From Marine Electronics by Captain Paul Whyte, Associate Master Mariner, LOC
It's not where you are, it's where you should not be that matters
Captain Whyte, a leading marine accident analyst at LOC Group, an independent marine and engineering consultancy which provides services to the shipping and offshore energy industries, explains how electronic data is making accident investigation clearer by providing irrefutable evidence.
"Fundamentally, situational awareness underpins everything we do", said Captain Whyte.
"Whether that's crossing the road or driving ships at sea. We need to know where we are, what we're doing and where we are going. If a vessel has grounded or had a collision, then clearly the bridge crew must have lost their situational awareness."
He says that every deck officer should have a good working knowledge of the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, 1972 (COLREGS), and in using these 'rules of the [sea] road' every Master and Officer of the Watch (OOW) should observe the four 'A's at all times;
Aware; the bridge team must be aware and maintain a proper lookout
Anticipation; the vessel should travel at a safe speed giving space and time to assess if there's a risk of collision
Application; the crew should know the COLREGS and particularly the risk of collision, and should follow the regulations
Action; the crew must take positive and early action to avoid a collision.
However, when a collision or grounding does occur, Captain Whyte investigates the incident using electronic data, some of which is freely available, to establish the exact causes.
E-navigation is defined by the IMO as;
'the harmonized collection, integration, exchange, presentation and analysis of marine information on board and ashore by electronic means to enhance berth to berth navigation and related services for safety and security at sea and protection of the marine environment.'
It covers a number of ship and shore-based technologies that all significantly support and improve situational awareness and decision-making.
All these sources produce data to determine situational awareness and that can also be analysed in any accident investigation.
ECDIS is a digital navigational chart system which can be used instead of paper charts, making the navigator's workload easier with its automatic capabilities such as route planning, route monitoring, automatic ETA computation and electronic navigation chart updating.
The electronic chart displays the vessel's 'real-time' position, course and speed.
It also carries out different complex functions to help improve the bridge crew's 'situational awareness' and can meld together radar imagery, ship information, chart activity and AIS information all into one view.
Using such tools, ECDIS can help to establish the best time-saving route planning within pre-defined 'safety corridors' although Captain Whyte cautions that a one-to-one check of the entire route from berth to berth must still be carried out.
Furthermore, ECDIS can 'replay' the entire course navigated over the previous 12 hours, recording the entire voyage using 4-hourly time markers.
The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) made the carriage of ECDIS mandatory under Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) Chapter V (Safety of Navigation) for most large vessels of 3000 GT or more, on 1 July 2018.
Looking ahead, Captain Whyte says that although only one third of the global fleet is currently required to use ECDIS, he envisages it spreading further and wider as shipowners see the benefits, regardless of vessel size.
The IMO made the carriage of AIS mandatory under SOLAS V for all vessels of 300 GT or more engaged on international voyages from 31 December 2004.
AIS is publicly broadcast via a VHF transponder device with the primary function of improving ship-to-ship and controlled water space 'situational awareness', such as major ports and traffic pinch-points like the Dover and Singapore Straits.
AIS transmits dynamic position and movement data, voyage related facts and static information such as vessel details designed to enhance water space management within the VHF horizon.
An unintended consequence of AIS has been the ability of organisations to globally harvest AIS transmissions using low-earth orbiting satellites and terrestrial receivers and share it with companies like LOC, who use it for investigation purposes.
ECDIS implantation
Using an electronic navigational chart within ECDIS, the OOW can monitor the safety corridor, safety contours, their own vessel GPS and its vector, any other vessels AIS and vector, the tide vectors and exploit the customizable menu.
Captain Whyte adds that another valuable source of navigation investigation data is the vessel's Voyage Data Recorder (VDR) - the 'black box' - which is an IMO requirement for passenger ships and vessels over 3000 GT.
VDR is a collection and storage device, recording on a continuous loop, and records the command and control inputs of the vessel.
Software used for the reconstruction of an incident of the 'black box' and other electronic data is highly valued by investigators, lawyers and insurance interests.
A traditional casualty investigation might have involved; attending the casualty, interviewing the crew and taking statements, collecting contemporaneous (and digital) evidence, determining the 'angle of blow', establishing the 'type and location of damage' in groundings - understanding which way the vessel was going, providing documentation (including digital evidence) and engaging experts if there's no agreement and ultimately proceeding to trial.
Today, modern accident analysis means conducting an investigation using all the electronic evidence, validating any contemporaneous evidence and assessing any incontrovertible evidence which leads to an agreed set of facts and an understanding of the causation.
This means that the parties involved can agree liability and costs, often without resorting to costly litigation and trial.
In addition, LOC has two further specialist tools which support its accident investigation analysis, by importing the electronic navigational data to reconstruct the grounding or collision scenario or modelling the 'what-if' options with the meteorological conditions at the time of the casualty.
The first is MADAS (Marine Accident Data Analysis Suite) which was developed by Avenca Ltd, for the UK's Maritime Accident Investigation Bureau and the US National Transport Safety Board.
MADAS can display multiple vessel tracks, extracting and using the AIS and/or VDR data, it can use the audio track recordings of the crew at the bridge and the bridge wings during the incident.
It can display different charts and overlays, and media including radar and CCTV - to show in 2-D the unfolding scenario, using precise vessel shapes, so the investigator can determine causation.
BMT have developed advanced manoeuvring assessment and simulation capabilities to aid in port design and crew training.
REMBRANDT is a real and fast time ship-handling and manoeuvring simulator.
It is PC based and designed using standard user interfaces and structure to ensure user-friendliness. It is principally designed for the following applications:
• Manoeuvre rehearsal
• Ship performance and operational assessments
• Assessment of port arrangements (berths, channels, etc)
• Assessment of tug requirements
• Ship-handling training
• Incident investigations
The second tool used by LOC for deciphering electronic intelligence is the 3-D programme REMBRANT (Real-time Manoeuvring, Berthing and Training) which was developed by BMT, which enables the user to build a 3-D imagery of the 2-D analysis.
This tool allows LOC to show a client how the incident looked from the bridge or birds-eye, whether by day or night, including modelling the 'what if' actions to avoid the incident.
Captain Whyte concludes that: "As I have already said, navigation is not about knowing where you are, but much more about knowing where you should not be, and still, too often ships end up where they should not be, sometimes with dangerous and hazardous consequences for all in the vicinity."
"But, by using electronic data and specialist tools we can now decipher the incontrovertible electronic evidence to understand exactly what happened, and if necessary, what actions would have prevented the incident."
Captain Whyte adds that: "By using the electronic data which is now available in any investigation, we can clearly see how the incident proceeded, and can then reach a conclusion much faster and cheaper for all those involved."
It’s stunning but true that we know more about the surface of the moon than about the Earth’s ocean floor.
Much of what we do know has come from scientific ocean drilling – the systematic collection of core samples from the deep seabed.
This revolutionary process began 50 years ago, when the drilling vessel Glomar Challenger sailed into the Gulf of Mexico on August 11, 1968 on the first expedition of the federally funded Deep Sea Drilling Project.
I went on my first scientific ocean drilling expedition in 1980, and since then have participated in six more expeditions to locations including the far North Atlantic and Antaractica’s Weddell Sea.
In my lab, my students and I work with core samples from these expeditions.
Each of these cores, which are cylinders 31 feet long and 3 inches wide, is like a book whose information is waiting to be translated into words.
Holding a newly opened core, filled with rocks and sediment from the Earth’s ocean floor, is like opening a rare treasure chest that records the passage of time in Earth’s history.
Over a half-century, scientific ocean drilling has proved the theory of plate tectonics, created the field of paleoceanography and redefined how we view life on Earth by revealing an enormous variety and volume of life in the deep marine biosphere.
And much more remains to be learned.
The scientific drilling ship JOIDES Resolution arrives in Honolulu after
successful sea trials and testing of scientific and drilling equipment.
IODP
Technological innovations
Two key innovations made it possible for research ships to take core samples from precise locations in the deep oceans.
The first, known as dynamic positioning, enables a 471-foot ship to stay fixed in place while drilling and recovering cores, one on top of the next, often in over 12,000 feet of water.
Anchoring isn’t feasible at these depths.
Instead, technicians drop a torpedo-shaped instrument called a transponder over the side.
A device called a transducer, mounted on the ship’s hull, sends an acoustic signal to the transponder, which replies.
Computers on board calculate the distance and angle of this communication.
Thrusters on the ship’s hull maneuver the vessel to stay in exactly the same location, countering the forces of currents, wind and waves.
Another challenge arises when drill bits have to be replaced mid-operation.
The ocean’s crust is composed of igneous rock that wears bits down long before the desired depth is reached.
When this happens, the drill crew brings the entire drill pipe to the surface, mounts a new drill bit and returns to the same hole.
This requires guiding the pipe into a funnel shaped re-entry cone, less than 15 feet wide, placed in the bottom of the ocean at the mouth of the drilling hole.
The process, which was first accomplished in 1970, is like lowering a long strand of spaghetti into a quarter-inch-wide funnel at the deep end of an Olympic swimming pool.
The re-entry cone is welded together
around the drill pipe, then lowered down the pipe to guide reinsertion
before changing drill bits.
IODP
Confirming plate tectonics
When scientific ocean drilling began in 1968, the theory of plate tectonics was a subject of active debate.
One key idea was that new ocean crust was created at ridges in the seafloor, where oceanic plates moved away from each other and magma from earth’s interior welled up between them.
According to this theory, crust should be new material at the crest of ocean ridges, and its age should increase with distance from the crest.
The only way to prove this was by analyzing sediment and rock cores.
In the winter of 1968-1969, the Glomar Challenger drilled seven sites in the South Atlantic Ocean to the east and west of the Mid-Atlantic ridge.
Both the igneous rocks of the ocean floor and overlying sediments aged in perfect agreement with the predictions, confirming that ocean crust was forming at the ridges and plate tectonics was correct.
Part of a core section from the Chicxulub impact
crater.
It is suevite, a type of rock, formed during the impact, that
contains rock fragments and melted rocks.
Reconstructing earth’s history
The ocean record of Earth’s history is more continuous than geologic formations on land, where erosion and redeposition by wind, water and ice can disrupt the record.
In most ocean locations sediment is laid down particle by particle, microfossil by microfossil, and remains in place, eventually succumbing to pressure and turning into rock.
Microfossils (plankton) preserved in sediment are beautiful and informative, even though some are smaller than the width of a human hair.
Like larger plant and animal fossils, scientists can use these delicate structures of calcium and silicon to reconstruct past environments.
The resulting acidification of the ocean from the release of carbon into the atmosphere and ocean caused massive dissolution and change in the deep ocean ecosystem.
This episode is an impressive example of the impact of rapid climate warming.
The total amount of carbon released during the PETM is estimated to be about equal to the amount that humans will release if we burn all of Earth’s fossil fuel reserves.
Yet, an important difference is that the carbon released by the volcanoes and hydrates was at a much slower rate than we are currently releasing fossil fuel.
Thus we can expect even more dramatic climate and ecosystem changes unless we stop emitting carbon.
Enhanced scanning electron microscope images of phytoplankton (left, a diatom; right, a coccolithophore).
Different phytoplankton species have distinct climatic preferences, which makes them ideal indicators of surface ocean conditions. (Dee Breger)
Today scientists from 23 nations are proposing and conducting research through the International Ocean Discovery Program, which uses scientific ocean drilling to recover data from seafloor sediments and rocks and to monitor environments under the ocean floor.
Coring is producing new information about plate tectonics, such as the complexities of ocean crust formation, and the diversity of life in the deep oceans.
This research is expensive, and technologically and intellectually intense.
But only by exploring the deep sea can we recover the treasures it holds and better understand its beauty and complexity.
How scientists know our seas are rising faster ? Although it may not be immediately obvious when we visit the beach, sea-level rise is affecting coastlines all over the world.
For low-lying countries such as the Netherlands, sea-level rise and tidal surges are a constant threat. Our oceans are rising as a consequence of climate change.
As the temperature of seawater increases it expands and the ice melting from ice sheets and glaciers adds more water to the global ocean.
We know this because satellites high above our heads measure the temperature of the sea surface and of our changing ice.
While the global averaged trend is towards rising levels, there are many regional differences so that in some places it is rising and in other places it is falling.
Satellites carrying altimeter instruments systematically measure the height of the sea surface so that sea-level rise can be closely monitored.
Altimetry measurements over the last 25 years show that on average sea-level is rising about 3 mm a year and this rise is accelerating.
From Reuters by Lucas Jackson & Elizabeth Culliford
A loud rumble jolted climate scientist David Holland just before he went to sleep inside his fiberglass bear-resistant dome, set up next to a frozen fjord in Greenland.
He scrambled outside into the sunlit night at about 11 p.m.
The thundering sound grew louder as he watched a chunk of ice about a third the size of Manhattan break away from the Helheim glacier.
Over the next half hour, the iceberg cracked into pieces and tumbled into the water — a mesmerizing sighting of the sea level rise that Holland has devoted years to studying.
Such major glacial ruptures, known as calvings, are rarely observed in person.
A Reuters photographer captured the event on video as Holland, a New York University oceanographer, took in the “absolutely breathtaking” scene.
“It’s just amazing how beautiful nature is, how violent and unstoppable; it just does its own thing,” he said.
“We actually saw the process by which sea level rises from glaciers.”
Meltwater pools are seen on top of the Helheim glacier near Tasiilaq, Greenland, June 19, 2018.
(Lucas Jackson / Reuters)
Now Holland and other climate scientists just have to figure out how — and how fast — warming oceans are undermining the glaciers of Greenland and Antarctica.
The best predictions for sea-level rise this century are getting more dire, and yet less precise, in part because of a lack of understanding of these glaciers and how their behavior fits into global climate modeling
A key obstacle to producing better predictions is the extreme difficulty of the research, which requires dangerous field work in some of the world’s harshest terrain.
Researchers must contend with winds strong enough to sweep away bolted-down equipment; temperatures that can freeze skin on contact; and remote locations that make securing supplies a steep challenge.
Glacial ice is seen from the window during a NASA flight to support the Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) research mission above the east coast of Greenland, March 13, 2018.
(Lucas Jackson / Reuters)
Security teams help scientists avoid falling into hidden crevasses, and, in the Arctic, teams arm themselves with rifles and sleep in fiberglass shelters to avoid becoming a meal for polar bears.
The challenges of data collection also require a host of creative solutions that scientists are refining through trial and error.
A NASA team that is now three years into a five-year, $30 million project called Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) has used radar to map changes in the sheet’s ice loss over time by returning each year to fly the same precise path; dropped probes from planes to measure water temperature and salinity at various depths; and mounted sonar instruments to ships to map the topography of the ocean floor.
The difficulties and dangers in accessing the ice-choked waters near Greenland’s glaciers caused some researchers to enlist the help of local wildlife by tagging seals, halibut or narwhals with sensors to gather data.
NASA researchers and Holland are focused on Greenland because it currently contributes more to sea level rise than the colder region of Antarctica — and because the research is so much harder in the Antarctic, with its punishing climate, massive scale and logistical challenges.
An iceberg floats in a fjord near the town of Tasiilaq, Greenland.
Reuters/Lucas Jackson
“It’s mind-boggling how difficult it is to do things in Antarctica,” said Holland, who has conducted studies in both regions.
“Work that can be done here in Greenland on the scale of summer takes five to ten years to set up and accomplish in Antarctica.”
$20,000 bolt
Scientists worry that the calving process underway at Helheim - named for the Vikings’ world of the dead - provides a preview of what might happen in Antarctica on a larger scale.
Another Greenland glacier called Jakobshavn has seen similar calving events.
In both polar regions, field researchers face serious hazards.
Bad weather can strand researchers for weeks and hidden dangers can lurk beneath the snow.
In 2016, Holland’s colleague Gordon Hamilton, a U.S.
climate scientist, was killed in Antarctica when his snowmobile plunged into a crevasse.
The job of keeping Holland’s team safe belongs to Brian Rougeux, a former mountaineering guide who has worked in both polar regions.
Rougeux, who originally met Holland in 2010 in Antarctica, where Holland was servicing weather stations, said sudden changes in weather and visibility in Antarctica can sometimes be life-threatening.
A large crevasse forms near the calving front of the Helheim glacier near Tasiilaq, Greenland, June 22, 2018.
(Lucas Jackson / Reuters)
“You’re trying to navigate to a tent in the middle of half a million square miles of flat white, with no real terrain features,” Rougeux said.
GPS can help, but could lead teams into areas with hidden crevasses.
Preparation is key to efficiency as well as safety.
“Going back to town to get a particular bolt takes $20,000 of helicopter time, so it becomes a pretty expensive bolt,” Holland said.
The research challenges often persist after researchers return home from the field.
The data-gathering tools they leave in place — from moorings that monitor oscillating water temperatures to radars encased in 10-foot-tall, egg-like protective shells that take images of melting ice — are vulnerable to the elements.
A buoy collecting ocean data for Holland’s team in Greenland was swept away by powerful currents and eventually surfaced on a beach in Scotland, and powerful winds swept away other equipment they had bolted in place.
An average sea level rise of 3.1 millimeters (0.12 inches) per year might not sound like much.
But it’s about 30 centimeters (about a foot) over a century.
In
recent years, the rate of rise has been more like 5 millimeters per
year. Image is a still captured from the video above, via ESA.
Help from the locals
Sometimes conditions are so brutal that researchers need to enlist the experts: local wildlife.
In the Ilulissat fjord in western Greenland, Holland’s team uses native ringed seals fitted with sensors to record depth, temperature, and salinity year-round near the Jakobshavn, the island’s fast-flowing river of ice.
They relied on seals because it was too dangerous to pilot a boat through the icy waterway near the glacier, which is believed to have produced the iceberg that sank the Titanic.
“It is difficult to find a way that a robot made by an engineer could do anything similar to what a seal can do,” said Holland.
A female narwhal surfaces in an open area surrounded by sea ice in
western Greenland March 30, 2012.
Photo courtesy of Kristin
Laidre/Handout via Reuters
Holland had teamed up with a local seal biologist, Aqqalu Rosing-Asvid, a former hunter and fisherman.
In 2010, they camped out on Greenland’s west coast for a week, but caught no seals.
It was not until their next attempt two years later that they finally tagged their first seal.
They also use halibut because their deeper swimming helps monitor the water column nearest the seafloor.
The team only tagged fish caught during the warmest days of the fishing season to prevent their eyes from immediately freezing in the cold.
The team relies on fishermen to retrieve the data: Rosing-Asvid’s phone number is on the fish tags.
“The fishermen call me on the phone, and we arrange to send the tag here,” he explained.
Last year, three out of the 20 halibut sensors made it back.
Another animal pressed into research in the Arctic is the narwhal, an elusive whale with a tusk protruding from the male’s head.
Marine biologist Kristin Laidre, of the Polar Science Center at the University of Washington, has in the past netted narwhals in order to pin a satellite tag to their dorsal ridge “like an earring.”
Laidre shared the narwhals’ depth, temperature and salinity readings with the NASA team, important because warmer, saltier Atlantic waters tend to sit below colder, fresher waters off the coast of Greenland.
Glaciers connected to the deeper waters are melting at faster rates.
“Even today, there are some places where we still don’t know how deep the water is,” said Josh Willis, lead scientist for NASA’s OMG project.
The tagging “gives us an idea that the water in some spots is at least as deep as a nearby narwhal dive.”
