The tanker Navigator Europa, moored outside the Targa LPG export terminal, caught fire today, shutting down a section of the Houston Ship Channel. The tanker is reported to be carrying ethylene, a chemical used in making plastic. The cause of the fire is under investigation. It was just another day on the very busy and highly congested waterway known for collisions, spills, and fires. In October of this year, the channel was shut down by a tug and barge which partially sank in the channel. In July, a collision between two barges caused a spill and a fire which shut down the channel. In March, Conti Peridot, a Liberian bulk carrier, and the Danish-flagged Carla Maersk, a chemical tanker, collided in the channel resulting in the spill of up to 216,000 barrels of methyl tert-butyl ether, or MTBE, a toxic chemical.
And on and on it goes. Continue reading
Today I saw the movie, “In the Heart of the Sea,” directed by Ron Howard and somewhat loosely based on Nathaniel Philbrick’s 
Today in theaters in the US, the movie 
This week, the beach in Melbourne, Florida was suddenly covered with 
I recently came across a sea story, that, like the best sea stories, has been retold enough times so that the details tend to wander from one version to the other. This much appears to be true. Thirty-five years ago, 
The
Minutes before the beginning of the attack on the warships of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Japanese Imperial Navy planes bombed the nearby U.S. Naval Air Station on the east coast of Oahu, destroying twenty-seven Catalina PBY seaplanes on the ground or moored on Kāne‛ohe Bay. Six others were damaged. The PBYs were a strategic target for the Japanese because the long-range patrol bombers could have potentially followed the Japanese planes back to their carriers. 
Ninety-eight years ago today, on the morning of December 6, 1917, the French freighter SS Mont-Blanc collided with the SS Imo, a Norwegian ship chartered to carry relief supplies to Belgium, in the Narrows, a strait connecting the upper Halifax Harbour to Bedford Basin. The collision at first seemed minor, the two ship hitting at only about a knot. Nevertheless, a fire broke out aboard the Mont-Blanc, which was loaded with munitions and high explosives. The fire burned out of control and ignited the cargo, causing the 
The state oil company SOCAR reports that over 30 are dead or missing after an Azeri drilling rig in the Caspian Sea caught fire yesterday. The fire started after a storm damaged a natural gas pipeline, causing the platform’s partial collapse. Rescue efforts have been hampered by the severity of the storm. One body has been recovered and 30 others are reported to be missing. 32 workers were evacuated safely from the rig. In a statement, SOCAR said that “The fire in the gas pipeline has not been completely extinguished and it has not been ruled out that it could spread to oil and gas wells near the platform…”
Today, Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos announced that it has found the wreck of the galleon San José, what some have called the “holy grail of shipwrecks.” He 
We recently 
Looking for the perfect holiday gift? How about an authentic replica Viking longship? A great way to impress the relatives or perhaps get together with 60 close friends to raid a neighboring village. You either can hire a team of researchers and book time in a specialist boat yard or you can stop by the gift shop in the 
The new $7.5 billion DDG-1000 destroyer, USS Zumwalt, expected to be delivered by Bath Iron Works sometime in 2016, is incredibly high tech and innovative. It features advanced weapons and propulsion systems as well as an inward sloping hull with a ram bow to make it more stealthy to radar. The only area of controversy is whether it will be seaworthy.
Overfishing of the world’s oceans is a huge and immediate problem. Back in 2002, the nations participating in the 
A 
In the last two months, 
The words “blue dragon” and “sea slug” do not seem to go together. The image of a dragon, of any color, and a slug just do not seem to overlap. Nevertheless, the sea slug