Update: FLIP, Famous Flipping Research Platform, Saved From Scrapping

Posted on by October 28, 2024

In August of last year, we bade a sad farewell to the Floating Instrument Platform, known as FLIP, which after 61 years of service, had been retired and was scheduled to be sent to a scrapyard. Fortunately, our reporting was premature. It now appears that FLIP will flip again.

Maritime Executive reports that the iconic offshore platform has been saved from scrapping and is now in France where it is being modernized to start a new phase of its research missions. The vessel/platform was developed for the US Navy’s Office of Naval Research and operated by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

UK firm DEEP, a subsea design firm seeking to develop underwater human habitats, reports it acted quickly after learning that FLIP had been decommissioned and towed to Mexico last year to be dismantled. DEEP founder and CEO Kristen Tertoole assembled a team and sent them to Mexico with the instructions, “Save her. Don’t come back without her.”

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Eighty Years Ago Today — Battle off Samar, a Victory Against All Odds

Posted on by October 25, 2024

The Battle of Leyte Gulf was fought eighty years ago this week between the US and Australian navies and the Imperial Japanese Navy.  It was the largest naval battle of World War II and by some standards the largest naval battle in history. Fought between October 23-26, 1944, it was actually a series of battles that spanned over more than 100,000 square miles of sea and involved more than 800 ships and 1,800 aircraft. The battle of Leyte Gulf was a major allied victory and effectively destroyed the Imperial Japanese Navy as a fighting force.

The Battle off Samar, fought on October 25, 1942, eighty years ago today, saved the landings at Leyte Gulf from likely destruction. The powerful US Navy 3rd fleet had been lured north by a decoy Japanese force, leaving the Leyte landing beaches protected only by three small escort carrier task forces designated by their call signs, Taffy 1, 2, and 3.

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Chinese Aquarium Whale Shark Turns Out to Be a Robot

Posted on by October 22, 2024

After being closed for five years for renovations, the Xiaomeisha Sea World aquarium in Shenzhen, China reopened its doors on October 1. During its week-long trial run, the 60,000 sqm sea park attracted around 100,000 visitors who each paid around $40 to enter the aquarium. But, much to their disappointment, they discovered that the giant whale shark on display was, in reality, a robot.

Many social media users posted under the hashtag “Netizens complain about spending hundreds of yuan at Xiaomeisha Sea World to see fake fish.”

A user on Chinese social media shared their disappointment after visiting, stating, “I was so excited to see the ‘whale shark exhibit,’ but instead found a mechanical shark. While I understand the need for animal protection, I’d rather they didn’t include a fake one; it detracted from the experience.”

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Celebrating Trafalgar Day and the Anniversary of the Launching of “Old Ironsides”

Posted on by October 21, 2024

Two hundred and nineteen years ago today, in 1805, the Royal Navy, commanded by Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson, defeated the combined French and Spanish fleets in the Atlantic off Cape Trafalgar.  The decisive victory ended French plans to use the combined fleet to take control of the English Channel and enable Napoleon’s Grande Armée to invade England. Tragically, Nelson was shot by a French sniper and died shortly before the battle ended. Today is celebrated as Trafalgar Day to commemorate Nelson and his greatest victory.

Today also happens to be the 227th anniversary of the launch of the USS Constitution, launched on October 21, 1797. Nicknamed “Old Ironsides ” after a round shot from HMS Guerriere bounced off her sides in a battle during the War of 1812, the USS Constitution is the oldest commissioned ship in the US Navy and the world’s oldest commissioned naval vessel still afloat.

HMS Victory, Nelson’s flagship in the Battle of Trafalgar, launched in 1765, is the oldest commissioned warship in the world, being 32 years older than the Constitution. The Victory, however, on permanent exhibit in drydock in Portsmouth, is no longer afloat, allowing the Constitution to claim the bragging rights as the oldest floating commissioned naval vessel. 

Collapse of Ferry Dock on Georgia’s Sapelo Island Kills 7

Posted on by October 20, 2024

At least seven people were killed yesterday when part of a ferry dock collapsed on Georgia’s Sapelo Island, where crowds had gathered for a fall celebration by the island’s tiny Gullah-Geechee community of Black slave descendants.

The Georgia Department of Natural Resources, which manages the island and operates its ferry service, said on Sunday that 20 people went into the water when the gangway collapsed and that three people remained in critical condition. All of the people who went into the water have been accounted for.

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Team New Zealand First Syndicate to Win the America’s Cup Three Times in a Row

Posted on by October 19, 2024

Emirates Team New Zealand clinched match point in the 37th America’s Cup on Saturday, beating INEOS Britannia 7-2 in the best-of-13 finals held just off Barcelona’s beachfront as reported by the AP.

The team led by Grant Dalton won its third consecutive cup, adding to wins in 2017 in Bermuda and 2021 in Auckland. That made Team New Zealand the first syndicate to win the America’s Cup three times in a row.

New Zealand’s eight-man crew embraced and cheered on the deck of the 75-foot Taihoro after holding Britannia off to win Race 9.

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Russian Man Rescued After 67 Days Adrift on Sea of Okhotsk

Posted on by October 17, 2024

In early August, Mikhail Pichugin, 46, set off in a small inflatable boat to watch whales in the stormy Sea of Okhotsk with his 49-year-old brother and 15-year-old nephew. They went missing after departing from Cape Perovsky bound for Sakhalin Island in the Khabarovsk region on August 9. After being reported missing, a rescue effort was launched but failed to locate the boat.

Sixty-seven days later, when the crew of the fishing vessel spotted the inflatable on their radar, only Mikhail Pichugin had survived. The boat was drifting about 11 nautical miles off Kamchatka’s shore, about 1,000 kilometers (about 540 nautical miles) from their departure point on the other side of the Sea of Okhotsk.

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Happy Belated Birthday US Navy – Whenever and Wherever the Date and Place May Be

Posted on by October 15, 2024

We are a few days late in wishing the US Navy a happy 249th birthday. October 13th, is celebrated as the birthday of the United States Navy. This should not be confused with Navy Day, once celebrated on October 27th.  The current “birthday” may have more to do with bragging rights than real birthdays. An updated repost.

Over the years, the founding of the Navy has been celebrated on various dates — the most common being either March 27th, the day in 1794 when the Congress authorized the construction of five frigates, or April 30th, the day in 1798 when the Navy Department was first established.
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Columbus, Eratosthenes & Posidonius

Posted on by October 14, 2024

Eratosthenes

Happy Columbus Day to those who celebrate in the United States and Happy Thanksgiving to those in Canada.

On Columbus Day, it seems appropriate to consider the role of error in discovery. An updated repost.

While many of us were taught in school that Columbus proved that the world was round, that is a rather shoddy myth. The ancient Greeks understood that the world was round by the 6 century BCE.

Indeed the  Libyan mathematician, Eratosthenes, calculated the circumference of the globe to be 250,000 stadia. Let’s put aside the fact that no one agrees on the length of a stadia, literally the length of a stadium.  If one uses the Egyptian stadia, Eratosthenes’ estimate of 25,000 miles came within just 100 miles over the actual circumference at the equator (24,901 miles).  Eratosthenes, in fact, made several mathematical errors but they cancelled out.
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Endurance — New Documentary Reveals Shackleton’s Ship as Never Seen Before

Posted on by October 10, 2024

A new National Geographic documentary “Endurance,” will premiere at the London Film Festival on Saturday before being released in UK cinemas from Monday and on Disney+ later in the year.

The documentary includes a 3D digital scan of Sir Ernest Shackleton‘s ship, created from 25,000 high-resolution images taken after the ship was found in 2022. The 3D scan, by Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust, reveals amazing details about the ship that sank in 1915 and lies 3,000m down at the bottom of the Weddell Sea. The documentary tells the story of Shackleton’s ill-fated voyage, as well as that of the expedition that discovered the wreck of the Endurance.

The BBC notes that the 3D scan was made using underwater robots that mapped the wreck from every angle, taking thousands of photographs. These were then “stitched” together to create a digital twin.

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Google AI Tracks Mysterious Deep Sea “Biotwang” to Help Study Bryde’s Whale

Posted on by October 9, 2024

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has partnered with Google AI to analyze an ocean of long-term passive acoustic data. Using AI and machine learning, they have analyzed in hours what would otherwise take decades to process.

In 2014, an Oregon State University autonomous seaglider survey in the Mariana Archipelago heard a new sound: a mechanical-sounding whale vocalization. They called it a “Biotwang.”

Without visual observers to identify the source of the sound, they guessed that it might be made by a baleen whale, but could not determine the species.

In 2018, NOAA scientists conducted a visual and acoustic survey of marine mammals in the Mariana Archipelago. During the month-long survey, they spotted 10 different groups of Bryde’s whales. In nine of those groups, they also recorded Biotwangs—solving the mystery of the source of the unique call.

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New Zealand Navy Support Vessel Grounds & Sinks off Samoa, All Onboard Rescued

Posted on by October 6, 2024

HMNZS Manawanui, a multi-role offshore support vessel commissioned in the Royal New Zealand Navy, ran aground while surveying a reef off the island of Upolu in Samoa on Saturday night local time. The ship subsequently caught fire before capsizing and sinking.

All 75 people on board were evacuated onto lifeboats and rescued early on Sunday, New Zealand’s Defence Force said in a statement. Officials said the cause of the grounding was unknown and will be investigated.

The reef being mapped had not been surveyed since 1987. The vessel is the first New Zealand naval vessel to be unintentionally sunk since the Second World War and the first to be lost in peacetime.

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Tentative Agreement Ends ILA Port Strike After 3 Days

Posted on by October 3, 2024

The longshoremen’s strike appears to have ended with a tentative agreement on wages. This afternoon, the ILA and the USMX released a joint statement:

The International Longshoremen’s Association and the United States Maritime Alliance, Ltd. have reached a tentative agreement on wages and have agreed to extend the Master Contract until January 15, 2025 to return to the bargaining table to negotiate all other outstanding issues. Effective immediately, all current job actions will cease and all work covered by the Master Contract will resume.

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Day 2 of ILA Port Strike & the Maritime Origin of the Term “Strike”

Posted on by October 2, 2024

We are now in day 2 of the first International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) strike in almost 50 years. The ILA represents 45,000 dockworkers at 36 ports from Maine to Texas on the East and Gulf coasts of the United States. The strike is over wages and the use of automation on the docks.

The two sides are attempting to negotiate a six-year master contract between ILA port workers employed in container and roll-on/roll-off operations, and the US Maritime Alliance, known as USMX, representing shipping firms, port associations, and marine terminal operators.

More than a third of US exports and imports could be affected by the strike, hitting the nation’s economic growth to the tune of at least $4.5bn each week of the strike, according to Grace Zemmer, an associate US economist at Oxford Economics, though others have estimated the economic hit could be higher, according to the BBC.

Labor actions have a long history in the maritime trades. The first recorded use of the word “strike” to describe a labor protest dates to April of 1768 when sailors in the Port of Sunderland in Great Britain announced that they would “strike the topsails” of merchant ships to prevent them from sailing unless wages were increased. The ship owners subsequently agreed to their demands.

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Yacht Builder’s Rogue Lawyer Fired After Filing €222 Million Suit Against Bayesian Crew & Widow

Posted on by September 23, 2024

The initial reports were bizarre. On Friday, Tommaso Bertuccelli, a lawyer who works with The Italian Sea Group (TISG), the builder of the superyacht Bayesian that sank at anchor in August off Sicily, killing Mike Lynch and six other passengers, filed a €222 million ($244 million) lawsuit against Lynch’s widow and crewmembers of the ship, citing reputational damage.

Immediately after the sinking,  Giovanni Costantino, CEO of TISG, described the vessel as “unsinkable” and claimed that a series of “indescribable, unreasonable errors” by the crew led to the shipwreck.

The lawsuit filed on Friday by Bertuccelli alleges that TISG has already lost business due to the sinking, including a well-known fashion house that retracted plans to launch its branding on the company’s yachts.

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