The Canadian based Chamber of Shipping and the United States based Pacific Merchant Shipping Association will cooperate to ensure safe and sustainable shipping on the Pacific Northwest and the Salish Sea. These areas are considered key gateways for marine commerce in Canada and the US. Both organizations will take part in the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority’s ECHO program.
Finnish technology group Wärtsilä’s EnergoProFin, an energy saving propeller cap, which delivers average fuel savings of 2%, has been listed in the 2019 Vancouver Fraser Port Authority’s EcoAction Program. The Program provides harbour dues discounts for vessels calling on the Port of Vancouver that meet environmental best practices.
The Vancouver Fraser Port Authority has expanded its industry-leading EcoAction Program, encouraging vessels that call on the Port of Vancouver to quiet the waters for the endangered whale population along the southern coast of British Columbia. Specifically, the program got into force on January 1, 2019.
The ‘FlipFlopi’ boat, is a 9-metre-long dhow, voyaging south along East Africa’s coast to raise awareness of the challenges plastics pose to the ocean, chief boat-builder and captain Ali Skanda stated. The marine ecosystem and the ocean has been crucially affected by the plastic debris and the boat aims to alert and wake up the locals on how they handle and dispose the waste.
Due to the important risks around HFO, the international shipping community banned its use and carriage by ships around Antarctica in 2011. To describe the process of what have been done and what will be done in the future, the Clean Arctic Alliance published an infographic. A ban on HFO in the Arctic was considered in 2013 during the deliberations on the IMO Polar Code.
In an attempt to tackle marine pollution, India’s Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change signed a letter of Intent finilizing the India-Norway Marine Pollution Initiative together with the Norwegian ministry of Foreign Affairs. Both Indian and Norwegian government agreed on jointly working on keeping oceans clean by signing an MoU and establishing the India-Norway Ocean Dialogue during the Norwegian Prime Minister’s visit to India in January.
Spain announced that it will construct the second-largest marine national park in the Mediterranean, turning the Cabrera National Park area nine times larger and taking the total area protected to 90,794 hectares. The park, located south of Mallorca, will offer legal protection for marine life that is threatened, such as corals, dolphins and whales.
Natural materials excreted by bacteria are gluing micro and nano-plastics together, so that they form larger masses in the world’s oceans, scientists from Heriot-Watt University and Plymouth University have discovered. The biopolymers are common in marine environments, but until now scientists did not know their effects on nano and micro plastics.
Sea Shepherd submitted a petition to the US government for emergency rulemaking, demanding it to fulfill its obligations under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) to protect the Māui dolphin. Actually, the organization formally demanded that the Trump Administration immediately ban all imports from New Zealand fisheries that are driving the Māui dolphin to extinction.
Using data from underwater robots, scientists have discovered that beaked whales prefer to feed within parts of a Navy sonar test range off Southern California that have dense patches of deep-sea squid. Therefore, the British Ecological Society published a study ‘Quantifying deep-sea predator–prey dynamics’ that shows that beaked whales need these prey hot spots to survive, and that similar patches do not exist in nearby ‘sonar-free’ areas.
