Tag: healthy oceans

A coalition of government, non-profit and marine industry groups announced the launch of a new trial incentive program in the Santa Barbara Channel to slow cargo ships down to reduce air pollution and increase protection of endangered whales. Six global shipping companies, COSCO, Hapag Lloyd, K Line, Maersk Line, Matson, and United Arab Shipping Company are participating in the speed reduction incentive program and have identified ships in their fleets that will transit between Point Conception and the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, from July-October 31, 2014, at speeds of 12 knots or less (reduced from typical speeds of 14-18 knots). Participating companies will receive $2,500 per transit through the Santa Barbara Channel. The trial program, developed and implemented by the Santa Barbara County Air Pollution Control District, NOAA's Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, and the Environmental Defense Center, is modeled after successful speed reduction incentive programs at the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles where over 90% of the shipping lines participate. Ship strikes are a major threat to recovering endangered whale populations. In addition, ships emit greenhouse gases and air pollutants, and account for more than 50% of ozone-forming nitrogen oxides in Santa Barbara County. ...

Gas transfer across the air-sea interface is a major link in the great global chemical cycles that drive life and other processes on our planet. Knowing which gases are being absorbed or emitted by the ocean, how much gas is moving across the sea surface, is crucial to our understanding of how these cycles work and how climate may be affected in the face of global change. While measurements in the atmosphere and below the surface are relatively easy to obtain, the shallow band just above and below the sea surface can prove extremely difficult to sample. Yet, it is within the few metres either side of the air-sea interface that the most telling measurements for air/sea gas transfer can be obtained. Assessing dissolved gas concentration gradients close to the sea surface requires good depth precision. The traditional jib-mounted method of lowering instruments into the sea cannot provide this except in the rare event of a very calm sea state. Even in a light swell, the instrument pack can rise and fall through a depth of metres in the water column. Such movement can result in a series of measurements that are inaccurate at best and misleading at worst. PML ...

International Maritime Organization (IMO) Secretary-General Koji Sekimizu has welcomed the recently-published report of the Global Ocean Commission (GOC), From Decline to Recovery: A Rescue Package for the Global Ocean, and its call for enhanced action at all levels to mitigate the threats to the global oceans described in the report. In a letter​ to the co-chairs of the Global Ocean Commission (Mr. José María Figueres, Mr. Trevor Manuel and Mr. David Miliband), Mr. Sekimizu noted that, as the United Nations specialized agency dedicated to sustainable uses of the world's oceans through safe, secure, clean ships, IMO plays a key role in advancing the critically important agenda carried forward in the report and has adopted key treaties addressing several of the outlined threats. Mr. Sekimizu highlighted IMO's active role in addressing many of the issues raised in the GOC report, noting also that IMO is working actively through several existing coordination mechanisms - such as UN Oceans, the Global Partnership for Oceans, and the Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection (GESAMP) - to ensure that joint efforts are maximized and duplication reduced. "In my view, thoughtful development of ocean regulations, coupled with early entry into force, ...

BMT Oceanica (BMT), a subsidiary of BMT Group, announced that it has won the bid to provide Ocean Outlet Monitoring services for Western Australia's Water Corporation. BMT works with the Water Corporation to ensure ocean monitoring methods adopted are up to date and consistent with best-practice as global environmental standards have progressed. This collaborative approach has resulted in improvements to the program, without increasing costs. BMT's staff has been specifically recruited and trained to manage ocean discharge programs and consistently produce technical work of the highest quality. Mark Bailey, Project Director at BMT Oceanica comments: "BMT Oceanica has more than 20 years of direct ocean outfall management experience and has played a key role in the development, maintenance and evolution of all the State's major ocean outfall monitoring programs. BMT Oceanica, Water Corporation and Western Australia's environmental regulators are all driven by a passion for WA's unique marine environment and share the view that it is our responsibility to maintain it for future generations. We are delighted to be continuing our partnership with the Water Corporation on this very important project." Water Corporation General Manager Regional Customer Services Group, Bennie Smith, said he looked forward to working with BMT Oceanica ...

For most of us, ferries are simply a convenient means of getting from A to B on a short break or family holiday, but for scientists at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), they have proved to be an invaluable source of information about harmful phytoplankton growth in the English Channel. Passengers travelling from Portsmouth aboard P&O's Pride of Bilbao may well have been unaware that whilst it was transporting them to their Spanish destination and back, it was also acting as a ‘Ship Of Opportunity' (SOO), making valuable measurements of the water using specialist equipment called a Ferrybox. The Ferrybox sampled the sea water continuously throughout the ship's twice-weekly journey over an 8 year period and most months scientists were able to collect additional water samples, which provided information for a range of scientific studies. For scientists at NOC studying the growth of harmful algal blooms (HAB), the water samples offered new insights into the physical factors that cause harmful algae to grow and develop further out in the English Channel. There is a gap in knowledge about mid-channel blooms, as it is a much more difficult area to monitor than coastal waters. Until recently, remote-sensing satellite images have been ...

HELCOM BASE project issued a new report on the current status of significant sources of pollution to the Baltic Sea in Russia, or 'hot spots'. Out of the twelve remaining Russian sites identified in the Baltic Sea catchment, one third could be removed from the original list as the necessary measures to meet the requirements have been introduced. Six hot spots are either implementing or planning for improvements, the study concludes, while two sites remain with lower levels of mitigation efforts. Since the report was written, further progress has been made. Russia submitted a proposal to HELCOM to delete Sub-Hot Spot No. 18.1 "Construction of new sewer connections" (Saint-Petersburg). The report on the status of HELCOM hot spots in Russia complements the final outcome of HELCOM's Baltic Sea Joint Comprehensive Environmental Action Programme (JCP, 1992-2013), created as large international environmental management framework to reduce pollution loads into the Baltic Sea. Identifying and cleaning up pollution hot spots has been an important part of this work. Originally 17 exclusively Russian sites were in the hot spot list, having in total 162 sites covering the whole region mainly from industrial and municipal, but also diffuse sources such as agricultural areas. According to ...

Thome Ship Management has been awarded a Green Environmental Achievement Award by the Port of Long Beach, California, for high standards in performance during 2013. Yatin Gangla, Chief Operating Officer Bulk Division said: "This award is presented to operators whose vessels call at the Port of Long Beach and who have demonstrated that 90% or more of the vessels have complied with the Voluntary Vessel Speed Reduction Programme. In recognition of this achievement, Thome has received a green flag and a 25% discount on the dockage dues payable by all our managed vessels to the Port of Long Beach during 2014. Announcing Thome's award, Donald B Snyder, Director of Trade Development at the City of Long Beach Harbor Department, said: "Thank you for your commitment to reducing air pollution in Southern California." The Port's Green Flag Program is a voluntary vessel speed reduction program which rewards vessel operators for slowing down to 12 knots or less within 40 nautical miles (nm) of Point Fermin, near the entrance to the Harbor. The Port says that because ships emit less when they travel more slowly, the program has been highly successful in reducing smog-forming emissions and diesel particulates from ships. Vessels that dock at the Port of Long ...

In 2013, the research team returned to Sermilik Fjord to find that a large passing iceberg had pushed down the SF1 mooring's top float to depths where increased water pressure caused it to implode. The researchers dragged the bottom of the fjord to recover the mooring. Its instruments survived the trauma and recorded data that helped the researchers learn about ocean's circulation near the glacier. The fatal blow was definitely not the first hit. For 13 months, icebergs had plowed over Mooring SF1, again and again. They pushed the long line of underwater scientific instruments toward the seafloor in a Greenland fjord. Usually, these chunks of ice-sometimes as tall as a skyscraper and as wide as seven city blocks-would hold down SF1 for several hours and then move along, allowing SF1 to resiliently float back up. This may not seem like a safe location for scientific equipment, but the research group deliberately placed SF1 in the line of iceberg fire in Sermilik Fjord, 20 miles from the terminus of Helheim Glacier. This narrow coastal inlet, abutted by steep cliffs, connects at one end to the open ocean; at the other end, the vertical ice face of the glacier forms a ...

A new study has found that turbulent mixing in the deep waters of the Southern Ocean, which has a profound effect on global ocean circulation and climate, varies with the strength of surface eddies - the ocean equivalent of storms in the atmosphere - and possibly also wind speeds. It is the first study to link eddies at the surface to deep mixing on timescales of months to decades. This new insight into how the Southern Ocean behaves will allow scientists to build computer models that can better predict how our climate is going to change in the future. The Southern Ocean plays a pivotal role in the global overturning circulation, a system of surface and deep currents linking all oceans and one of the fundamental determinants of the planet's climate. The Southern Ocean around Antarctica is the only location where the ocean can circulate freely all the way around the globe without continental barriers. Because the ocean is made up of many layers of water that are dependent on temperature and salinity, water moves easily along horizontal or ‘isopycnal' layers, but mixes only slowly across the layers, known as ‘diapycnal' mixing. This combination of diapycnal and isopycnal mixing drives ...

Blue whales, the world's largest animals, frequent waters off California that overlap with some of the United States' busiest shipping lanes, according to a new study that suggests ship strikes are contributing to the whales' stagnating population numbers. Blue whales spend their summers in the shallow waters of marine sanctuaries surrounding the Farallon Islands and Channel Islands, offshore of San Francisco and Los Angeles, respectively. Scientists tagged blue whales and monitored their movements via satellite between 1993 and 2008, delineating core areas of use. Commercial shipping lanes intersect with these whale hot spots, sometimes resulting in fatal ship strikes. Ships struck and killed three blue whales in southern California alone in 2007, says study co-author Ladd Irvine, a marine mammal ecologist with Oregon State University in Newport. Two others were found dead in the same area, but the cause of death was inconclusive. This may not seem significant, but in a population of 2,500, five dead blue whales were enough for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to declare the deaths "unusual mortality events." Irvine and colleagues hope the new satellite tracking data-funded in part by a National Geographic grant-can help modify existing shipping lanes to minimize run-ins between ships ...