June 8th is officially World Ocean Day, “a global celebration of ocean conservation,” sponsored by the United Nations since 2008, and coordinated internationally by The Ocean Project and the World Ocean Network. The theme for this year and next is : Youth – the Next Wave for Change. Most activities this years seem aimed at educating children about the oceans. Other than that it is hard to tell what is going on as both the World Ocean Day and The Ocean Project websites are down this morning, which is not terribly encouraging. Nor am I overly impressed with their nifty marketing idea of “Wear Blue – Tell Two.” The idea is to wear blue on World Ocean Day and tell two friends why you are wearing blue and/or two things they didn’t know about the orcean, or somethiong along those lines. Sadly, I doubt that that “wearing blue and telling two” will do much to address the very real problems of ocean conservation.
And speaking of “music of the sea”, an intriguing story from Australia. When Matt Waller, a tour operator in Neptune Bay, Australia, attached speakers to shark cages and played the heavy metal band AC/DC, he discovered that the great white sharks became less aggressive and more inquisitive, which is odd because AC/DC seems to have exactly the opposite effect on human teenagers.
Heavy Metal Under the Sea: Sharks Act Calmer When Listening to AC/DC
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The 32nd Annual Sea Music Festival at Mystic Seaport starts this Thursday night, June 9th, and runs through Sunday, June 12th. More than 5,000 people gather each year to hear Mystic Seaport’s Chantey Staff along with a solid core of performers carry on classic musical traditions of the golden age of sail. The festival features music from maritime cultures around the world, including the United Kingdom, Italy, Portugal, Australia, Iceland, Poland, Netherlands, France, Canada and Africa, as well as native peoples within the United States. In addition to the performances, the 32nd Annual Music of the Sea Symposium will also take place on Saturday and Sunday.
Traditionally, ships in port use auxiliary generators to power shipboard electrical systems. APL, the Singapore based container lines, is now going “cold-iron,” shutting down the auxiliary generators on their ships docking when calling on Oakland, California and using shore power instead to meet the their electrical needs. They expect to reduce emissions by 50,000 pounds of nitrogen oxides and 1,5000 pounds of particulates from its ships annually in Oakland. The State of California has mandated cold-ironing for container ships by 2014. APL is several years ahead of schedule.
A maritime first: APL ‘cold-irons’ ships in Oakland to clear the air
Archeologists cannot say for sure what the lead pipe which penetrates the hull of a nearly 2,000 years old wreck of a Roman ship off the town of Grado in Italy was used for. Some think that it was a supply line to an onboard tank which carried live fish to market. If so, the approximately 55′ ship may have carried on one the earliest onboard fish tanks.
June 25th of this year is being celebrated as the “Day of the Seafarer.” We will be joining with other bloggers and journalists from around the world to say “thank you” to the world’s 1.5 million seafarers for the invaluable and often overlooked contribution that they make every day. Kipling once write that “transportation is civilization.” Seafarers play a key role in keeping our civilization alive and functioning.
One of the ways to show our appreciation is to acknowledge the problems still faced by seafarers. When things go wrong, it is usually the seafarer who suffers first and the most. We can think of no better example of this than the nightmare faced recently by the crew of the Sahmo Dream.
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The 31-meter Turanor, a catamaran yacht fitted with 536 square meters of photovoltaic panels, has successfully sailed halfway around the world, from Monaco to Brisbane, Australia, powered solely by the sun. The Turanor‘s captain and crew are half way toward completing their goal of piloting the first solar powered vessel to circumnavigate the world.
World’s largest solar-powered yacht reaches milestone in record voyage
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D
ead zones are areas where there is too little oxygen in the water to support fish and other aquatic life. They are usually caused by fertilizers and/or other organic materials causing algae blooms which deplete the oxygen in the water. Dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico from the run-off from fertilizers and chemicals flowing into the Mississippi have been forming yearly since the 1970s. Now there is serious concern about the impact this year’s flood in the Midwest may have on the waters of the Gulf.
Chemicals in Farm Runoff Rattle States on the Mississippi
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Until I saw the video I didn’t grasp just how large this anchor is. It is believed to be from the pirate Blackbeard‘s flagship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge, which ran aground in 1718 while trying to enter Old Topsail Inlet in North Carolina, now known as Beaufort Inlet. The wreck of what is believed to be Blackbeard’s ship was discovered in 1996 by Intersal Inc., a private research firm. To learn more about the excavation go to – Queen Anne’s Revenge Online.
Thanks to Irwin Bryan for the passing the article along.
Rear Adm. Sandra Stosz has been named as the 40th Superintendent of the United States Coast Guard Academy in New London, Ct. She is the first woman to lead one of the nation’s five military service academies.
New leader takes the helm at Coast Guard Academy
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Last July we posted about divers finding intact bottles of champagne, believed to date from between 1782 and 1788, in the hold of a shipwreck on the Baltic seabed. In November, a bottle of the “world’s oldest champagne” was opened and tasted by experts who judged it to be quite palatable. Earlier today, two bottles of the shipwreck champagne went on auction in Finland. Despite expectations that each bottle might sell for as much 100,000 euros (approximately $140,000), the winning bids were 30,000 euros ($43,500) for a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and 24,000 euros for a bottle of Juglar. This morning some sources were enthusiastically suggesting that the champagne might go for “140 million dollars a bottle,” apparently adding three zeros to the earlier $140,000 estimate.
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A recent report by Greenpeace directly contradicts Japanese government assurances that the radiation in the water near the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is being dispersed and diluted over time. Significant levels of radioactive contamination have been recorded in local seafood.
Greenpeace: Japan nuclear plant radiation accumulating in marine life
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One of Johan's Arks
If a group of birds are a flock, a group of whales is a pod, and fish gather in schools, what would one call a group of Noah’s arks? A fleet would be the easy answer, but that somehow doesn’t quite fit. How about a flood of arks?
However one might wish to describe them, there are at least six or seven arks, either completed, under construction or planned in the Netherlands, Turkey, Hong Kong, Canada and the United States.
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Perry’s Battle Flag
On June 1, 1813, one hundred and ninety eight years ago today, the British frigate HMS Shannon defeated and captured the USS Chesapeake in single ship combat. Captain James Lawrence on the Chesapeake was mortally wounded during the battle. His last words were, depending on the account, “Don’t give up the ship. Fight her till she sinks,” or “Tell them to fire faster; don’t give up the ship.” If “don’t give up the ship” was an order, it was never carried out because the ship had already been taken by British boarders.
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The good news is that the events were more like the Carnival Splendor than the Titanic. No one died. No ships were lost to icebergs. Nevertheless, there was high drama, bordering on the operatic, on the cruise ship MSC Opera on its voyage from Southhampton to the Baltic last month. There was a blackout, the ship adrift, a passenger mutiny and the detention of the ship by the authorities. Now that the ship is back in service, it seems worthwhile to take a look at the unsuccessful cruise.
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