The strange saga of “A Whale” continues. The ship is reported to have recently come under fire by a Libyan Navy patrol boat, as it attempted to enter the Es Sider terminal in Northern Libya, apparently without clearance. The ship turned away from the port and no significant damage was reported. Libya has warned that it will attack and destroy any tanker illegally exporting oil, which the defense forces believe the charterers of “A Whale” were attempting to do. This is only the most recent mis-adventure for this misbegotten ship.
In July we posted, The Sorry Saga of the Ore/Oiler A Whale – From Miracle Skimmer to Bankruptcy & Abandoned Sailors. It is an odd tale about “A Whale” a 319,000 DWT Ore/Oiler which arrived on the Gulf Coast during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. Its owners claimed that it was the world’s largest and highest tech oil skimmer. On testing however, it didn’t actually skim any oil, so it was sailed away. We next heard of “A Whale” a few months ago when it was reported that its now bankrupt owner, the TMT Group, had abandoned the crew without pay, food or water. Subsequently, it was reported that the crew was paid and fed. We can only hope that the owners of “A Whale” find her paying cargo and otherwise keep her out of trouble in the future.
Great activities on the water, on both coasts, this Labor Day weekend. In San Diego, the annual 
In June, we posted about the Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman’s traveling 
In 1970, fisherman discovered a shipwreck in about 85 feet of water, ten miles off the Absecon Inlet on the New Jersey coast. For more than 40 years, divers have visited the unidentified wreck. Now the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has positively identified the wreck as the iron-hulled side-wheel steamer, Robert J. Walker, a U.S. Coast Survey vessel that sank in 1860 after a violent collision with a 250-ton schooner. Twenty sailors aboard the Walker died, making it the worst accident in the history of the U.S. Coast Survey or its successor, NOAA.
The two headlines in the BBC are from the same day and posted only an hour apart. The first reads “
It is around 13 feet long, appears to have horns and stinks to high heaven. A carcass washed ashore on Luis Siret Beach in Villaricos, Spain which is being widely referred to a “
Oliver Hazard Perry
Is pod propulsion the best or worse thing to ever happen to cruise ships? 
Maine has been experiencing a lobster boom. After catching an average of 20 million pounds of lobster per year for decades, Maine’s 5,500 lobster-men landed a record 125 million pounds of lobsters last year. Will this boom, however, end in a bust? Some experts think so. The question is important because the other ground fisheries in the Gulf of Maine; cod, haddock, pollock and hake; have been effectively fished out. Lobster accounts for 80% of the total value of the Maine fisheries. If lobster yields drop dramatically, the economic impact on the coast could be dire.