drawn by David Garcia, 2018
Links :
- GeoGarage blog : Marie Tharp: the woman who mapped the ocean floor
Sunday, August 26, 2018
Saturday, August 25, 2018
Global weather June 2018
A movie of weather across the globe during June of 2018.
Our series of monthly weather videos shows a combination of infrared imagery from the geostationary and polar-orbiting satellites of EUMETSAT, NOAA, the CMA and the JMA which, together, continuously observe the Earth's surface 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
This data is used to help forecasters predict weather patterns and warn citizens of adverse weather conditions, hours and sometimes days in advance.
Our colleagues at Meteofrance combine imagery from the satellite data into half-hourly segments, which EUMETSAT processes to produce this animation.
To see a full view of the Earth from the last hours, as seen by Meteosat-10, check out our web page at: http://bit.ly/1k4RozO
Friday, August 24, 2018
New ocean layer discovered
A Nekton submarine descends into the Abyss
From Geographical by Katie Burton
A deep-sea mission in the ocean around Bermuda confirms the existence of a new oceanic zone
‘You almost pinch yourself and think you’re on some distant planet,’ explains Professor Alex Rogers as he reminisces about his dives into the deep ocean around Bermuda.
For him, every trip in the Triton submarine, whose clear dome provides an unprecedented view of the ocean’s inhabitants, is magical.
‘There’s always something novel to see and the landscapes are fantastical.
It’s a very humbling experience,’ he adds.
Rogers is a co-founder of Nekton, an organisation exploring the depths of the ocean for the benefit of humankind.
In July 2016, Rogers and a team of marine scientists launched Nekton’s ‘Mission I’ to investigate the ocean around Bermuda, the Sargasso Sea and the northwest Atlantic.
During the mission, dive teams, manned submarines and remote-controlled vehicles collected thousands of samples from the ocean’s surface down to 1,500 metres.
Now, nearly two years later, the results of the mission have been processed and the team has announced some striking finds.
As work begins to pull together the scientific data from Nekton's
inaugural mission to be released as part of the XL Catlin Deep Ocean
Survey, the team and supporters take a moment to reflect on some of the
highlights and achievements of their first venture into the deep ocean.
There was a great deal beneath the waves to excite the Nekton team, but the most important discovery of all was the existence of a new zone in the ocean, dubbed the ‘rariphotic’ (or ‘rare light’) zone.
First mentioned by Dr Carole Baldwin from the Smithsonian Institute in March 2018, and now confirmed by the Nekton mission, the rariphotic zone extends from 130m to 300m and is the fourth zone confirmed in the top 3,000m of the ocean.
The rariphotic zone was identified by examining the unique biological communities that congregate at those depths.
Each of the four ocean zones – altiphotic (0m to 40m), mesophotic (40m to 130m), rariphotic (130m to 300m) and bathyal (300m to 3,000m) – are characterised by these distinct groups of sea-life.
For the Nekton researchers, understanding the zones and their different inhabitants is vital for improving understanding of ocean biodiversity and patterns of life.
Nekton Mission I - Discovering the Rariphotic Zone
At the moment, that understanding is limited.
One impact of the mission’s results was to reveal just how much we still don’t know.
Rogers and his team were amazed to discover over 100 new species around Bermuda, mostly in the rariphotic zone, including more than 40 new species of algae, a new black coral and at least 13 new crustaceans.
‘Given that Bermuda is such a well-studied area in general terms, we really weren’t expecting to find as many new species,’ says Rogers.
‘We found a new species of black coral.
They looked like big forests of coiled bed springs.
Discovering an animal that large and learning that it makes up a community that was not known to be around the islands of Bermuda was a really nice thing to find.’
Each discovery made bears its own wider significance and Nekton is currently preparing policy recommendations for the Bermudan government in light of the research.
One of the most significant finds was a number of lionfish, an invasive species, as far down as 300 metres, the deepest recorded evidence of their troubling presence.
Lionfish are capable of reducing populations of smaller fish on a reef by nearly 90 per cent in just five weeks.
While policies to control them in shallow waters have had some success, their discovery in deeper water requires further action.
Lionfish are an invasive species in Bermuda and can have devastating effects on the reef
Also important was the team’s exploration of the Plantagenet Seamount (locally known as Argus).
There are more than 100,000 seamounts – or underwater mountains – globally, but less than 50 have been biologically sampled.
Argus sits 15 miles off the coast of Bermuda and researchers noticed a different community of plants and animals there, compared to other areas around the island.
The slopes of the seamount played host to gardens of wire corals and sea fans, communities of sea urchins, green moray eels, yellow hermit crabs, fish and other mobile fauna feeding off zooplankton and algae drifting off the summit and settling on the seabed.
‘We think there is a reason to consider specific management measures for that seamount,’ says Rogers.
‘Whether that’s a marine protected area is up to the government, but it would seem to require some special management measures.’
Wire corals and sea fan (Image: Nekton and XL Catlin Deep Ocean Survey)
More generally, Rogers believes the rariphotic zone probably extends throughout the Caribbean and he is particularly excited about taking the research forward into the Indian Ocean.
Nekton’s next mission is planned for 2018-2021 and will focus on six distinct regions of the Indian Ocean, from the Mozambique Channel in the west to Sumatra in the east.
‘There’s still a huge amount of work to be done on the mesophotic zone and we’ve only just discovered the rariphotic zone,’ says Rogers.
‘We are very keen to see if there’s a similarly distinct community at those depths in the Indian Ocean because that will mean that the rariphotic zone goes through the Indopacific.’
The team is also aware of the importance of analysing human impact on the ocean.
In Bermuda, where there is no trawling of the ocean floor, it found relatively little human debris, but it knows this will not be the case everywhere it goes.
Mission I was just the beginning for Nekton.
By embracing new technology, artificial intelligence and improved camera technology it hopes to spread the word about its findings and continue to explore the ocean’s depths.
For Rogers it means more trips into the unknown and more memories he’ll never forget.
Links :
Thursday, August 23, 2018
Superyacht cybercrime: the next big thing?
From CNN by Motez Bishara
He was in St Tropez to install an internet router onto a superyacht owned by a wealthy European businessman when a thought occurred to him.
"How vulnerable is this device to a hack?" wondered the German IT specialist, Stephan Gerling, before running a number of tests that uncovered the boat's exposure to potential assaults "over the rudder, radar systems, GPS, or anything else."
"When I found these vulnerable routers, my first thought was, 'What could happen with these big yachts and the celebrities on them?'" Gerling told CNN Sport
"What if they store private pictures on the media server of the yacht?
"Someone could be sitting at a café with a Wi-Fi connection and targeting them, and they don't know."
That was the moment when Gerling, a former navigation systems expert with the German military, became obsessed with defending yachts from malicious hacking.
With steady superyacht orders leading up to the busy summer season, Gerling and the few other marine cybercrime specialists who operate from Monaco to Miami are increasingly in demand, according to yacht industry insiders.
Gerling will be in Croatia this summer to rent a 20-foot yacht -- miniscule relative to those he normally works on -- as a tester for his hacking research
He will take apart everything is that able to transmit a signal on the boat, including satellite receivers and radio transmitters, to find potential vulnerabilities, because today's yachts are exposed to hacks like never before
One billionaire had more than $150,000 stolen when yacht hackers pilfered his bank account, according to The Guardian, while yacht owners have been blackmailed after private photos were stolen
Navigation systems have also been locked and held for ransom.
Risk for ransomware'
A number of superyachts even feature financial dealing rooms with data-rich Bloomberg terminals, necessitating stronger firewalls than usual
Previously, superyacht owners were nervous about pirate attacks in risky areas like the Caribbean and Gulf of Aden
However, the current crop of owners should be just as concerned when moored in crowded tourist traps in the Mediterranean, says Ben Lind, a senior yacht underwriter at AIG
"We feel there is a lot more risk for ransomware type of attack," he says, explaining that "a massive desire by yacht owners to have Wi-Fi available all over the boat" leads to greater risk.
"To do that they push up the broadcast tower and put in more wireless access points, and now you can sit in a café at a marina and watch 10 or 20 yacht Wi-Fis come up," he says
Crew members or guests active on social media could create further risk, Lind says
"That's the type of thing that might not be a direct cyber-loss, but you don't want your staff to broadcast to the world that your VIP is going to St Tropez next week," he says
"A lot of these yacht crew are in their early 20s and they grew up with Facebook and Instagram
If they haven't had their training, it's second nature to post (their whereabouts)."
Superyachts have never been an easier target for malicious hackers or paparazzi looking to capture valuable private photos of celebrities, says Gerling.
Luxury cruisers like Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich's Eclipse -- which was reportedly purchased for nearly half a billion dollars in 2009 -- can be tracked easily via websites like marinetraffic.com, which publicly provide the names and exact locations of vessels, along with their cruising speeds
Locked down networks'
Despite the value of superyachts ranging from tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars, their systems can be potentially infiltrated for months without detection, Gerling says
"The first thing is they have to figure out if they are hacked," he explains
Signs include unusually high bills for satellite communications systems, or a mobile network's data plan that is "always locked out or exceeded."
"If someone is taking care of the IT system on board, then they should easily see that, just like in a normal company," he notes
"But mostly you have only a captain and a crew on board, and they mostly don't know what to look for that can raise alarms."
Cybercrime is at times dismissed as a non-issue in the yachting community, but should be taken seriously, says Robert Raymond, CEO of London-based Superyacht Insurance Brokers.
"I think it has been overlooked," says the 40-year industry veteran, adding that prevention begins with having an IT specialist dividing the yacht's communication system into "a minimum of four separate and locked down networks."
Raymond clarifies that the ship's captain and other key personnel need one network to run the ship which is "not just firewalled, but completely separate from other things on board."
Another network should cater to the yacht's owner to guard business operations, along with one for guests and another for junior staff at risk of accessing suspect websites.
Though employing a full-time IT expert on board is still a rarity on superyachts, the very top-tier of owners would be wise to do so, says Lind
"With the very big boats, such as a $200 million yacht, you would expect a chief technical officer," he says
"On those very modern boats, because they are so interconnected, there is a risk of cross contamination .. into the operational technology side, where the engine management and the electronic charting and the GPS are all connected."
On more thing, suggests Lind: Change default passwords for every gadget on the boat and reset guest Wi-Fi passwords after every charter.
Prevention is key because cybercrime is currently excluded in nearly all marine insurance policies, says Lind, whose private clients' division at AIG insures 100,000 yachts.
Any physical damage as a result of a hack -- a crash into rocks, for instance -- would be covered, Lind says, "though not ransomware, extortion, leaking of data and all the ancillaries that go around dealing with that event."
That, along with the sensitivity of high net-worth individuals, is why most cybercrimes on yachts go unreported, Lind says
'Secret gun lockers'
In the event that a boat is rerouted and held for ransom, backup plans are often in place, says London-based yacht architect Evan Marshall.
"We do get involved occasionally with preventative measures to keep yachts from being hijacked, including installing secret gun lockers, or adding secret operational rooms where the crew can retreat to and still control the vessel in the event it is hijacked," he says.
Even old-fashion pirating of ships has been made easier by IT hacking
Last year, cybercrime expert Campbell Murrary of BlackBerry took just 30 minutes to demonstrate how he could hijack a superyacht's satellite communications system and sail a boat into the hands of pirates, according to The Guardian.
Murray was even able to control a ship's CCTV system -- because its factory password was still intact -- wiping out any coverage of would-be thieves or hijackers.
"Normally, well-trained crew members should see manipulation in navigation systems by a cyber-attack," Gerling says
"That's the theory. In practice, what happens when a ship is on autopilot at 1 a.m.? Hmm."
Links :
- Yachting Pages : Could you cyberattck a superyacht ?
- Megayacht News : Cybercrime on Superyachts: a Serious Threat
- Florida Yacht Management : Luxury yachts are incresingly the targets of cybercrime
- GeoGarage blog : Cyber Security at sea: the real threats / Combatting maritime cyber security threats / Hacked at Sea: Concerns grow over lax ... / Your ship has probably been cyber attacked / How hackers are targeting the shipping industry / Nightmare scenario: ship critical systems easy target ... / Cybercrime on the high seas: the new threat facing ... / Cyber threats prompt return of radio for ship navigation / UK at risk from ships covertly sailing into Europe ...
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