Tag: marine environment

 The Port of Long Beach announced that has  surpassed every air pollution reduction milestone set for 2014 by the landmark San Pedro Bay Ports Clean Air Action Plan, according to an analysis released.An annual, comprehensive inventory of port-related air pollution emissions in 2014 found the Port’s efforts to reduce pollution have cut diesel particulates by 85 percent since 2005, surpassing the CAAP goal for 2014 of a 72 percent reduction. In addition to the drop in diesel emissions, smog-forming nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides have dropped 50 percent and 97 percent respectively. The corresponding goals for the year are 22 percent and 93 percent.The reasons for the air quality improvements include the Clean Trucks Program, low-sulfur fuel regulations for ships, increased use of shore power for cargo ships and the Port’s Green Flag Vessel Speed Reduction Program.“The Port of Long Beach remains the greenest Port in the world, reducing emissions while increasing economic activity,” Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia said.“The Port’s consistent commitment to sustainability and our environment should be celebrated.”“When the Clean Air Action Plan was adopted almost 10 years ago, the Port made a promise to the community to reduce air pollution and to be a better neighbor,” said ...

 US Senators for California introduced the West Coast Ocean Protection Act, legislation to permanently prohibit offshore drilling on the outer continental shelf of California, Oregon and Washington.The legislation, first introduced in 2010, would amend the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to permanently protect the $44 billion coastal economies of the three states, which support nearly 650,000 jobs in California, Oregon and Washington."Offshore drilling carries real risks, and an accident would be catastrophic for California's environment and economy," Senator Feinstein said. "This is why I'm very happy to join with Senator Boxer and other colleagues on this legislation to permanently ban offshore drilling on the West Coast.""We cannot afford to put California's coastal economy at risk by drilling offshore," Senator Boxer said. "More than half a million California jobs and more than $34 billion in annual economic activity depend on a pristine coastline, and we owe it to current and future generations to protect our coast from a disaster like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.""We must protect our coastal communities, economies and ecosystems against the risk of an oil spill. In addition, the threat of seismic activity along the Cascadia Subduction Zone increases the probability of a catastrophic oil spill in the ...

 The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration (MARAD) announced that it will provide over $1 million to support the development of two new emission-reducing maritime solutions.The first is a cutting-edge liquefied natural gas (LNG) conversion demonstration project and the second is modification of an on-board air pollution control device that will aid the United States maritime industry’s ongoing effort to decrease its environmental footprint, one more measure spearheaded by the Obama Administration’s climate initiative to find cutting edge technologies that cut pollutant emissions.“The Department continues to fund innovative projects that support a steady shift towards cleaner and sustainable transportation options,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx.“This public-private venture will produce the data required to further develop even cleaner and more sustainable maritime transportation options.”Through a cooperative agreement, MARAD has provided $730,000 to Pittsburgh Region Clean Cities (PRCC) to convert a towboat engine from diesel to LNG. Results from this demonstration project will help expand the development and availability of natural gas conversion technology for smaller scale tug, tow, and harbor vessels.  PRCC will collect air emissions data before and after the conversion, which will allow for operational and emissions comparisons.A separate cooperative agreement will provide Interlake Steamship Company (Interlake) of ...

 CHALOS & Co law firm informs that a federal appeals court in New York ordered US EPA to rewrite its rules regarding the discharge of ballast water from ships, following reaction by environmental groups that said the rules threatened the nation’s waterways.Four environmental agencies petitioned the Second Circuit Court of Appeals for review of the Vessel General Permit (“VGP”) issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) in 2013 under Section 509(b)(1) of the Clean Water Act (“CWA”), which regulates the discharge of ballast water from ships (and is the primary cause of the spread of invasive species to different bodies of water). On October 5, 2015, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion in Natural Resources Defense Counsel, et al. v. United States Environmental Protection Agency, holding that the EPA acted arbitrarily and capriciously in issuing the permit and remanded back to the EPA for further proceedings.   The sixty-five (65) page decision goes into great detail regarding the historic context for why such a VGP is necessary, the purposes of the CWA, and the technical components of the statute for preventing pollutants and measuring compliance with the act, specifically water quality standards.  The EPA issued the 2013 VGP allowing vessels to discharge ballast water ...

  Figure 1: The IMO-adopted ships’ routeing systems in the Coral SeaThe Australia Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) issued a Marine Notice to advise mariners, shipowners, ship operators and agents that the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has adopted two new two-way routes and an associated area to be avoided (ATBA) in the Coral Sea (Figure 1). These measures come into effect at 0000 hours UTC on 1 January 2016. The routeing systems will serve as associated protective measures for the recently-extended Great Barrier Reef and Torres Strait Particularly Sensitive Sea Area in the Coral Sea. Regulation V/10 of SOLAS (Ships’ routeing) provides for IMO-adopted ships’ routeing systems that may be recommended for use by some or all ships.Two-way routesThe five mile wide, two-way routes aim to separate opposing streams of traffic and keep ships clear of the shoals, reefs and islands that lie in close proximity. The 60 nautical mile (nm) route in Diamond Passage aligns with the existing traffic pattern (Figure 2). The 53 nm route west of Holmes Reefs provides a routeing measure for ships navigating west of the ATBA (Figure 3).Figure 2: The two-way route in Diamond PassageFigure 3: The two-way route west of Holmes Reef Area to be avoidedThe ATBA aims to ...

 The Australian Maritime Safety Authority warns of the potential dangers posed by toxic canisters that have been reported washing up on Australian beaches.Since February 2012, emergency services have received reports from the public of small unlabelled canisters washing up along the coast in the Torres Strait, Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia and Tasmania. In the last few months reports have been received of canisters washing up in the Western Cape York region and in Yeppoon in Central Queensland.The canisters contain a rat poison known as ‘aluminium phosphide’, a white to grey solid which is hazardous to humans. When the canister is opened, the powder reacts with moisture in the air to release phosphine gas, which is also highly toxic to humans.The gas has a strong odour that can smell like garlic, rotting fish or urine, but it can quickly dull the sense of smell. Exposure can cause symptoms such as headaches, nausea, vomiting, difficulty breathing, dizziness, tightness of the chest, diarrhoea, fluid in the lungs, liver/kidney damage, and in severe cases death.The gas is also flammable and can spontaneously ignite causing burns or small explosions. Most aluminium phosphide is imported into Australia from China and Africa, and the unused ...

 A new paper by a group of 10 scientists affiliated with UC Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) suggests that by the end of this century, warming of the oceans will result in significant global redistribution of marine life. This in turn will increase biodiversity in many areas or lead to extinctions in others, all while creating new kinds of communities less distinct from one another. The research results appear in the journal Nature Climate Change.In conducting the study, the researchers projected ocean temperatures and then modeled how nearly 13,000 species — more than 12 times the number of species previously assessed — followed changing temperatures into future locations. Similar studies have been based on such complex variables as larval dispersal, population-growth models and other factors for which data is scarce, thus limiting the number of species that could be tracked. As warming continues to cause migration, new species will enter a community before others disappear from it, and species that can tolerate a wider range of water temperatures may not move right away. The results show an unexpected outcome — that migrating species will increase biodiversity in most parts of the ocean — but also that ...

 The UOW Global Challenges-funded project examines the effect of anchors and anchor chains on the ocean floor near Australia’s busiest ports, including Port Kembla, Newcastle, Port Dampier in Western Australia’s Pilbara region, and Townsville on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef.Marine biologist Professor Andy Davis said preliminary mapping and 3D imagery of the sea floor three nautical miles from Port Kembla had revealed the anchor chains of more than 250 metres in length and with individual links up to 200 kilograms, are dragging across seafloor habitat.“Preliminary mapping has confirmed anchoring is occurring on reef near Port Kembla. This may well have damaging environmental impacts on important habitat-forming marine species, with implications for fish populations. We will now seek to identify areas of high conservation value, then identify how these areas may best be conserved.”Professor Davis, a member of the Centre for Sustainable Ecosytem Solutions at UOW (University of Wollongog), said the project is the first of its kind to research the impact of anchors on the marine environment, with the aim of creating sustainable anchoring practices throughout the world and working closely with the shipping Industry to achieve this goal.“There is a huge knowledge gap in the impact of deep-water ...

 For 25 years, methodical research by scientists has investigated the effects of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 on Alaskan communities and ecosystems. A new study regarding the effects of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska shows that embryonic salmon and herring exposed to very low levels of crude oil can develop hidden heart defects that compromise their later survival, indicating that the spill may have had much greater impacts on spawning fish than previously recognized.The herring population crashed four years after the spill in Prince William Sound and pink salmon stocks also declined, but the link to the oil spill has remained controversial. The new findings published in the online journal Scientific Reports suggest that the delayed effects of the spill may have been important contributors to the declines."These juvenile fish on the outside look completely normal, but their hearts are not functioning properly and that translates directly into reduced swimming ability and reduced survival," said John Incardona, a research toxicologist at NOAA Fisheries' Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle."In terms of impacts to shore-spawning fish, the oil spill likely had a much bigger footprint than anyone realized."The research builds on earlier work by the Auke Bay ...

 The Ocean Cleanup successfully concluded the Mega Expedition with the arrival of a first group of vessels including the fleet’s 171ft mothership in the port of San Francisco on 23rd August.Using a series of measurement techniques, including trawls and aerial surveys, the fleet of close to 30 vessels sampled the concentration of plastic during its month-long voyage through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This is in preparation for the large-scale cleanup of the area, set to begin in 2020.The Mega Expedition’s primary goal is to accurately determine how much plastic is floating in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, by executing the largest ocean research expedition in history. This was also the first time large pieces of plastic, such as ghost nets and Japanese tsunami debris, have been quantified.I’ve studied plastic in all the world’s oceans, but never seen any area as polluted as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” said Dr. Julia Reisser, Lead Oceanographer at The Ocean Cleanup. “With every trawl we completed, thousands of miles from land, we just found lots and lots of plastic.”Although the samples collected during the expedition still have to be analyzed, preliminary findings indicate a higher-than-expected volume of large plastic objects floating in the ...