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.
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.
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The good news is that the events were more like the 
Victor Hugo wrote, “Nothing is stronger than an idea whose time has come.” There are some ideas whose time always appears to be coming but somehow never quite arrive. As a young naval architect in the 1970s, I recall predictions that tug boats would be towing icebergs to areas where fresh water is in short supply. On Sunday, Time magazine posted an article asking, “
An explosion in a fuel tank on the cruise ship docks in Gibraltar today injured several on the dock and over twelve passengers on the 3,634-passenger Royal Caribbean cruise ship, 
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