Wednesday, June 17, 2020

Supertrawlers ‘making a mockery’ of UK’s protected seas

The world’s second largest factory fishing trawler, the Lithuanian FV Margiris, was among 25 supertrawlers fishing in protected UK waters.
Photograph: Greenpeace/PA

From The Guardian by Damian Carrington

Supertrawlers spent almost 3,000 hours fishing in UK marine protected areas in 2019, making “a mockery of the word ‘protected’,” according to campaigners.

Supertrawlers are those over 100 metres in length and can catch hundreds of tonnes of fish every day, using nets up to a mile long.
A Greenpeace investigation revealed that the 25 supertrawlers included the four biggest in the world and fished in 39 different marine protected areas (MPAs).

 Annelies LLena supertrawler

The Southern North Sea MPA was one of those fished and was created to safeguard porpoises, which are especially threatened by supertrawlers.
More than 1,000 porpoises died in fishing nets around the UK in 2019.
The most heavily fished MPA was the Wyville Thomson Ridge, off Shetland, which was intended to protect reefs.
All the supertrawler fishing was legal.

 Willem Van Der Zwan tracking

Forty per cent of England’s seas are designated as MPAs, but these only ban some of the most damaging activities in some locations.
On Monday, an independent reviewcommissioned by the government urged the establishment of highly protected marine areas (HPMAs), where all harmful activities including fishing, dredging and construction are banned.
The government’s own assessment in 2019 showed the marine environment is not in a healthy state.

“Our government allowing destructive supertrawlers to fish for thousands of hours every year in MPAs makes a mockery of the word ‘protected’,” said Chris Thorne of Greenpeace UK.
“For our government to be taken seriously as a leader in marine protection, it must ban this practice.”

 Jan Marian supertrawler

Prof Callum Roberts of the University of York, a member of the HPMA review panel, said: “The Greenpeace analysis is timely and important.
It highlights the yawning gulf between what people imagine an MPA is there for, to protect nature and wildlife, and the reality of continued industrial exploitation with little evidence of restraint or oversight.
“A high level of protection is necessary for a high level of benefit,” he said.
“We cannot be surprised if MPAs that are open to some of the most voracious and destructive fishing methods in the world have no measurable benefit at all.
“That is why the [HPMA] review is important. If we are to rescue British waters from two centuries of overfishing and destructive fishing, we will need to roll out HPMAs widely and fast.”



Sea birds follow the German flagged trawler Maartje Theadora as it fishes for herring in the English Channel
(Photo: Christian Aslund / Greenpeace)

Greenpeace used tracking data from the Lloyd’s List to show that trawlers over 100 metres spent 2,963 hours fishing in UK MPAs in 2019.
None of the 25 supertrawlers are British-owned, with 15 Russian-owned, nine Dutch-owned and one Polish-owned.

A spokesman for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “The UK is a global leader in the fight to protect our seas with our ‘blue belt’ of protected waters nearly twice the size of England.
The common fisheries policy currently restricts our ability to implement tougher protection, but leaving the EU and taking back control of our waters means we can introduce stronger measures.”

Willem Van Der Zwan (142m/9500t) supertrawler

Jean-Luc Solandt of the Marine Conservation Society said: “The government had an opportunity to designate 65 HPMA sites in English waters back in 2013, but failed to do so, citing a ‘lack of evidence’ and bowing to pressure from industry and fishing lobbyists.
The [HPMA report] is promising, but means nothing if the government – after decades of delay – doesn’t get them in place with urgency.”

 SCH24 Afrika (126m/7000t) supertrawler

Joan Edwards, the director of marine conservation at the Wildlife Trusts and another member of the HPMA review panel, said: “Our seas are in an impoverished state. Cod were once as long as humans are tall, and whales, dolphins and basking sharks were many times more common. We want the government to commit to an HPMA delivery plan [within 12 months].”

On Monday, the environment secretary, George Eustice, said: “We will carefully consider the recommendations set out in the review.”

Separately, more than 50 scientists have signed a letter to the European Commission, European parliament and member states calling for an end to overfishing.
Under reforms to the common fisheries policy, fishing quotas in 2020 were supposed to be in line with the maximum sustainable yield, determined by scientific advice.
However, overfishing beyond what scientists regard as safe levels has continued and looks set to carry on into future years, as the UK and the EU wrangle over fishing as part of the Brexit negotiations.

 A Dutch super trawler like the one used in UK waters
(Photo: Pierre Gleizes / Greenpeace)

The scientists warned that further overfishing would harm fish populations and stop them from recovering.

Rainer Froese, of the Helmholtz centre for ocean research in Kiel, Germany, said: “Overfishing means taking more fish out the water than can grow back – that’s pretty stupid.
The stocks shrink, and small stocks can only support small catches.
It doesn’t help the fishermen, it doesn’t help the fish, it doesn’t help anyone.”

Overfishing also harmed the climate, he added: “If the ecosystem does not function properly, it cannot breathe properly and cannot absorb carbon dioxide properly.”

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Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Mechanics of map projections : the myth of Mercator

[OC] 10 map projections and how they distort the world, video 57s. from r/MapPorn

The Mercator projection distorts land mass and gets criticized for that.
I can see why it's still widely used for world maps.
On other projections individual European countries are hard to make out.
When targeting a European audience Mercator makes sense.
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Monday, June 15, 2020

Second woman quickly follows first to ocean’s nadir

The submersible Limiting Factor, a two-person craft piloted by Victor Vescovo, after a dive to the deepest known point of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific last year.
Credit...Tamara Stubbs/Atlantic Productions for Discovery Channel, via Associated Press

From NYTimes by William J. Broad

The mountaineer Vanessa O’Brien dove to the Challenger Deep, seven miles below the surface of the sea.
The second of two women has made history by diving to the ocean’s deepest spot: the Challenger Deep, the lowest point of the Mariana Trench, the greatest of the sea’s many recesses.

The long fissure of the western Pacific lies 200 miles southwest of Guam.
The deep’s muddy bottom lies nearly seven miles down in inky darkness under crushing pressure.

 Vanessa O’Brien

“I made it,” Vanessa O’Brien, 55, a star of adventure tourism, tweeted after emerging Friday from the icy abyss.
She called herself the first woman “to Earths highest & lowest points!”

 Kathy Sullivan and Victor Vescovo
Enrique Alvarez / EYOS Expeditions

 Kathy Sullivan becomes US woman to walk in space – NASAachiev

Her moment comes after the plunge on Sunday of Kathy Sullivan, 68, an oceanographer, astronaut and the first American woman to walk in space.

Both women are passengers of Victor L.Vescovo, a wealthy investor who has climbed Mount Everest and last year piloted a mini submarine into the Challenger Deep.

His innovative craft is up for sale, and earlier this year a London firm was selling dives on the expedition for $750,000.

Men who have made the descent include James Cameron, the maker of the “Avatar” and “Titanic” films, who explored the deep in a 2012 dive, and two Navy divers in 1960.
Dr. Sullivan became the eighth person in history to reach the deep’s bottom, and the first woman.

Mr. Vescovo calls his diving venture Caladan Oceanic, after a water-covered planet in the science-fiction saga “Dune.”
His two-person craft features an inner five-foot sphere made of titanium, a superstrong metal, and three portholes the size of dinner plates.
He had it built by Triton Submarines, a company in Sebastian, Fla.
The diving vessel and its mother ship cost $48 million.

In a recent profile, The New Yorker described Mr. Vescovo as part of an elite group of explorers setting the last meaningful records on Earth.
In an email Tuesday, Mr. Vescovo said that Ms. O’Brien was paying for her dive but gave no specific figure.
“Funds she provides will allow me to fund longer science missions in the northern Mariana Trench,” he wrote.
Those dives are planned for July, Mr. Vescovo said.
Mr. Vescovo added that Ms. O’Brien’s financial contribution would help pay not only for her own dive but also for the expedition’s monthlong seabed mapping effort for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a project of the International Hydrographic Organization known as the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans.

Ms. O’Brien told Forbes in April that she decided to pay for her part of the expedition in lieu of signing up backers, as extreme adventure fans often do.
“It didn’t seem appropriate to try and find sponsors,” she said, at a time when the global coronavirus pandemic had upended so many lives.

Vanessa Audi Rhys O’Brien grew up in Grosse Pointe Farms, Mich., worked for Barclays and Morgan Stanley and is the author of a forthcoming memoir, “To the Greatest Heights.”
The book describes Ms. O’Brien’s fall from the corporate ladder during the 2009 economic downturn and her quest for new meaning in global mountaineering.

In the depths of the global ocean, the line between raw exploration and adventure tourism has long been murky.
In 1985 the deteriorating hulk of the Titanic was discovered some 73 years after the luxury liner, said to be unsinkable, struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage and went down in waters more than two miles deep, resulting in the loss of more than 1,500 lives.

By 2003, scientists warned that visitors in newly capable miniature submarines were endangering the world’s most famous shipwreck.
Assailed by explorers, moviemakers, salvors and tourists — including a couple that was married on its sunken bow — as well as rust and seabed creatures, the iconic liner was described as rapidly falling apart.

It is not uncommon for tourist-dive companies to perform a measure of scientific research as an adjunct to their commercial ambitions.
In an interview last year, Mr. Vescovo said that he saw his own push for deep exploration — including what his team has called the world’s first crewed “expedition to the deepest point in each of the five oceans” — as helping rekindle interest in the planet’s lifeblood.

“Hopefully, it will spur more interest in the ocean and real science,” he said.
“No one has ever been to these places before and measured them. We’d like to continue to see that done. I hope it leads to a renaissance in deep-sea exploration.”

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Sunday, June 14, 2020

Canada (CHS) update in the GeoGarage platform

53 nautical raster charts updated
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Hetairos

Hetairos sailing in the 2014 Boat International BVI Regatta
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