Finally, a world map that's all about oceans

The connectedness of the worlds ocean - from the German magazine mare
Athelstan Spilhaus (1911-1998), geophysicist and oceanographer, offers a representation of the Earth centred on the oceans.
The poles are placed in South America and China, particularly distorting the continents, but the oceans merge into a closed inland sea.

From BigThink by Franck Jacobs

The Spilhaus Projection may be more than 75 years old, but it has never been more relevant than today.

Athelstan Spilhaus designed an oceanic thermometer to fight the Nazis, and the weather balloon that got mistaken for a UFO in Roswell
In 1942, he produced a world map with a unique perspective, presenting the world's oceans as one body of water
The Spilhaus Projection could be just what the oceans need to get the attention their problems deserve.

In 1942, the South African-born oceanographer and geophysicist Athelstan Frederick Spilhaus produced a fascinating map.

The marine regions are represented in the centre of the world.

An immense inland sea (a little more than 70% of the Earth's surface) appears before our eyes.

Let us remember that the World Ocean generates more than 60% of the ecosystem services that allow us to live, starting with the production of most of the oxygen we breathe.

This map is therefore very symbolic of the importance of the seas.

In order to achieve this, the author uses the principles of the following two projections.

The screening by Ernst Hammer and August Heinrich Petermann (co-author with Hermann Berghaus and Carl Vogel of the Atlas Stieler).

The result is an interrupted projection in which the oceans form a unit.

It's both awesome and totally confusing.

The deformation is such that the American and Asian continents are completely torn apart.

Europe, Africa and South-East Asia, on the other hand, have a coherent form.

This projection is rarely used and it's a shame!

from thecartographe.net

This is a world map unlike any other.
Uniquely, it centres on Antarctica.
Disturbingly, it rips Asia and the Americas to shreds.
And compellingly, it presents the seas and oceans – 71% of the Earth's surface – as a unified body of water.

 Spilhaus shoreline maps by Mike Bostock (d3)

The map was designed by a renaissance man who also invented the skyways of Minneapolis and the secret weather balloon that caused the Roswell Incident.
And yet you've never heard of him.

It's a name you would have remembered: Dr Athelstan F. Spilhaus.
But neither this map, connected to a wartime invention for fighting Nazi U-boats, nor his other creations have earned his name household status.

Born in Cape Town in 1911, Spilhaus studied and worked both in his native South Africa and in the U.S., where he settled later in life.
In 1937, he was named assistant professor in at NYU, where he set up the meteorology and oceanography department.
Dr Spilhaus was not just a distinguished meteorologist and oceanographer, but also a prolific inventor.
During the Second World War, he developed the bathythermograph, a device for measuring sea temperature at great depth – making it easier to detect German submarines.
In 1948, he moved to the Minnesota Institute of Technology in Minneapolis.
Perhaps because of the huge contrast between the harsh local winters and Cape Town's Mediterranean climate, he conceived of a network of elevated covered walkways between buildings, sheltering people from severe weather.
The Minneapolis Skyway System is currently 11 miles long, connecting buildings across 80 city blocks.

Following his work on the undersea thermometer, Dr Spilhaus helped develop a similar system of weather balloons for the Air Force, to spy on Soviet nuclear testing.
When one such balloon crashed in New Mexico in 1947, the wreckage was whisked away with such speed and secrecy that the rumour mill went into overdrive.
Some today still claim the crashed device was an extra-terrestrial space ship – the infamous 'Roswell UFO'.

A man of many talents, Dr Spilhaus built some 3,000 varieties of children's toys and for 15 years authored a science-focused, globally syndicated weekly comic strip called Our New Age.
In 1954, Dr Spilhaus became America's first representative on the executive board of Unesco, the UN's educational and cultural department.
A few years later, president Kennedy appointed him to direct the U.S. exhibit at the 1962 Seattle World's Fair.
"The only science I ever learned was from your comic strip", JFK told him.

another example of this projection, taken from this article.

Dr Spilhaus also proposed the establishment of Sea Grant Colleges – a network of institutes of higher learning focusing on the exploitation and conservation of marine areas.
Which brings us back to the sea, and to this map.

Designed in 1942 while Dr Spilhaus was working on his bathythermograph, it reverses the land-based bias of traditional cartographic projections.
The Spilhaus projection – a combination of the Hammer and Spielmann projections – places the poles of the map in South America and China, ripping up continents to show the high seas as one interrupted whole.

The earth-sea is perforated by Antarctica and Australia, and fringed by the other land masses.
Two small triangles, one at the top of the map and the other on the lower right hand side, mark the same spot: the Bering Strait – as a reminder that what we're looking at is not in fact a vast inland sea, but a body of water that circles the entire globe.

This map was designed for Libération by Clara Dealberto,

a French graphic designer who has a side project producing strange new countries.

On most maps, the oceans are so vast that they become easy to ignore.
Rather than just use them as background noise, this map focuses on the watery bits of our planet.
That's not just a refreshingly different viewpoint but, it could be argued, also a desperately needed one.

Our oceans produce between 50% and 85% of the world's oxygen and are a major source of food for humanity.
But they are in mortal danger, from overfishing, acidification, plastic pollution and climate change.
Maritime 'dead zones' – with zero oxygen and zero marine life – have quadrupled since the 1950s. Low-oxygen zones have increased tenfold.
The trend is fuelled by climate change (warmer waters hold less oxygen) and, in coastal zones, fertiliser and sewage runoff from the land.

Perhaps this map can do what Earthrise did for the planet as a whole. Taken in 1966 by astronaut Bill Anders of Apollo 8 – the first manned mission to circle the moon – that picture shows our planet rising above the lunar surface, an inversion of the moonrises so familiar to humankind.
It's been called "the most influential environmental photograph ever" because it so clearly visualises the earth as a single, fragile ecosystem.

Earth rising above the lunar horizon; image taken by Bill Anders of Apollo 8 on 24 December 1968. The land mass visible in the lower right-hand side is northwest Africa.

The oceans need a similarly powerful unifying visual.
Even though it's over 80 years old, this projection reminds us that saving the planet is pointless if we don't also save the seas

Links :

• NYTimes : Athelstan Spilhaus, 86, Dies; Inventor With Eye on Future
• Shilhaus : Atlas of the World with geophysical boundaries
• Jason Davies : Spilhaus map
• Kootke : Shoreline maps of the world 

100 Island Challenge

This model was collected on Ta'u, part of American Samoa. Collection of this model was made in partnership with NOAA's Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC) on an expedition to monitor the reefs around American Samoa.

This particular model is of the coral nicknamed "Big Mama"- a large Porites colony thought to be over 500 years old!

This model was created using Structure from Motion (SfM) technology and is visualized using the custom built software Viscore developed by Vid Petrovic and Falko Kuester as part of the Cultural Heritage Engineering Initiative (CHEI) at UC San Diego.

Learn more at 100islandchallenge.org !

Coral reefs cover less than 0.1% of the Earth’s surface, yet are estimated to support greater than 25% of marine biodiversity.
For the hundreds of millions of people living adjacent to coral reefs, this productive ecosystem provides important shoreline protection and critical food security.
Alarmingly, a combination of local human influences and global climatic changes are altering the structure and functioning of many reef ecosystems.

For years, our team at Scripps Institution of Oceanography has been working to establish a regional scale perspective of coral reef health, investigating how reefs are structured, how they change over time, and how we can better manage them in the face of global change.

This 3D model was collected at Flint Island, Southern Line Islands, Republic of Kiribati, in 2013.

One of the most remote and pristine islands on the planet, Flint Island, and the southern Line Islands as a whole, offer researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography the rare opportunity to study coral reefs in pristine states over large scale physical gradients known to influence reef development.

To accelerate this crucial effort, we propose a campaign of field surveys across the tropical Pacific and beyond that will generate critical data about reef ecosystems through time.

By using a collection of survey technologies coupled with ecological theory and quantitative models, we will gain important insights into the relative condition of coral reefs from across locations, using large-scale geographic scope to provide context for comparisons across locations.
By developing a rigorous and repeatable sampling protocol, especially with the inclusion and sharing of high-resolution data (fish, benthic, oceanographic) and novel reef visualization products (i.e. large-area ‘photomosaics’) in collaboration with engineers, we can inform and educate managers and other stakeholders about how their coral reefs work and what is needed to ensure that reefs persist into the future.

Gypsea stories : Wylo II

Gypsea Stories: Wylo II from Bryony Stokes

Gypseas live on the water.
Afloat and free they roam all over the world.

At 70, the infamous Nick Skeates has sailed around the world 4 times.

Many have wondered how he does it and the changes he has seen over the years.

This film reveals a unique insight into his life onboard his equally famous boat Wylo II. 

Container ship crosses Arctic route for first time in history due to melting sea ice

Venta Maersk Escorted Through Sannikov Strait

(Maritime Executive)

From The Independant by Tom Embury-Dennis

Ice-class 42,000 ton vessel carries Russian fish and South Korean electronics to Europe

A commercial container ship has for the first time successfully navigated the Northern Sea Route of the Arctic Ocean, a route made possible by melting sea ice caused by global warming.

The Venta Maersk in the Russian port of Vladivostok as it prepares to set off on its Arctic voyage, Russia August 22, 2018.

(Yuri Maltsev / Reuters)

Maersk Line, the world’s biggest container shipping company, told The Independent its ship, Venta Maersk, was expected to reach its final destination of St Petersburg next week.
The new ice-class 42,000 ton vessel, carrying Russian fish and South Korea electronics, left Vladivostok, in the far east of Russia, on the 23 August.

 The voyage of the Venta Maersk from Asia to Europe and ice conditions along the route.

(courtesy of Malte Humpert)

With help from Russia's most powerful nuclear icebreaker, it followed the Northern Sea Route up through the Bering Strait between Russia and Alaska, before travelling along Russia’s north coast and into the Norwegian Sea.

 Venta Maersk route captures by Lemur satellites from Spire

The route has seen growing traffic during summer months already, with cargos of oil and gas regularly making the journey.

Arctic sea ice hit a record low for January this year, and an “extreme event” was declared in March as the Bering Sea’s ice levels reached the lowest level in recorded history as temperatures soared to 30C above average.

Arctic sea ice extent for September 17, 2018 was 4.60 million square kilometers (1.78 million square miles). The orange line shows the 1981 to 2010 average extent for that day.

Data released by the National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado showed this winter’s sea ice cover was less than a third of what it was just five years ago.

The Northern Sea Route can cut journey times between Asia and Europe by up to two weeks by allowing ships to avoid travelling through the Suez Canal or past the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa.
The Arctic Ocean route does, however, remain more costly as icebreakers are still required to accompany ships.

On the Northern Sea route heading for Yurp.

In an email to The Independent, Maersk confirmed the success of the “one-off trial passage”, with icebreaker ships providing assistance “as required”.
“The trial passage will enable us to explore the operational feasibility of container shipping through the Northern Sea Route and to collect data,” a spokesperson said.
“Currently, we do not see the Northern Sea Route as a commercial alternative to our existing network.”

Sune Scheller, project leader of Greenpeace Nordic, told The Independent any regular shipping route in the Arctic Ocean ultimately risked an "environmental catastrophe".
"The most immediate threat comes from some of the problems with the fuel," he said.
“Maersk hasn’t spoken about which kind of fuel this [ship] is using, but in general container ships are using heavy fuel oil, which is basically what’s left in the barrel.”

Mr Scheller said the "dirty fuel" had "consequences" for the environment, including adding to particulate matter in the atmosphere.
Also known as black carbon, particulate matter rests on white surfaces like ice and snow and absorbs heat instead of reflecting it, which contributes to climate change.
According to The Economist, “just 15 of the biggest ships emit more of the noxious oxides of nitrogen and sulphur than all the world’s cars put together”.
"It’s also of a concern in case of an accident," Mr Scheller continued.
"It is more toxic and it is more difficult to get out of the environment again, especially an Arctic environment where the water is cold."
A combination of the use of heavy fuel oil, the shallow water of the Arctic Ocean, and the ice makes the Northern Sea Route one of "increased risk" of a catastrophe, he added.

Even though the Northern Sea Route (NSR) is only feasible for three months of the year, globalwarming is making it increasingly viable for major shipping companies. 
However, no expert has ever predicted that the NSR would become a "maritime highway" in the decade 2010.
The majority of global shipowners are indeed convinced by the Arctic, but from the 2030s onwards.

(courtesy of Statista)

But as global warming increases ice loss, Mr Scheller said banning commercial shipping in the area was unlikely to be a realistic possibility.
“What’s important now is that you make sure that when this becomes available, you have the necessary regulation in place in the area," he said.
"So that means you have vessels that are capable of charting this area, But it’s also about putting bans on the most dirty types of fuels that exist."

Global estimates suggest ships are responsible for 15 per cent of nitrogen oxides and 8 per cent of sulphur gas worldwide.
These gases have been linked with a range of health problems including asthma, heart disease and cancer.

Links :

• ArcticToday : Maersk container ship is set to complete Arctic Ocean transit
• WP : Russia’s Suez Canal? Ships start plying a less-icy Arctic, thanks to climate change
• Axios : Climate change is opening a new era in Arctic shipping 
• YaleEnv360 : Five Chinese Ships, Led by Russian Icebreakers, Make Arctic Transit
• The Barents Observer : Deputy Prime Minister supports foreign sailing restrictions on Northern Sea Route
• SputnikNews : Russia's Plan to Boost North Sea Route is Challenging - Arctic Economic Council / Climate Change: Big Ships to Save 2 Weeks Taking Russia’s Northern Sea Route
• Neo : The Huge Implications of Russia’s Northern Sea Route
• Ocean North : Introducing Canada’s Arctic Marine Atlas
• GeoGarage blog : Chinese shipper on path to 'normalize' polar shipping /
  First ship crosses Arctic in winter without an ... / New sailing routes for future container mega-ships / The future of the Arctic economy / Russian tanker sails through Arctic without ... /
  Ships to sail directly over the north pole by 2050 ... / Arctic shipping passage 'still decades away' / Polar code agreed to prevent Arctic environmental ... / Arctic passage / Map shortcomings could hinder Northern Sea Route ...  / SCF Baltica tanker completed the Northern Sea Route / Arctic sea routes open as ice melts

Shell and Exxon's secret 1980s climate change warnings

(2014) Exxon published a deeply cynical rebuke in a report to investors.

The oil company argued that, because it was “highly unlikely” that governments would address climate change, it was going to carry on drilling for oil and gas regardless.

courtesy of BetterWorldSolutions

From The Guardian by Benjamin Franta

Newly found documents from the 1980s show that fossil fuel companies privately predicted the global damage that would be caused by their products.

One day in 1961, an American economist named Daniel Ellsberg stumbled across a piece of paper with apocalyptic implications.
Ellsberg, who was advising the US government on its secret nuclear war plans, had discovered a document that contained an official estimate of the death toll in a preemptive “first strike” on China and the Soviet Union: 300 million in those countries, and double that globally.

Ellsberg was troubled that such a plan existed; years later, he tried to leak the details of nuclear annihilation to the public.
Although his attempt failed, Ellsberg would become famous instead for leaking what came to be known as the Pentagon Papers – the US government’s secret history of its military intervention in Vietnam.

America’s amoral military planning during the Cold War echoes the hubris exhibited by another cast of characters gambling with the fate of humanity.
Recently, secret documents have been unearthed detailing what the energy industry knew about the links between their products and global warming.
But, unlike the government’s nuclear plans, what the industry detailed was put into action.

1982 Exxon Primer on CO2 greenhouse effect

In the 1980s, oil companies like Exxon and Shell carried out internal assessments of the carbon dioxide released by fossil fuels, and forecast the planetary consequences of these emissions.
In 1982, for example, Exxon predicted that by about 2060, CO2 levels would reach around 560 parts per million – double the preindustrial level – and that this would push the planet’s average temperatures up by about 2°C over then-current levels (and even more compared to pre-industrial levels).

Exxon’s private prediction of the future growth of carbon dioxide levels (left axis) and global temperature relative to 1982 (right axis).

Elsewhere in its report, Exxon noted that the most widely accepted science at the time indicated that doubling carbon dioxide levels would cause a global warming of 3°C.

Illustration: 1982 Exxon internal briefing document

Later that decade, in 1988, an internal report by Shell projected similar effects but also found that CO2 could double even earlier, by 2030.
Privately, these companies did not dispute the links between their products, global warming, and ecological calamity.
On the contrary, their research confirmed the connections.

Shell Climate 1988

Shell’s assessment foresaw a one-meter sea-level rise, and noted that warming could also fuel disintegration of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, resulting in a worldwide rise in sea level of “five to six meters.”
That would be enough to inundate entire low-lying countries.

Shell’s analysts also warned of the “disappearance of specific ecosystems or habitat destruction,” predicted an increase in “runoff, destructive floods, and inundation of low-lying farmland,” and said that “new sources of freshwater would be required” to compensate for changes in precipitation.
Global changes in air temperature would also “drastically change the way people live and work.”
All told, Shell concluded, “the changes may be the greatest in recorded history.”

 source : Pullitzer prizes

For its part, Exxon warned of “potentially catastrophic events that must be considered.” Like Shell’s experts, Exxon’s scientists predicted devastating sea-level rise, and warned that the American Midwest and other parts of the world could become desert-like.
Looking on the bright side, the company expressed its confidence that “this problem is not as significant to mankind as a nuclear holocaust or world famine.”

The documents make for frightening reading.
And the effect is all the more chilling in view of the oil giants’ refusal to warn the public about the damage that their own researchers predicted.
Shell’s report, marked “confidential,” was first disclosed by a Dutch news organization earlier this year.
Exxon’s study was not intended for external distribution, either; it was leaked in 2015.

 A combination of file photos shows the logos of five of the largest publicly traded oil companies - BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, and Total.

Photo: Reuters

Nor did the companies ever take responsibility for their products.
In Shell’s study, the firm argued that the “main burden” of addressing climate change rests not with the energy industry, but with governments and consumers.
That argument might have made sense if oil executives, including those from Exxon and Shell, had not later lied about climate change and actively prevented governments from enacting clean-energy policies.

Although the details of global warming were foreign to most people in the 1980s, among the few who had a better idea than most were the companies contributing the most to it.
Despite scientific uncertainties, the bottom line was this: oil firms recognized that their products added CO2 to the atmosphere, understood that this would lead to warming, and calculated the likely consequences.
And then they chose to accept those risks on our behalf, at our expense, and without our knowledge.

In 1991, Shell produced a public documentary on global warming called Climate of Concern.

It warned that trends in global temperatures raised serious risks of famines, floods and climate refugees.

But in the quarter century since, Shell has continued to invest heavily in fossil fuels.

The catastrophic nuclear war plans that Ellsberg saw in the 1960s were a Sword of Damocles that fortunately never fell.
But the oil industry’s secret climate change predictions are becoming reality, and not by accident.
Fossil-fuel producers willfully drove us toward the grim future they feared by promoting their products, lying about the effects, and aggressively defending their share of the energy market.

As the world warms, the building blocks of our planet – its ice sheets, forests, and atmospheric and ocean currents – are being altered beyond repair.
Who has the right to foresee such damage and then choose to fulfill the prophecy?
Although war planners and fossil-fuel companies had the arrogance to decide what level of devastation was appropriate for humanity, only Big Oil had the temerity to follow through.
That, of course, is one time too many.

Links :

• The Guardian : Exxon knew of climate change in 1981, email says – but it funded deniers for 27 more years / In court, Big Oil rejected climate denial / Shell's 1991 warning: climate changing ‘at faster rate than at any time since end of ice age’  / ExxonMobil agrees to join oil and gas climate change alliance
• Project Syndicate : Global Warming’s Paper Trail
• Union of concerned scientits : Tweet the Story of the Fossil Fuel Industry's Climate Deception / The Climate Deception Dossiers (2015)
• Climate Investigations : Internal Shell Climate Documents Revealed 
• WP : New York City sues Shell, ExxonMobil and other oil majors over climate change 
• GeoGarage blog : BP and Shell planning for catastrophic 5°C global ... / In a 1991 film, Shell Oil issued a stark warning about ...