Tag: Pacific

Australia revealed intentions to cooperate with regional partners for setting up a Pacific Fusion Centre, that will provide strategic analysis of information to help strengthen maritime domain awareness and provide security alerts and advice for Pacific security agencies.

A new study by UK's National Oceanography Centre and the University of Southampton has revealed a series of depressions forming mysterious “tracks” on the seafloor, which may be an unprecedented record of deep-diving whales. The observations were made by an autonomous underwater vehicle in the Pacific Ocean.

The US Coast Guard Captain of the Port reopened all commercial ports in the Hawaiian Islands as of 5 p.m. Wednesday. All vessel and cargo operations have resumed in Hawaii, Honolulu and Maui counties. Hurricane Hector is expected to continue to move west and degrade as it continues in its current direction. 

Five crew members were sentenced in a US court this week for smuggling 1,205 pounds of cocaine across the ocean in low-profile vessels, including a captain who received a 17-year term. The defendants were sentenced to spend between 84-210 months in prison. 

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association and drone company Saildrone will launch the first batch of 11 unmanned sailing vehicles these days, as part of NOAA’s expanding use of technologies to advance fisheries, weather and climate science.

In a new short safety animated video, IMO provides simple but key messages to ferry passengers: Overcrowding is dangerous, listen to crew, follow instructions. The video was commissioned following a series of IMO-sponsored regional discussion forums on ferry safety held in the Asia and Pacific region.

Plastics make up 85% of marine litter globally and are even reaching people's dinner tables. But where does all this plastic lie? The largest accumulation of ocean plastic in the world can be found between Hawaii and California, in the North Pacific and is no other than the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The GPGP covers an area three times the size of France.

The IMO announced that it has welcomed a new member state, on 14 May. Nauru, a Small Island Developing State in the western Pacific Ocean, deposited its instrument of acceptance to the IMO Convention with the United Nations depositary, becoming IMO’s 174th Member State.

Using the advanced technologies available at MARIN, the Ocean Cleanup has conducted new scale model tests of its system. Through continued testing, the Dutch foundation was able to adapt and redesign its system, as needed, in order to have the best possible chance of effectively working in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

The USCG offloaded approximately 6 tons of cocaine in Port Everglades, worth an estimated $180 million, that it was seized in international waters in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. The seizure represents six separate vessel interdictions off Central and South America and Mexico between late February and mid-April.