An estimated 90% of world trade is facilitated by maritime shipping, and as trade volumes continue to increase, the world’s busiest ports continue to grow larger and more efficient to meet demand.
In fact, in just the last four years, the median annual volume of the top 50 ports jumped from 5.49 to 5.86 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs).
Here are the world’s 20 largest ports, using the most recent data from the World Shipping Council:
Only five of the top 20 ports in the world are now located outside of East Asia. The Port of Los Angeles is the only U.S. entrant in the top 20, and only three European ports made the cut.
Today, trade is more likely than ever to flow through the South China Sea. Ruling the high seas
From dollar store knick-knacks to nuclear reactor components, China’s manufacturing output is a critical link in the global supply chain.
Getting all those products to consumers and companies around the world is big business, and over the past decade, China has emerged as the heavyweight champion of world shipping.
While Danish company, Maersk, is still the largest shipping line, an ever increasing share of the world’s container traffic is moving through Chinese controlled ports.
An estimated two-thirds of container traffic now passes through Chinese ports or ports that have received Chinese investment.
While shipping volumes on a global basis continue to rise, not all of that growth has been spread around equally. This is particularly true for established titans of the South China Sea.
At the outset of this millennium, Hong Kong and Singapore were home to the busiest ports in the world.
Today, both are facing increased competition from neighboring ports, as well as declining volumes:
In contrast, the massive Port of Shanghai saw a 71% increase over the last decade, and many other Chinese ports has seen significant growth in volume in recent years.
If China’s One Belt One Road initiatives and investments in global port facilities are any indication, the country’s domination of maritime shipping will only continue to strengthen in the near term.
Why this mysterious location blurred out by Google ? This tiny island out in the East Siberian Sea is remote, abominably cold, and for some reason, it's blacked out on Google Earth. It's
hard to even imagine why — although Russia and the U.S. briefly argued
about who owns it, the U.S. hasn't pursued it and recognizes it as
Russian.
If you are browsing around Google Maps and, for some reason, looking at islands in the East Siberian Sea, you will come across something peculiar — a nightmarish black blob covering up what should be a landmass named Jeannette Island.
This island, in reality, is quite small, at only three square kilometers, and part of the De Long Island archipelago in the East Siberian Sea.
The uninhabited island was not discovered until the late 19th century during the Jeannette Expedition, which tried, unsuccessfully, to reach the North Pole through the Bering Strait.
Though the history of Jeannette Island is as brief as it is uninteresting, the peculiar way that Google Maps renders it has led to a plethora of conspiracy theories, ranging from the involvement of aliens to secret deals from President Obama.
Jeannette island in The GeoGarage platform (NGA chart)
Missing and incomplete data on mapping services is not an uncommon occurrence, of course.
In some cases, areas are censored or obscured on satellite imagery intentionally; there is a fascinating Wikipedia article listing a number of locations with intentionally or unintentionally censored or blurred locations.
The reasons for obscuring some of these are self-evident — they’re nuclear power plants, prisons, etc.
— while other decisions to obscure maps are political (all of Israel and Palestine, thanks to U.S. legislation).
There are, hence, a few questions worth asking with regard to Jeannette’s “disappearance”: Was the blacking out of the island intentional, or is it some sort of glitch?
What can we find out about this island online, both from reliable sources and, to put it mildly, unreliable ones?
Aliens? A Military Base? Secret Intelligence Facilities?
One of the first things that may catch your eye when researching the island is the low rating it has on Google: Did people actually visit this uninhabited island and, for some reason, were unsatisfied with their stay?
As it turns out, most of the bad reviews are due to the fact that the island is “hidden” on Google Earth.
Other reviewers are suspicious that Russian President Vladimir Putin is up to no good there, hatching evil plans for Jeannette Island.
As with many other topics, 4chan provides some of the more outlandish conspiracy fodder for Jeannette Island, as seen in a lengthy post from last year.
The 4chan user in question wrote what is probably a creepypasta about how a distant relative of his had disappeared on the island in the early 2000s while serving in the Russian Navy.
The user was asking the forum’s help in figuring out what was going on on the island, and the “very Lovecraftian” case was cracked by concluding that the island was most likely inhabited by aliens.
When it came to more serious answers, other anons suggested that Google Maps blurred out the island due to the presence of a military base or missile silo.
Others saw (or, were trolling and therefore pretending to see) geopolitical intrigue surrounding the mysterious island — President Obama allegedly “gave away” disputed islands near Alaska to Russia, including Jeannette.
The Real Jeannette Island
While Jeannette Island may be shrouded by mystery on both Google Maps and 4chan, the island is actually open for expeditions and visitors, as evidenced by a number of reports and photos of it posted online.
Though you cannot see the island from the sky on Google, you can from the ground on the Russian social network Vkontakte (VK), thanks to a user who uploaded an album of photographs he took on the island in 2011.
Judging by the photos of the island, it is not home to any secret military bases or missile silos — let alone extraterrestrial beings — unless they are underground or well camouflaged.
Photos of a more recent expedition to the East Siberian Sea islands, including Jeannette, were uploaded recently onto Instagram.
These photographs were taken during the Pax Arctica, a Russian Arctic expedition led by explorer Luc Hardy.
The expedition became immortalized in a French documentary film titled Artika Incognita.
During the expedition, the crew actually stepped foot on Jeannette Island, and filmed it from above.
Looking back even further, there is a sketch of Jeannette Island from 1881 that matches the photographs of the island uploaded onto social networks.
As we can see from all the photographs, videos, and other materials online, Jeannette Island is actually visited by people fairly often, including by scientists, and there are no restrictions for someone who wants to experience the “mysterious” island firsthand.
So, why is the island censored on Google Maps?
Jeannette Island From the Sky
When looking on Google Earth, the same blurring effect is visible for Jeannette Island, without any alternate historical imagery available.
NGA raster nautical chart overlaid on Google Maps imagery with the GeoGarage platform Jeannette Island (Russian: Остров Жанне́тты, Ostrov Zhannetty) is the easternmost island of the De Long Islands archipelago in the East Siberian Sea. t is the second smallest island of the De Long group, being only 2 km in length. It has an area of approximately 3.3 km2 (1 sq mi). The highest peak of the island is 351 m (1,152 ft).
The source of this satellite image is from either the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and NASA with their Landsat collection, or the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Copernicus program.
It most likely comes from Landsat, as there is no data visible from the Copernicus Open Access Hub for Jeannette Island.
Imagery from recent Landsat 8 satellite imagery (via Sentinel Hub Playground) shows us Jeannette Island as it really appears, matching the photographs of the island uploaded onto social networks.
Landsat 8
While Google Maps makes Jeannette Island look like an Arctic Area 51, it is completely unremarkable on Bing Maps.
To recap, Jeannette Island clearly exists, and is visible in the low-resolution satellite imagery of the area on other sites.
But why does Google Maps and Earth apparently blur out this unremarkable, uninhabited Russian island?
The answer probably lies in a simple error with the USGS/NASA Landsat program.
When there is data loss or errors during the capturing of satellite imagery or its transfer, various colors and shapes are used to illustrate the error.
For example, Google Maps shows a strange yellow square along the border between Afghanistan and China.
This is due to an error of rendering satellite imagery onto the map, rather than intentional censorship.
More similar to Jeannette Island is “Sandy Island,” a “phantom island” that was represented by a black blotch on Google Maps east of Australia.
Sandy Island was included in maps since the 18th century, but was “undiscovered” this decade when scientists realized that it did not actually exist.
In reality, there is only ocean in the area designated as Sandy Island, as the outline of the “island” is roughly the same as the black blotches — likely, these black marks were inserted automatically to account for the lack of land in the area that the mapping service expected to find it.
Similarly to Jeannette Island, the black marks look as if they were manually entered, though the shape of the island is much closer to the black marks in the case of Sandy Island than Jeannette (though the expected landmass shape could be complicated by the ice surrounding the island for much of the year).
The satellite imagery used for this black blotch came, just as with Jeannete Island, via Landsat.
Most likely, this same explanation can be ascribed for the Jeannette Island mystery: An error in the Landsat satellite image that expected to find a certain shape and set of pixels, but instead saw something else, and produced the mysterious black blotch as a placeholder.
Paval Botica, chief officer on CMA CGM's Benjamin Franklin container ship, checks a monitor off Guangzhou, China, in 2016. The startup Shone is outfitting CMA CGM ships with situational awareness systems, a first step toward autonomous operation.
The next time you hop on a ferry, take a look at the captain’s bridge.
There may not be a human at the helm much longer.
Ships around the world are beginning a transformation into autonomous machines, leveraging the same advances in artificial intelligence that are shaking up the automotive world.
In 2017, Ugo Vollmer and his friend Clement Renault were working on self-driving cars in Silicon Valley when an article on autonomous shipping caused them to make a sudden change in direction.
Reading that more than 80% of goods are transported by sea, a light bulb went off, says Vollmer.
“We can have a very huge impact,” he remembers thinking.
The French engineers started tinkering with robotizing a small boat along with another friend friend, Antoine de Maleprade.
Within three months of joining the incubator Y Combinator in January 2018, their startup Shone struck a deal with the big French shipping line CMA CGM to install a system on cargo ships plying trans-Pacific routes that detects surrounding ships and obstacles.
CMA CGM collaborates with a startup, Shone, to embed artificial intelligence on board ships
Shone fuses data from multiple sensors (radar, camera, AIS, etc.) in order to increase detection accuracy, thus preventing potential collisions, taking into account COLREGs.
Shone is one of a wave of companies that are seeking to robotize ships using artificial intelligence to fuse data from shipboard sensors like radar and cameras to create a picture of the hazards around a ship and to navigate among them.
Autonomous and remote-controlled shipping promises to reduce the costs of consumer goods and improve safety for passenger ferries and cruise liners.
The first commercial vessels likely to operate autonomously at least part of the time are expected to be tugboats and small ferries traveling short routes—the technology could enable an expansion of passenger service into thinly traveled early morning hours and in rural locations.
In 2017, Rolls-Royce signed a deal with Google to develop intelligent awareness systems for future autonomous ships. The autonomous ships market size is expected to grow from USD 6.1 billion in 2018 to USD 13.8 billion by 2030, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 7.00% during the forecast period.
However, autonomy will play out very differently on the water than on land, and in many cases it won’t take humans off the ship—or entirely away from the controls.
Rather than just replacing one driver of a car or truck, oceangoing ships can have 20 or more crew members onboard, some of whom tend to a range of mechanical systems en route.
“Diesel engines require replacement of filters in oil systems—the fuel system has a separator than can get clogged,” says Oskar Levander, who heads Roll-Royce’s autonomous systems efforts.
“There are a lot of these things the crew is doing all the time.”
In the near term, it’s more likely that the helm will be controlled by an autonomous system or a remote human operator while a smaller crew takes care of the vessel.
Transoceanic autonomous journeys will require rule-making by the International Maritime Organization, a process that could take through the middle of the next decade.
The first commercial applications of autonomous systems are likely to be on small vessels in coastal waters in Scandinavia, where Finland and Norway have staked out testing areas.
In December in Finland, Rolls-Royce pulled off the first public demonstration of an autonomous voyage by a passenger vessel, a state-run car ferry that avoided obstacles on a 1-mile route and docked automatically.
On that day and in previous trials, Rolls-Royce says the system performed ably in rough winter weather, handling snow and strong winds.
Small ferries are a key part of the transportation network in Scandinavia, carrying cars across fjords and connecting to islands.
Autonomous and remote control systems could allow for an expansion of service on short routes into nighttime hours, and reduce staffing on less popular ones, with boats potentially piloted from onshore centers where one captain could supervise many, says Levander.
The tugboat market also has a good near-term business case for autonomy and remote control, says Levander.
“There’s a very attractive payback time, crew costs are high,” he says.
Rolls-Royce demonstrated remote control of a tugboat in Copenhagen in 2017 working with Svister, a tug operator owned by Maersk.
A Boston-based startup called Sea Machines is also developing autonomous and remote-control systems for tugs, ferries and other workboats.
The ferries between Horten and Moss in Norway will now go alongside automatically.
Kongsberg Maritime is installing technology onboard to increase safety, improve passenger experience and reduce fuel consumption.
In 2020, the Norse conglomerate Kongsberg, which is acquiring Rolls-Royce's marine unit, will launch the world’s first electric containership designed to be autonomous, the YARA Birkehead.
The vessel, which is on the smaller side with capacity for 120 shipping containers, will carry fertilizer in Norwegian waters from a YARA plant to nearby ports to be transferred to larger vessels for export.
Rolls-Royce’s Levander and many in the industry believe new-build electric vessels will be the ideal platform to robotize cargo shipping—electric propulsion systems will have fewer moving parts and require less maintenance.
But it will take decades for cargo fleets to turn over—vessels typically stay in service for about 20 years—and batteries don’t have enough energy density yet to power ships for cross-ocean voyages.
Shone is staking its business on retrofitting existing cargo ships.
In certain ways it’s easier to make ships autonomous than automobiles.
Large ships already have marine-tested sensor systems that can be plugged into: radar, GPS and a transponder-based automatic identification system.
Shone adds 360-degree cameras and microphones and uses artificial intelligence to fuse the sensor data into an object detection system that displays an integrated picture of a ship’s surroundings for the crew on an iPad.
Microphones can pick up a ship’s horn and by algorithm the system can pinpoint its location.
The system also add layers of intelligence, says Vollmer.
“It can flag you should pay attention to this one ship because it has erratic behavior.”
At this point that’s the extent of what the system does.
In the spring Vollmer says it will begin recommending courses of action for the ship’s helm to take, from obstacle avoidance to optimizing routes, building trust for the final step, when it’s permissible: taking automatic action.
Shone is installing its system for a price “in the hundreds of thousands,” says Vollmer, and a recurring fee for service.
It’s a small amount, he says, compared to the $200 million price for a cargo vessel, and contrasts to the cost issues that autonomous sensor suites raise for cars.
In the near future cargo ships are only likely to operate autonomously on the open ocean, says Levander, because of the difficulty and expense of creating a system capable of handling the most complex situations that ships encounter.
Going in and out of port the ship would be controlled remotely by a captain in a center onshore, with video and other data streaming over land-based 4G and 5G networks.
Out on open water, the ship would switch to autonomous mode, which wouldn’t require as much data transmittal, with captains ashore standing by to take over as needed, aided by satellite communications.
With more jobs on shore, Levander says it will provide a better, safer life for some seafarers.
“The captain doesn’t have to be away for six months at a time and can have a family life.”
The enhanced situational awareness systems are expected to reduce accidents—from 2011 through 2016, 75% of incidents at sea that resulted in liability insurance claims were due to human error, according to the German insurer Allianz.
And that means taking sailors out of harm’s way.
“We can provide a better life for the seafarer,” says Levander.
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