Massive Explosion at Iranian Port Kills at Least 40, Injures Over 1,000

Posted on by April 27, 2025
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A massive explosion and fire on Saturday rocked the Port of Shahid Rajaei in southern Iran, killing at least 40 people and injuring more than 1,000 others. Helicopters and aircraft dumped water from the air on the raging fire through the night into Sunday morning.  

The state-run Islamic Republic News Agency quoted an official as saying the explosion was likely set off by containers of chemicals, but did not identify the chemicals. The agency said late Saturday that the Customs Administration of Iran blamed a “stockpile of hazardous goods and chemical materials stored in the port area” for the blast.

There are reports that the explosion is linked to a shipment of a chemical ingredient used to make missile propellant.

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Diver Buys World War I Shipwreck of the SS Almond Branch on Facebook for £300

Posted on by April 25, 2025
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It is amazing what one can buy online these days.  Recently, Dom Robinson, 53, a diver and shipwreck aficionado from Portsmouth, Hampshire, saw an ad on Facebook Marketplace for a World War I shipwreck for sale for just £300. He couldn’t resist, so he snapped up the wreck of the 3,000-tonne SS Almond Branch.

SS Almond Branch, a steam-powered cargo ship built in 1896, was torpedoed by German submarine UB-57 near Mevagissey on November 27, 1917, and has rested 58m underwater off the coast of Cornwall ever since. 

Every shipwreck has a legal owner. In Britain, the government sold a number of them into private hands to be salvaged after the end of the Second World War.

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Alessandro Tosetti Sailing ULDB 65′ Aspra in Global Solo Challenge Attacked by Orcas in Strait of Gibraltar.

Posted on by April 24, 2025
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 Last Saturday, Italian sailor Alessandro Tosetti was returning from sailing Aspra, a ULDB 65′, in the Global Solo Challenge, when his boat was attacked by orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar.  Tosetti describes the attack in his race blog.

“I had prepared for the storm and never imagined that a group of orcas would attack me in the Strait of Gibraltar. Large animals about 5 meters long, a family group, I’m told, that for about half an hour battered Aspra, especially its rudder.

I had positioned myself in a southern corridor with few ships to get some rest! The attack began with blows. I followed the procedure I had read: turned off the autopilot and sonar, lowered the sails… it was all in vain, after the first hits, the hydraulic part of the autopilot exploded with all the oil in the bilge, the cables tangled on the quadrant… adrift in the middle of the Strait with ships passing by.

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On Shakespeare’s Birthday — Was Shakespeare a Sailor?

Posted on by April 23, 2025
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There is much that we do not know about William Shakespeare. The exact date of his birth was not recorded, but is most often celebrated worldwide on April 23rd.

One of the biggest mysteries about William Shakespeare, however, is the period referred to as his “Lost Years,” when he completely disappears for more than seven years. When he was 21 years old, Shakespeare was married with three children and living in the small town of Stratford in England. Seven years later, he was living in London as resident playwright and part owner of a theater company. Nobody knows just what Shakespeare was doing for all those years in between.

Charles Spencer, writing for the Telegraph, had a hunch. After reviewing the Royal Shakespeare Company’s trilogy of Shakespeare’s “shipwreck” plays last month,  he found himself wondering whether the Bard spent his so-called “lost years” before his arrival in London, as a sailor. He came to the conclusion that his hunch holds water, so to speak, based primarily on the work of the late Professor A.F. Falconer of the University of St. Andrews.
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Recreating Bronze Roman Naval Rams from Punic War Using Ancient Techniques

Posted on by April 21, 2025
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A team of archaeologists has just recreated a bronze Roman naval ram using ancient fabrication techniques. The ram design was critical in the establishment of Roman naval superiority in the Mediterranean.

The primary weapon used on naval galleys in the Mediterranean for close to a millenium (c. 500 BCE–500 CE) was the bronze ram. The use and devastating force of the ram is described in the ancient accounts of sea battles, but examples of the ancient weapon itself were not discovered by archaeologists until the 1980s. Then, beginning in 2010, archaeologists found twenty-seven bronze warship rams off Sicily, at the site of the battle of the Aegates, (also known as the battle of the Egadi Islands),a Roman naval victory over Carthage of 241 BC that marked the end of  the First Punic War.

The rams, originally mounted on the bows of Roman triremes, quadriremes, and quinqueremes are highly-engineered three-bladed bronze castings.  Exactly how these ancient naval rams were made has been the subject of debate among archeologists since they were discoverd. Initial speculation suggested that the rams were cast in bronze using the sand-casting method with wooden molds. Further examination, however, ruled out this method. The lost-wax method was then proposed as the technique by which rams were made.

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Five Drown, Two Missing as Powerful Waves Batter Australia’s Coast

Posted on by April 19, 2025
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The BBC reports that five people have drowned after huge waves hit parts of Australia at the start of the Easter weekend.  Two others are missing off the coasts of New South Wales and Victoria.

On Saturday, the body of a man was found in the water near Tathra in southern New South Wales. It came a day after a 58-year-old fisherman and two other men were found dead in separate incidents in the state.

Rescuers are searching for a man who was washed into the water near Sydney. Also on Friday, one woman drowned and a man is missing after their group was swept into the sea in San Remo in Victoria.

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First Ever Confirmed Image of a Colossal Squid in the Deep Ocean Happens to be Really, Really Small

Posted on by April 18, 2025
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A colossal squid has been caught on camera for the first time in the deep sea by an international team of researchers steering a remotely operated submersible. Ironically, the first colossal squid caught on camera was anything but colossal.

Adult colossal squid have been estimated to have a maximum total length between 10 meters (33 ft) and 14 meters (46 ft).  The squid on video was not colossal, despite its species designation. It was a juvenile of only about 1 foot in length.

The young colossal squid in the video was swimming around 600 meters down, Dr. Kat Bolstad, a deep-sea cephalopod biologist, said, not in the deeper waters where adults likely dwell. Other deep-sea squids spend their early lives in shallower waters, she said. Having a transparent body may help the baby swim undetected by predators before it descends as an opaque, reddish adult to the darker ocean.

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World’s Largest Suction Sails Installed On Fruit Juice Tanker, MV Atlantic Orchard

Posted on by April 17, 2025
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The Spanish cleantech engineering firm bound4blue has installed four 26-meter high eSAILs® on the MV Atlantic Orchard, a 35,584-dwt juice carrier. The eSAILs® are said to be the world’s largest suction sails ever installed. The sails were installed in under a day per unit during the vessel’s 10-year survey at Astander Shipyard, Santander, Spain. The ship is chartered by Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC) and owned by Wisby Tankers AB, Sweden.

The 2014-built vessel was originally built as a dry bulk vessel before being converted to a juice carrier in 2020. With the new suction sails, the ship will benefit from fuel consumption and emission savings, projected to reach around 10% depending on its trade route. These savings will contribute towards compliance with FuelEU Maritime and other regulations, including the Carbon Intensity Indicator (CII) and the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS).

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Books About Racism & the Holocaust Purged From Naval Academy Library, Works by Hitler and White Supremacists Retained

Posted on by April 16, 2025
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Nimitz Library

As the current regime in Washington continues its assault on diversity, equity, and inclusion in schools across the country, it has even included the Nimitz Library at the US Naval Academy in its modern-day book burning. An order from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office has purged almost 400 books from the shelves. Tellingly, the books removed included works on the Holocaust, racism, feminism, and civil rights, while volumes defending white power were retained.

The New York Times reports that Maya Angelou’s transformative best-selling 1970 memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, chronicling her struggles with racism and trauma, has been removed, while two copies of Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler are still on the shelves.

Memorializing the Holocaust, Janet Jacobs’s 2010 examination of how female victims of the Holocaust have been portrayed and remembered, is gone, while The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail is still on the shelves. Raspail’s 1973 racist novel, which envisions a takeover of the Western world by immigrants from developing countries, has been embraced by white supremacists and promoted by Stephen Miller, a senior White House adviser.

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Iceland Fin Whaling Season Cancelled for Second Year in a Row

Posted on by April 15, 2025
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Iceland’s only active whaling company, Hvalur hf. is reportedly canceling this summer’s fin whale hunt. This marks the second consecutive year the company has opted out of whaling during the summer season. Another whaling company, Tjaldtangi ehf., was granted permits to hunt minke whales but has ceased operations. 

Hvalur has been granted a permit by the government of Iceland to hunt 200 fin whales this season. Its CEO, Kristján Loftsson, says the decision to end the whale hunt was made due to the global economic situation. Hvalur has not caught fin or minke whales since 2022.

Hvalur hf. exports almost all of its whale meat to Japan. However, Loftsson, told Icelandic media Morgunblaðið on April 12 that the price of their product in Japan has recently been “unfavorable and is worsening.” The low price, driven by economic circumstances, including global trade wars, doesn’t make whaling commercially viable this summer, he added.

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Not “Demonic” but “Domoic” — Sickened Sea Lions Attacking Beachgoers in California

Posted on by April 14, 2025
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The BBC reports that last month a surfer paddling off the coast of Southern California was attacked by a sea lion that lunged at him, bit him, and dragged him off his board.  “It looked possessed,”  the surfer, Rj LaMendola wrote in a Facebook post, saying the animal involved in the encounter was “feral, almost demonic”.

It turns out that the sea lion was not “demonic” but “domoic.” The sea mammal was poisoned by ingesting domoic acid — a neurotoxin produced by a toxic algal bloom. In the ecosystem, sea lions were perhaps hit the worst, suffering from seizures, brain damage, dehydration, and muscle spasms as hundreds began to die.

How was the sea lion poisoned? Small fish, such as anchovies and plankton, probably ate toxic algae that was blooming in the Pacific Ocean. Larger mammals, including sea lions and dolphins, then ate the fish and the toxic algae they carried, researchers found.

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Searching For And Discovering the Titanic as a Cover for Surveying the Submarines Thresher and Scorpion

Posted on by April 13, 2025
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One hundred and thirteen years ago this week, the RMS Titanic slipped below the icy waters of the North Atlantic after striking an iceberg. Close to 1,500 passengers and crew were lost, making the sinking the deadliest peacetime sinking of a passenger liner in history.

The Titanic had sailed from Southampton, UK five days earlier on April 10th. Coincidentally, 51 years later, on April 10, 1963, the nuclear attack submarine USS Thresher sank during deep-diving tests, killing all 129 crew and shipyard personnel aboard. Also coincidentally, the Thresher sank relatively close to the wreck of the Titanic, although when the submarine sank, no one knew quite how close. An updated repost.

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Satellite Mapping of Ocean Floor Discovers 100,000 Seamounts

Posted on by April 12, 2025
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Graphic: NASA Earth Observatory

For decades, we have more detailed maps of the Moon’s surface than Earth’s ocean floor. Although ships equipped with sonar can capture highly detailed images of the seafloor, only about 25 percent of the ocean has been mapped this way. Scientists have long been working to do better.

Now, a NASA-supported research team has taken a major step forward by creating one of the most detailed maps of the seafloor to date, using data from the SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) satellite.

One of the most striking discoveries made through the SWOT satellite’s observations is the discovery of nearly 100,000 seamounts beneath the ocean’s surface. 

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On World Parkinson’s Day — Patrick Morrissey & Team HPP Row Across the Pacific To Beat Parkinson’s

Posted on by April 12, 2025
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Today, April 11th, is World Parkinson’s Day. Parkinson’s disease is a progressive and debilitating neurological disorder affecting millions of people worldwide. It is the fastest growing and the second most prevalent neurological condition, affecting an estimated 11.8 million people worldwide. From 1990 to 2015, the number of people with Parkinson disease doubled to over 6 million. Experts now expect 25 million Parkinson’s diagnosis by the year 2050.

Despite significant advancements in treatment, there is still no known cure for  Parkinson’s. While drugs can help control the symptoms, so far the best method for slowing the disease progression is exercise, which brings us to the story of Patrick Morrissey and the Team Human Powered Potential (HPP).

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Six Die in Helicopter Crash in Hudson River Near Jersey City

Posted on by April 10, 2025
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Six people died when a helicopter crashed in the Hudson River, at roughly 3:15 PM this afternoon. Two adults and three children — all believed to be members of a family of Spanish tourists — were pulled from the helicopter or from the frigid river and taken to hospitals in New Jersey, but none survived, officials briefed on the crash said. A sixth person, believed to be the pilot, was also killed.

The helicopter, a Bell 206, took off from Lower Manhattan and flew near the Statue of Liberty before heading up the Hudson River, turning around just past the George Washington Bridge and flying back down along the Jersey side of the river. The helicopter came down near Jersey City, not far from the Water’s Soul sculpture.

The helicopter apparently came apart in mid-air and came plummeting down. Video of the crash shows the helicopter tumbling end over end and hitting the water at a high speed. 

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Triple Amputee, Craig Wood, Sailing Solo Across the Pacific

Posted on by April 8, 2025
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A wonderful story reported by the BBC. Craig Wood, a British Army veteran who lost both his legs and his left arm while serving in Afghanistan set sail late last month in an attempt to become the first triple amputee to sail solo across the Pacific. 

Rifleman Wood lost both his legs and an arm when he was blown up by a roadside bomb while serving in Sangin, southern Afghanistan, in 2009. He was just 18 and only three months into his first tour. 

Mr Wood, now 33, hopes to sail 6,000 nautical miles (11,112km) solo and unsupported in 80 days, from Puerto Vallarta in Mexico to Yokohama, Japan, and is expected to finish in early May. After 14 days at sea, he has sailed so far over 1,500 nautical miles.

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Windcoop Orders World’s First Sail-Powered Container Ship

Posted on by April 4, 2025
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In February, we posted about the world’s first commercial sailing ro/ro, the Neoliner Origin. Launched by Turkish shipyard RMK Marine, the ship is expected to enter service in mid-2025.

This week, it was announced that Windcoop, a French maritime cooperative based in Lorient, has placed an order with RMK Marine for the world’s first wind-powered container ship. The wind-powered open hatch box ship will operate between Madagascar and France. Construction is said to commence in 2026, while the ship is expected to undergo trials, delivery, and commissioning in May 2027.

The 91.3-meter-long ship will have a  210 TEU capacity, including 40 reefer plugs for refrigerated cargo. The three wing sails, designed by Computer Wingsails (CWS), are each 350 square meters for a total sail area of 1,050 square meters. The ship is projected to have an average speed of 9 knots under sail.

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Congratulations to Sophie Pierce, First Person to With Cystic Fibrosis to Row Across the Atlantic

Posted on by April 3, 2025
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Image: Atlantic Dash

Sophie Pierce did not believe she would live until she was 30 due to cystic fibrosis, a genetic illness affecting her ability to breathe. Remarkably, she has just completed a world record-breaking row, at age 32, becoming the first person with the condition to row the Atlantic.

As part of Cruising Free, a team of four women rowers from Neyland Rowing Club, Pembrokeshire, she set off on a 3200-mile unsupported row across the Atlantic from Lanzarote in the Canary Islands to Antigua in the Caribbean as part of the Atlantic Dash 2025.

Ms Pierce said the 53-day journey had been “incredibly tough” but “empowering”.
“If you had told me five years ago that I would be standing here in Antigua after rowing an ocean, I would have laughed,” Ms Pierce said.

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Expedition Ship Ocean Explorer Hit By 40′ Waves in Drake Passage

Posted on by April 2, 2025
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Quark Expeditions bills it as “The Ultimate Drake Passage Cruise” and it appears that passengers aboard Quark’s expedition cruise ship Ocean Explorer got their money’s worth as the ship was slammed by 30-to-40-foot waves in its crossing of the notorious Drake Passage, between the tip of South America and Antarctica. Fortunately, there were no reports of damage to the ship or injuries to those aboard.

Lesley Anne Murphy, a travel blogger, captured footage showing passengers falling into walls and sliding across the floor as giant waves crashed into the vessel during a return trip from Antarctica.

Murphy estimated some waves were 30 to 40 feet. The ship’s unique design, including paneled windows, allows passengers to see waves coming. 

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Update: Microalgal Bloom Causing Toxic Sea Foam on South Australian Beaches Identified

Posted on by March 28, 2025

We recently posted about a mysterious foam on beaches of the Fleurieu Peninsula of South Australia, that is being blamed for sickening more than 100 surfers and for the deaths of leafy seadragons, fish, and octopuses. Now, the Australian Environment Protection Authority (EPA) has received results from water tests identifying the species Karenia mikimotoi (Kar-een-ia mickey-mow-toy) as the cause of the microalgae bloom on the Fleurieu Peninsula.

Karenia mikimotoi is toxic to fish and invertebrates and can cause general allergic-type responses in humans.

The EPA says that the event has been driven by an ongoing marine heatwave, with marine water temperatures currently 2.5C warmer than usual, as well as relatively calm marine conditions with little wind and small swell.

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