New rules proposed for vessel traffic near orcas

The federal agency in charge of protecting Puget Sound orcas proposed new rules Tuesday to prohibit vessels from coming closer than 200 yards of the endangered mammals.NOAA Fisheries Service said the rules safeguard killer whales, which depend on sophisticated sonar to navigate and forage for food. The whales can be affected by underwater noise from boats and vessels that approach too close or block their paths, the agency said.The proposed rules would prohibit vessels from intercepting or parking in the path of a whale. It also sets up a half-mile "no-go" zone along the west side of San Juan Island where most vessels won't be allowed from May 1 to September 30."The idea here is to give these remarkable animals even more real, meaningful protection," said Barry Thom, acting head of the agency's Northwest office. "Without it, we would undercut the hard work we are all doing to recover the species by improving the sound's water quality and recovering salmon, the killer whale's primary food."Many U.S. and Canadian whale-watching operators and private boaters follow voluntary guidelines that recommend vessels give whales a 100-yard buffer.But those guidelines "just haven't been working," said Brian Gorman, a spokesman with the fisheries service in Seattle. "Some pay attention to them, some people ignore them."The new mandatory rules would require vessels to give the orcas twice as much berth, or 200 yards. It also doubles the distance required under Washington state law.The rules would not apply, however, to government and research vessels, commercial fishing vessels and cargo vessels traveling in established shipping lanes. If adopted, they would take effect in May at the earliest."We think it's a good move to try to back off and give the whales some more space," said Jenny Atkinson, executive director of The Whale Museum on San Juan Island.Pollution and a lack of food, particularly salmon, are believed to be the whales' biggest threats, but stress from whale-watching, commercial and recreational boats has also contributed to their decline.The three southern residents pods - J, K, and L - that frequent Western Washington's inland marine waters were listed as endangered in 2005. The current population is at 85."Giving them a little more space so they have less competition can't hurt and must help," said Val Veirs, who operates a hydrophone network that monitors underwater noises in inland Washington waters. "There have been multiple studies on multiple species that show that boats nearby and boats making noise do change the animals' behavior."While there are other serious issues harming the orcas, this is one that can dealt with quickly, he added.seatlepi.com

'Ocean glider' home after two-month voyage

Scientists are celebrating the first successful deployment and retrieval in Australia of a remotely controlled, deep ocean-going robotic submarine destined to play a central role in measuring changes in two of Australia's most influential ocean currents. Under the joint CSIRO Wealth from Oceans National Research Flagship and Integrated Marine Observation System (IMOS) project, the underwater ocean glider was launched in February on a two-month, 1,500 kilometre voyage. The ocean glider was supplied through IMOS's Australian National Facility for Ocean Gliders facility located at The University of Western Australia. The Integrated Marine Observing System has been developed as part of the Australian Government's National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. With its porpoising motion and an ability to descend to a depth of nearly 1,000 metres, the $200,000 robotic glider is being trialled in the Tasman Sea and the Indian Ocean as the latest tool in Australia's $94 million marine observing network. The glider's sensors measure temperature and salinity, as well a range of biological parameters including oxygen and turbidity. Senior CSIRO Wealth from Oceans Flagship researcher Ken Ridgway, says the Tasman Sea trial has generated new confidence among scientists broadening the array of instruments available to them to better understand the East Australian Current and Leeuwin Currents. "Ocean currents around Australia are critical to so many aspects of nature and human activity," Mr Ridgway says. "With the East Australian and Leeuwin Currents, we need to understand how they change from season to season and year to year, and the extent of their influence on local coastal conditions, as this affects climate, weather, fisheries, shipping and more. "Increasingly, these autonomous gliders are being used by northern hemisphere marine research groups. Australia is just beginning to use these deep-ocean systems, although shallow water gliders have been deployed off Western Australia, South Australia and New South Wales in recent months. The Tasman Sea deployment was the first deployment of a deep-ocean glider in the southern hemisphere." Together with data from research vessels, satellites and moored, drifting and expendable instruments, the glider will add a new dimension to profiling the oceans around Australia. But there are still challenges to be overcome. "In a lot of ways this first deployment is as much learning how to pilot the glider and guide it through and around the eddies of the East Australian Current as it is getting about the data we want," Mr Ridgway says. A recent innovation in oceanography, the winged gliders are programmable and guided by Global Positioning Systems. They glide during depth changes, driven by an inflated oil filled chamber. However, because the ocean currents can be faster than the glider's speed, ensuring they are not swept away has been a difficult process. "The appeal of these instruments is that they are out working while the scientist can be assessing what is near-real time information about ocean conditions," Mr Ridgway says. CSIRO initiated the National Research Flagships to provide science-based solutions in response to Australia's major research challenges and opportunities. The nine Flagships form multidisciplinary teams with industry and the research community to deliver impact and benefits for Australia.

Acoustic Phenomena Explain Why Boats And Animals Collide

Researchers at Florida Atlantic University have laid the groundwork for a sensory explanation for why manatees and other animals are hit repeatedly by boats. Last year, 73 manatees were killed by boats in Florida’s bays and inland waterways. Marine authorities have responded to deaths from boat collisions by imposing low speed limits on boats.

In spite of manatee protection policies that have been in effect for nearly two decades to slow down boats passing through manatee-protection habitats, the number of injuries and deaths associated with collisions has increased and reached record highs.
In an effort to reduce manatee deaths and injuries from boats, Dr. Edmund Gerstein, director of marine mammal research and behavior in FAU’s Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, set out in 1991 to investigate what might be the underlying cause for these collisions. Gerstein disagreed with the unsubstantiated assumptions, which wildlife officials had relied upon, that manatees could hear boats, but they were just too slow and could not learn to avoid boats.
“Manatees have the cognitive prowess to learn and remember as well as dolphins and killer whales,” said Gerstein. “Furthermore, when startled or frightened, manatees explode with a burst of power and can reach swimming speeds of up to 6.4 meters per second in an instant.”
Given that manatees have the cognitive ability to recognize danger and the physical prowess to evade boats, Gerstein sought to explore the answers to some simple questions. “After a manatee has been hit more than once (some have been hit up to 50 different times) why doesn't the animal learn to get out of the way?” “Is it possible that manatees are not aware or cannot hear the sounds of an approaching boat?"
Gerstein and his colleagues conducted rigorous, controlled underwater psychoacoustic (audiometric) studies to understand what sounds manatees can hear in their environment. After a comprehensive series of hearing studies, his research revealed that manatees cannot hear the dominant low frequency sounds of boats and that those sounds do not transmit well in shallow water. Furthermore, ambient noise in manatee habitats can conceivably mask the perception of many kinds of signals. Unlike dolphins, which can use active sonar to navigate and detect objects in the environment, manatees are passive listeners restricted to listening to their auditory landscape.
"It is ironic that slow speed zones result in quieter and lower frequency sounds which manatees can’t hear or locate in Florida’s murky waters,” said Gerstein. “Slow speed zones make sense in clear water where the boater and the manatee can see each other and therefore actively avoid encounters. However, in turbid waters where there is no visibility, slow speeds actually exacerbate the risks of collisions by making these boats inaudible to manatees and increasing the time it takes for a boat to now travel through manatee habitats thereby increasing the risk and opportunities for collisions to occur.”
With these issues in mind, Gerstein and his colleagues developed an acoustic alerting device specifically tailored to exploit the manatees’ hearing ability. The environmentally friendly device is narrowly focused in front of the boat so that only manatees in its direct path are alerted.
“The alarm emits a high-frequency signal which isn’t loud, doesn’t scare or harm manatees and doesn’t disturb the marine environment,” said Gerstein.
Gerstein has been testing this alarm in a NASA wildlife refuge where controlled studies are possible. He has reported that 100 percent of the controlled approaches toward manatees by a boat with the alarm have resulted in the manatees avoiding the boat up to 30 yards away. Without this alarm, only three percent of the manatees approached by the same boat moved to avoid the boat.
Manatees aren’t the only animals that collide with boats. Other passive-listening marine mammals, including great whales, are vulnerable to collisions when near the surface, where the risk of collisions with ships and boats is greatest or in shallow water. Gerstein and his colleagues are using the findings from their studies to help understand and reduce collisions in the open seas where great whales are regularly injured and often killed by large ships.
Adapted from materials provided by Florida Atlantic University.

Microbial Stowaways: Are Ships Spreading Disease?

Ships are inadvertently carrying trillions of stowaways in the water held in their ballast tanks. When the water is pumped out, invasive species could be released into new environments. Disease-causing microbes could also be released, posing a risk to public health, according to an article in the May issue of Microbiology Today.

"There is no romantic adventure or skullduggery at work here," said Professor Fred Dobbs from Old Dominion University, Virginia. Ships pump water in and out of ballast tanks to adjust the waterline and compensate for cargo loading, making the ship run as efficiently as possible. These tanks can hold thousands of tonnes of water. "Any organisms in the water are likely to be released when it is next pumped out."
Many non-native animals and plants have been taken to new environments and become invasive, threatening the survival of local species; some fundamentally alter the ecosystem. Zebra mussels were introduced in North America and the comb jelly in the Black Sea and both have had enormous ecological and economic impacts
For more than 20 years we have known that a variety of large phytoplankton and protozoa are transported in this way, but we know very little about smaller microbes like bacteria and viruses. "It is inevitable that hundreds of trillions of micro-organisms enter a single ship's ballast tank during normal operations," said Professor Dobbs. The majority of these microbes are harmless, but some are a potential risk to public health.
"Vibrio cholerae, which causes cholera in humans, can be carried in ballast tanks," said Professor Dobbs. "There have been no known outbreaks of disease associated with ballasting activities, but the water is only sampled very rarely." Other disease-causing microbes in the tanks include Cryptosporidium parvum and Giardia duodenalis, which cause stomach upsets.
Some people say microbes are present everywhere; they may be easily dispersed because they are so small. However, many experts believe micro-organisms have a "biogeography", a natural home, which means they could become invasive if moved and have a negative effect on different environments. There is some evidence for this argument: two phytoplankton species called diatoms were introduced to the English Channel from the North Pacific Ocean.
The International Maritime Organisation, which sets rules and standards for the global shipping industry, has proposed an upper limit to the numbers of Vibrio cholerae, E. coli, and intestinal enterococci contained in discharged ballast water. A few ships are also using different treatments to reduce and even eliminate the microbes in their ballast water. "A number of techniques are being looked at for this purpose, from filtration to biocides, ultrasound to ultraviolet irradiation," said Professor Dobbs. "Our understanding of the issues involved will increase as more studies are carried out, particularly those employing the tools of modern molecular biology."
Adapted from materials provided by Society for General Microbiology, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Sunken Antarctic ship spill threatens penguins

About 2,500 penguins en route to their Antarctic mating grounds could be sickened by a diesel fuel spill from a cruise boat that struck an iceberg and sank last week, Chilean scientists said Friday.Areas surrounding the mile-long spill site include breeding grounds for Antarctic and Adelia penguins, and the largest mating colony for Papua penguins, said Maria Jose Rosello, a Chilean marine biologist."The danger is that this fuel spill will impede the journey that species like Papua penguins make at this time of year," Rosello said.Veronica Vallejos, director of the scientific department at the Chilean Antarctic Institute, said the spill could also affect other Antarctic fauna, including sea lions, seals and sea birds as well as fish, krill, algae and plankton colonies — key elements of the Antarctic food chain."There's always environmental danger when fuel leaks, and even more so in a zone with high biodiversity," Vallegos said.

Pollution from marine vessels linked to heart and lung disease

Pollution from marine shipping causes approximately 60,000 premature cardiopulmonary and lung cancer deaths around the world each year, according to a new report। The report benchmarks for the first time the number of annual deaths caused globally by pollution from marine vessels, with coastal regions in Asia and Europe the most affected.

Conducted by James Corbett of University of Delaware and James Winebrake from Rochester Institute of Technology, the study correlates the global distribution of particulate matter—black carbon, sulfur, nitrogen and organic particles—released from ships’ smoke stacks with heart disease and lung cancer mortalities in adults. The results indicate that approximately 60,000 people die prematurely around the world each year from shipping-related emissions. Under current regulation, and with the expected growth in shipping activity, Corbett and Winebrake estimate the annual mortalities from ship emissions could increase by 40 percent by 2012.
Corbett and Winebrake’s results come in the midst of current discussions by the International Maritime Organization to regulate emissions from ships.
“This study will help inform policymakers about some of the health impacts associated with ship emissions and the long range transport of those emissions to population centers,” says Winebrake, chair of RIT’s Department of Science, Technology and Society/Public Policy। “We now have a benchmark by which we can begin to evaluate the benefits of emission reduction policies.”

Annual deaths related to shipping emissions in Europe are estimated at 26,710, while the mortality rate is 19,870 in East Asia and 9,950 in South Asia. North America has approximately 5,000 premature deaths, concentrated mostly in the Gulf Coast region, the West Coast and the Northeast, while the eastern coast of South America has 790 mortalities.
Ships run on residual oil, which has sulfur content thousands of times greater than on-road diesel fuel. “Residual oil is a byproduct of the refinery process and tends to be much dirtier than other petroleum products,” Winebrake says.
“We needed to know what the benefits are of cleaning up this fuel,” he explains. “Now we can evaluate the human health impacts of policies to require low-sulfur fuels for the shipping industry or that require ships to put emissions control technology on their vessels. Our study will help inform this policy debate.”
Up until recently, researchers had little information with which to work; emissions data for marine vessels had to be linked with data tracking the movement of these vessels around the world. In their report, Corbett and Winebrake mapped marine pollution concentrations over the oceans and on land, estimating global and regional mortalities from ship emissions by integrating global ship inventories, atmospheric models and health impacts analyses.
The focus on long-term exposure to particulate matter in this study does not extend to impacts on children or other related health issues such as respiratory disease, asthma, hospital emissions and the economic impact of missed workdays and lost productivity.
“Our work will help people decide at what scale action should be taken,” says Corbett, associate professor of marine policy at University of Delaware. “We want our analysis to enable richer dialogue among stakeholders about how to improve the environment and economic performance of our freight systems.”
This study was supported in part by the Oak Foundation, the German Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft Deutscher Forschungszentren and by the German Aerospace Center within the Young Investigators Group SeaKLIM.
Research article: “Mortality from Ship Emissions: A Global Assessment” is scheduled to appear in the Dec. 15 issue of Environmental Science and Technology, the journal of the American Chemical Society.
Adapted from materials provided by Rochester Institute of Technology.

Maritime Security Enhanced With Ship And Satellite Data Integrated

Data from ERS-2, ESA’s veteran spacecraft, is experiencing an increasing demand as the 12-year-old mission’s products and services are playing a vital role in the initial activities for Global Monitoring for Environment and Security, such as the MARitime Security Service project which addresses the European concern of illegal marine trafficking।

The MARitime Security Service (MARISS) is a GMES Service Element (GSE) initiative that integrates near real time satellite Earth Observation (EO) data with conventional vessel tracking data to deliver an understanding of the maritime situation to coast guards, navies and border police forces in Europe.
Within the MARISS partnership, service providers require Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery such as that provided by ERS-2 within 15 to 20 minutes in order to rapidly detect vessels and extract their positions. This data is integrated with coastal surveillance systems such as coastal radar, the Automatic Identification System (AIS) and the Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) for tracking fishing vessels.
With this information, service providers can locate all vessels not reporting their position using conventional identification systems and transmit the position of these non-cooperative vessels to the relevant authorities in less than 30 to 60 minutes of the satellite overpass।

Service providers speak
The service providers within the MARISS consortium are Italy’s Telespazio, Spain’s GMV, France’s Collecte Localisation Satellites (CLS), Portugal’s EDISOFT and Skysoft, the United Kingdom’s QinetiQ and the Norway’s KSAT. These companies are currently delivering prototype services to the Italian Guardia Costiera and the Ministero dell’Interno, the Spanish Guardia Civil and Navy, the French Departement des Affaires Maritimes, the Portuguese Department of Maritime, the Irish Navy Service, the Swedish Coast Guard, the Finnish Border Guard, the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) and Frontex, an EU agency tasked to coordinate the operational cooperation between Member States in the field of border security.
Antonio Giancaspro of Telespazio said: "The ERS-2 MARISS support was perfect team work between service providers/end users, national ground station/segment operators and ESA. In teamwork, a data provision timeliness of less than 15 minutes for Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data was achieved. This has contributed to reaching strict temporal performances for the needs of Maritime Authorities."
EDISOFT’s Teresa Cardoso said: “The experience with ERS-2 has been very positive for several reasons. With the acquired set of images, we have been able to detect and classify vessels at low cost. This detection process has been subject to different activities of verification like, correlation with AIS, Vessel Traffic Management Systems (VTS) and VMS, with the support of the Portuguese Navy, always with very encouraging results.
"The ERS-2 mission is very flexible, allowing changes in the acquisition planning with very short notice, which is a feature very much appreciated by EDISOFT, and especially by the users of our service. In addition, during the EDISOFT service it was possible to provide a vessel detection service in less than 1 hour after acquisition, which is the Sentinel 1 required timeliness."
Celestino Gómez Cid of GMV said: "The use of ERS-2 data has been the key to succeeding in the delivery of Maritime security-based services for national and European Union authorities. In particular, ERS-2 has provided the required products with less than a one-hour delay after acquisition and provided a near real time processing chain by downloading data close to the area of interest thanks to ground stations.
"With its flexible and light product formats, ERS-2 has also simplified the processing and reduced the delays in transferring the data. In addition, it has matched the quality requirements for maritime security products production and reacted to security context changes and user needs quickly and easily."
CLS’s Jean-Yves Le Bras said: "In the framework of MARISS, CLS acquired ERS-2 images through the Mas Palamas station in September 2007 to perform trials in the West Mediterranean Sea. The trials have shown that near real time capability and good geolocation performance can be obtained from ERS-2, allowing for potential in an operational context. In particular coupling with other missions could be valuable, for example provision of additional information in the co-located part of an Envisat Wide Swath image."
Satellite synergy within 30 minutes
Key users have also expressed considerable interest in the 30-minute time difference between the overpasses of ERS-2 and Envisat. The minimal time lag allows data to be retrieved and used from ERS-2 when Envisat is being used in a different mode. For example, in the case of oil slick monitoring, Envisat can obtain acquisitions in Wide Swath Mode while ERS-2 provides a more detailed view. This unique capacity is approaching update times of conventional systems, such as the AIS, and is currently unique for satellite surveillance systems.
ERS-2 sets stage for GMES
ERS-2 with its well-defined products and services has an important role to play in the preparation for GMES, building on the established customer base through the generation of policy-relevant services. Until the launch of GMES-dedicated missions, such as Sentinel, the retention of ERS-2 will provide the necessary additional capacity to maintain the uninterrupted data flow that is critical to the programme.
GMES responds to Europe’s needs for geo-spatial information services by bringing together the capacity of Europe to collect and manage data and information on the environment and civil security, for the benefit of European citizens. As the main partner to the European Commission (EC) in GMES, ESA is the implementing agency for the GMES Space Component, which will fulfil the space-based observation requirements in response to European policy priorities.
The GMES Service Element (GSE) has been preparing user organisations in Europe and worldwide for GMES by enabling them to receive and evaluate information services derived from existing EO satellites since 2002.

Adapted from materials provided by European Space Agency.

Barnacle-busting paint makes ships' voyages greener

Scientists have developed a novel way to combat one of the world's stickiest and most expensive maritime problems: the encrusting of ships' hulls by algae and barnacles। They have created a special coating, using nanotechnology, that is engineered to a scale of a millionth of a millimetre. Organisms that try to hitch a ride will simply slip off.The development, announced at the EuroNanoForum in Dusseldorf last week, is important because 'bio-fouling' costs billions of pounds a year, not just to the shipping industry but to private yachtsmen and owners of power and desalination plants whose pipes get blocked by bacteria and barnacles. In addition, ships burn excess fuel with encrusted hulls, increasing carbon emissions; while current anti-fouling paints are thought to harm sealife.'We badly need a new anti-fouling agent and nanotechnology will provide it,' said Frederic Luizi, research director of Nanocyl, a member of the European consortium Ambio.Algae and barnacles have always been maritime scourges. The Greeks used pitch to discourage them while the Romans found copper nails released poisons that helped kill them. Yet the problem has remained a major headache.Once a ship is encrusted, its speed can be reduced by up to 10 per cent, while fuel consumption rises by 40 per cent. The world's shipping fleets spend more than £5bn on the problem annually.

Biocidal paints - which poison anything that adheres to a surface - are often used. But 20 years ago scientists discovered that tributyltin, a key agent, was poisoning marine organisms and triggering sex reversals in creatures like the dog whelk. Now it is banned. Instead, copper-based compounds are used though fears are mounting about their impact and restrictions may soon be introduced. 'Rather than kill organism once they are attached to hulls, we need to prevent them from latching on in the first place,' said Luizi.Some silicone paints do this but have limited efficacy. But by incorporating carbon nanotubes, tiny cylinders of carbon, each a thousand times thinner than a human hair, into paints, scientists have created a material that stops organisms sticking to hulls.'Nanotubes disrupt the paint surface at the molecular level so the glue molecules cannot operate effectively. When the ship moves, the organisms are swept away,' said Professor James Callow, the consortium's co-ordinator.

New Ship Routes Recommended to Avoid Endangered Whales

New Ship Routes Recommended to Avoid Endangered Whales WASHINGTON, DC, November 27, 2006 (ENS) - To lower the chance of shipstrikes with endangered right whales, the National Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministration, NOAA, is urging ship captains to use new recommended routeswhen entering or leaving a number of east coast ports. The new guidance applies to the Florida ports of Jacksonville andFernandina, and Brunswick, Georgia, as well as in Cape Cod Bay offMassachusetts. NOAA says the recommended routes take into account safety and economicimpact to the mariner. Although the routes are voluntary, they will appear on both electronic andpaper NOAA nautical charts no later than November 30. The new designations will help mariners decrease whale strikes by reducingvessel activity in areas frequented by ships and whales. "This is an important part of our ship strike reduction strategy forcritically endangered right whales," said Bill Hogarth, director of the NOAAFisheries Service. "Mariners need to be aware of these voluntary routes before the wintercalving season when pregnant females and females with calves migrate towaters off of Florida and Georgia. With a population so low, even one whaledeath can set back recovery efforts dramatically." North Atlantic right whales are among the most endangered marine mammalpopulations in the world and are highly vulnerable to ship collisions.