SOAR Oyster Buyback Reseeding Reefs

Posted on by December 30, 2020

The pandemic has been brutal to the restaurant industry. Likewise, the small-scale oyster growers of Barnegat and Delaware bays have been extremely hard hit as restaurants cut back on their orders or shut down altogether. 

One bit of good news, however, is a new partnership formed by the Pew Charitable Trusts and The Nature Conservancy, intended to support the oyster industry while also helping to restore damaged and dying reefs in coastal waters.

NJ Spotlight News reports that the initiative, called Supporting Oyster Aquaculture and Restoration (SOAR), has designated $2 million to buy back some 5 million oysters from over 100 oyster farmers in New England, the mid-Atlantic, and Washington state. Once the bivalves are purchased, they are transported back to the water to be “replanted” on existing oyster reefs in need of restoration.

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New Blue Whale Population in Indian Ocean Identified by Unique Song

Posted on by December 29, 2020

A new blue whale population has been discovered in the Arabian Sea and Western Indian Ocean according to a study recently published in the journal Endangered Species Research. The conclusion is based not on sightings or DNA samples, but rather on recordings of the unique whale songs that distinguish this whale population from other blue whales in the region.

At up to 100 feet long and weighing up to 170 tonnes, blue whales are the largest creatures ever to exist on the earth. Nevertheless, they are often easier to hear than to see.

The unusual song was picked up at three different underwater locations separated by 3,500 kilometers (2,175 miles) of ocean. First recorded in 2017 off the coast of Madagascar, these unique calls were later identified in the western Arabian Sea, off the coast of Oman, and also in the Chagos Archipelago in the central Indian Ocean.

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New Zealand’s Astrolabe Reef Reclaiming the Rena — 2020 Shipwreck Survey

Posted on by December 28, 2020

Almost a decade ago, the container ship MV Rena ran hard aground on Astrolabe Reef off Tauranga on New Zealand’s Bay of Plenty. The ship, carrying 2,100 containers and 1,700 tonnes of heavy fuel, would break up resulting in New Zealand’s worst marine ecological disaster. It resulted in a $700 million salvage operation to remove the wreckage, along with scattered debris on the reef.

Tauranga diver and ecologist Phil Ross has been monitoring the wreckage of the Rena since 2012, making dives at least yearly to monitor how the reef is recovering from the damage done by the grounding,

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Update: Golden Ray Salvage, Cutting Begins on Stern Section

Posted on by December 27, 2020

Salvors on the heavy-lift barge VB-10,000 have begun making the second cut through the hull of the stranded car carrier Golden Ray which rolled over in shallow water shortly after departing the Port of Brunswick, Georgia on St. Simons Sound in September 2019.

The 656-foot-long ship is now 114 feet shorter after the VB 10,000 cut off the vessel’s bow section on Nov. 28. The first cut that was originally expected to take a few days, took three weeks after being delayed by weather, the pandemic, and a broken link in the cutting chain.

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Underwater Christmas Trees

Posted on by December 6, 2024

A Christmas repost from a few years ago. Spirobranchus giganteus are beautiful underwater creatures, only about 1.5 inches tall, which look like tiny decorated Christmas trees. They are almost too attractive to be described as what they are, tube-building polychaete worms. They are, however, often referred to as Christmas tree worms. Each worm has two brightly colored crowns that protrude from its tube-like body. The crowns look like miniature fir trees often in a wide range of brilliant colors. The worms live in tropical waters around the world. Here is a video of spirobranchus giganteus, Christmas tree worms, from Taiwan.

Spirobranchus giganteus in Green Island, TAIWAN

Sting — Christmas At Sea (Live from Durham Cathedral)

Posted on by December 25, 2022

We hope everyone is having a joyous holiday season.  Here is a repost of a beautiful version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem “Christmas at Sea,” performed by Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, better known as Sting.

Sting – Christmas At Sea (Live from Durham Cathedral)


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Chicago’s Christmas Tree Ship in the Year of the Pandemic

Posted on by December 24, 2020

Every year, the Christmas Ship, with the support of the US Coast Guard and volunteer groups, delivers Christmas trees to families in need in Chicago’s communities. This year was no exception, but because of the pandemic, it was a bit different.

In past years, the USCG Cutter Mackinaw delivered trees to the Navy pier where volunteers, including Sea Cadets, Venture Crews, Sea Scouts, and Young Marines, off-loaded the trees and loaded them into trucks to be distributed to more than one thousand deserving families.

This year, the Navy Pier is closed to the public and volunteers could not get to the cutter. Nevertheless, in early December, the Cutter Mackinaw arrived with 1,200 Christmas trees. Taking up the challenge, the cutter’s crew offloaded the trees and packaged and loaded them to be delivered. More than a half dozen community groups helped deliver the trees to Chicago-area families.

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Update: Massive Iceberg Threatening South Georgia Island Now Breaking Up

Posted on by December 23, 2020

A view of the A68a iceberg from a Royal Air Force reconnaissance plane near South Georgia Island on Nov. 18. Image: UK Ministry of Defence

In November we posted that the world’s largest iceberg, dubbed A68a, was drifting on a collision course with the island of South Georgia. The iceberg calved from Antarctica’s Larsen C ice-shelf in 2017. The berg weighed roughly one trillion tons and measured 4,200 sq km, or almost the size of the state of Delaware. The fear is that the iceberg might run aground on the sloping seabed around South Georgia, threatening wildlife, particularly penguins and seals.

It now appears that that the massive iceberg is breaking up.

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The Long Goodbye of the HMS Hermes/INS Viraat

Posted on by December 22, 2020

Ship scrapping is a slow and methodical process. A ship is typically run up on the scrapping ways, which can be a concrete platform or a sloping sandy beach.  As burners cut away the upper sections of the ship, it gets lighter and floats a little higher allowing winches to pull the ship a bit farther up the ways. As more steel is cut away the ship is pulled progressively farther ashore until the entire structure is reduced to scrap metal to be hauled away for resmelting in a local steel mill.

I recall years ago watching the ship breaking yard in Kaohsiung, Taiwan from a ship in drydock just up the harbor in China Shipbuilding. A ship being scrapped in the breaking yard looked like the carcass of some great beast being slowly but inexorably devoured by ants. 

For the past month, the aircraft carrier INS Viraat, ex HMS Hermes has been slowly cut up and dismantled at an  Alang shipbreaker’s yard in Gujarat, India. Breaking her up completely is likely to take a year.

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Halcyon Days in a Pandemic Year

Posted on by December 21, 2020

According to an ancient sailors’ legend, we are in the middle of the Halcyon days – seven days of calm on either side of the winter solstice. The legend says that the halcyon bird builds a floating nest on the sea on the winter solstice and has the ability to calm the seas so as to be undisturbed when laying its eggs. The halcyon is generally associated with the kingfisher.

The source of the belief in the bird’s power to calm the sea originated in a myth recorded by Ovid. The story goes that Aeolus, the ruler of the winds, had a daughter named Alcyone, who was married to Ceyx, the king of Thessaly. Ceyx was drowned at sea and Alcyone threw herself into the waves in a fit of grief. Instead of drowning, she was transformed into a bird and carried to her husband by the wind.

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WWI Anti-Submarine Warfare with Seagulls, Sacks and Hammers

Posted on by December 20, 2020

Anti-submarine warriors?

One of the great things about writing historical fiction is discovering odd sets of facts, often buried in the archives, that capture both the desperation and the madness of a given time. Often, as the cliche goes, you just can’t make this stuff up. Here is an account of how the Royal Navy attempted to fight back against German submarines in World War I using trained seagulls and hammers. The schemes worked about as well as one might expect.

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The Great Solstice Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn

Posted on by December 19, 2020

On Monday night, December 21, the planets Jupiter and Saturn will appear closer together in the night sky than they have on any night since March 4, 1226. At their closest alignment, the planets will be a tenth of a degree apart or roughly equivalent to the width of a dime held at arm’s length. Depending go the atmospheric conditions, the conjunction of the two planets may appear as a single bright object in the south-western sky, just after sunset.

The conjunction of the planets feels portentous. For skygazers with a clear horizon, it will be a once in a lifetime event. Given its relatively close proximity to the holiday, many are calling it the Christmas Star.  As the conjunction falls on the winter solstice, some astrologers are heralding it as the beginning of a time of rebirth. 

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Australian Beaches — Sea Foam, Sea Snakes and a Lost Dog

Posted on by December 18, 2020

Severe weather off the east coast of Australia has left beaches in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales and on the Gold and Sunshine coasts covered in a thick layer of sea foam, attracting crowds of curious locals, and, at least potentially, venomous sea snakes. 

News.com.au reports that the foam went viral across the globe after a local Byron Bay woman interrupted a live weather update to search for her missing dog, Hazel, who was later rescued from the mess. 

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Vendee Globe: Oscar and the Unidentified Floating Objects

Posted on by December 17, 2020

At roughly this point in the last sailing of the Vendee Globe in 2016-2017, 5 boats had been forced to retire after being damaged by collisions with UFOs, unidentified floating objects.

In this year’s race, 18 of the 33 boats competing are carrying a new high-tech collision avoidance package dubbed OSCAR. The electronics package, installed at the boat’s masthead, uses day and thermal cameras combined with artificial intelligence, to provide a second set of ‘eyes’ for the solo skipper both day and night. 

How well has OSCAR worked so far? It may still be too soon to judge. That being said, of the 4 racing boats damaged by UFOs in the current race, at least two had OSCAR units installed.

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Rotor Sails – Fixed, Rolling and Tilting

Posted on by December 16, 2020

Sail-assist propulsion on commercial ships is developing rapidly, featuring a range of technologies including rotor sails, rigid wing sails, ventilated turbo sails, and even conventional fabric sails.

One thing that all these rigs have in common, however, is that when they are not converting wind energy into power to propel the ship, they can interfere with operations, whether loading and discharging cargo or navigating under bridges. Now, in addition to fixed installations, engineers are designing rigs that can be moved or tilted out of the way.

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Steel Cut for National Security Multi-Mission Vessel (NSMV) at Philly Shipyard

Posted on by December 15, 2020

Today, steel was cut for the first National Security Multi-Mission Vessel (NSMV) at Philly Shipyard, Inc. The NSMV is designed to be a state-of-the-art training vessel for America’s state maritime academies. The ship will also be available to support humanitarian assistance and disaster relief missions. 

In May 2019, MARAD awarded TOTE Services, LLC, a company involved in ship management, marine operations, and vessel services, a contract to be the Vessel Construction Manager (VCM) for the NSMV program. In April 2020, TOTE Services awarded Philly Shipyard, Inc. a contract to construct up to five NSMVs.

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eConowind Sail Assist Successfully Tested on Container Barge

Posted on by December 14, 2020

A year ago we posted about the innovative ideas and products developed by the Dutch firm, eConowind. They have developed a Ventfoil, a fixed airfoil-shaped spar with an internal fan that uses boundary layer suction to generate thrust.  Ventfoils can be installed to provide sail-assisted propulsion on new ships, or retrofitted on existing vessels. There is also a modular version in which two Ventfoils can be deployed from inside a 40-foot container. The Ventfoils can be raised or lowered from the container in about 5 minutes.

Recently, an eCononwind Ventfoil container was installed on the TMA Logistics container barge Ms. Royaal, operating on the IJsselmeer and the Wadden Sea, between Harlingen and Amsterdam. The conditions were close to perfect. The route is typically very windy. That being said, the single eConowind container sail unit produced fuel savings of 10%, enough to justify further testing.

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Voyage of the Orphan Boys in the Vaccine Ship of 1803

Posted on by December 13, 2020

Today, the first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine have begun to be distributed in the United States. It seems like a good time to look back at the voyage of the orphan boys in the vaccine ship that sailed from Spain in 1803.

Now know as the Balmis Expedition, it was officially called the Real Expedición Filantrópica de la Vacuna (Royal Philanthropic Vaccine Expedition) and was a three-year mission, from 1803 to 1806, to Spanish America and Asia led by Dr. Francisco Javier de Balmis with the aim of vaccinating millions against smallpox. It was the first large scale mass vaccination of its kind.

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A Video for a Pandemic Saturday : Jolie Brise – the Boat That Changed Tom Cunliffe’s Life

Posted on by December 12, 2020

This is a wonderful half-hour documentary hosted by Tom Cunliffe about Jolie Brise. Jolie Brise is a gaff-rigged pilot cutter/racing yacht built and launched by the Albert Paumelle Yard in Le Havre in 1913 to a design by Alexandre Pâris. Tom Cunliffe is a British yachting journalist, author, and broadcaster.

Here are his comments on the video: Here’s a ‘lock-down special’ released early for Christmas about one of the greatest cutters of them all, Jolie Brise. This boat truly changed my life. She deserves this professionally made, TV-quality show, so pour yourself a glass of the finest and shut the cabin door on the world for half an hour.

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MOL Signs Deal For New Wind Challenger Sail Assisted Collier

Posted on by December 11, 2020

Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Ltd. (MOL) has reached a coal transport deal with Tohoku Electric Power Co., Inc., which will use a new 99,000 DWT collier equipped with a retractable wing sail propulsion system, known as the Wind Challenger. Construction of the vessel will start at Oshima Shipbuilding with the goal of going into service in 2022.

The new ship will feature a single retractable sail, mounted near the bow, which is expected to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) by about 5% on the Japan-Australia route or about 8% on the Japan-North America West Coast route, in comparison with a conventional vessel of the same class.

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