of Little Diomede off Alaska’s Arctic coast provide habitat for seabirds that feed in Bering Strait waters.

 Diomede islands and the Russia-US frontier with the GeoGarage platform (NOAA chart)

Russia and the United States are also in talks to set up new protections around the Diomede Islands in the Bering Strait.
Those two islands are located 2 ½ miles apart, with the western Big Diomede governed by Russia and eastern Little Diomede part of Alaska.

Also at the IMO meeting, the safety committee announced plans to assess the safety, security and environmental soundness of autonomously operated ships (Greenwire, May 25).

That study will examine whether vessels operated with limited or no human help can comply with a variety of international conventions, including mandates that require all vessels to have procedures for recovering people from the water and to help tow disabled ships.

The shores between the Arctic and Pacific oceans are home to dozens of small Alaskan and Russian indigenous villages that maintain a traditional subsistence way of life.
The area also hosts one of the world’s major marine migrations of bowhead and beluga whales, Pacific walruses, and ice seals, as well as vast populations of seabirds.

Now, the increasingly open Arctic waters are beginning to attract new cargo ships, tourism, oil and gas exploration, and research and scientific activities.
The growing marine traffic is problematic in regions that are relatively shallow, particularly for ships that continue to rely on 100-year-old nautical charts, according to the IMO.

 Image Courtesy: Champion Tankers

The potential impact of increased shipping on Alaska Native communities became clear two years ago when the 599-foot Norwegian tanker Champion Ebony ran aground offshore from Nunivak Island in the Bering Sea while carrying 14.2 million gallons of fuel products.

None of the fuel leaked from the ship. But the close call raised local concerns that an oil spill could have devastated local resources, Albert Williams, president of the Native village of Mekoryuk on Nunivak, said in a letter to the Obama administration.
“At the same time, our community, which would have been on the front line of an oil spill response, has virtually no infrastructure or capacity to address a risk of that scale,” Williams wrote.

The IMO’s adoption of new shipping routes and environmental protections was praised by U.S. conservation groups that have been working with coastal communities in Alaska and Russia.

Kevin Harun, Arctic program director for Pacific Environment, praised the IMO for beginning to bring order before ship traffic gets out of hand.
“Finally, decisionmakers are getting ahead of the curve to protect the environment and subsistence in advance of this increase in traffic,” he said.

Eleanor Huffines, senior officer with the Pew Charitable Trusts’ U.S. Arctic program, described the IMO action as “a significant step toward safer shipping in the Arctic.”
“These measures will keep vessels on the safest course and reduce the risk of them running aground, colliding or interfering directly with subsistence hunting,” Huffines said.

Coast Guard officials said the new shipping routes, developed in conjunction with the Russian government, will go a long way toward reducing the potential for marine casualties and environmental disasters.
“This is a big step forward as the U.S. Coast Guard continues to work together with international, interagency and maritime stakeholders to make our waterways safer, more efficient and more resilient,” said Mike Sollosi, chief of the Coast Guard’s Navigation Standards Division.

The proposal to create shipping lanes grew out of the Coast Guard’s Port Access Route Study of the Bering Strait, which was completed last year.
Sollosi said the study was the product of a decade of collaboration with international, interagency, industry and private stakeholders and extensive coordination with community residents along the coasts of Alaska.

Links :

• Maritime Executive : IMO Authorizes New Bering Sea Routing
• Seattle Times : Maritime organization approves Bering Strait shipping routes
• The Pew : New Coast Guard Measures Mean Safer Shipping in the US Arctic