After graduating the Catholic University of America in 2005 with a B.S.B.A. in Finance, Mike went on to Tahoe to help with the launch of gCaptain's sister site, UnofficialSquaw.com. In June of 2008 Mike joined gCaptain.com as the first full-time employee in charge of sales and marketing and the day-to-day operations of gCaptain.com and Unofficial Networks, LLC.
Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood was in San Diego on February 5th to speak at a Town Hall meeting with port leaders from around the country at the first ever “National Port Summit”.
After his speech I had a brief meeting with him to specifically discuss MarAd’s “Marine Highway Program” and was also able to share with him some of the initiatives and progress the AMH advocacy website has made since launching in February, 2009.
During our meeting we discussed the obvious benefits of Marine Highways such as the energy savings, pollution reduction, congestion mitigation and safety. I also pointed out how the benefits of ‘Marine Highways’ naturally meshed with the President’s top transportation priorities: improving transportation safety, investing for the future, and promoting livable communities, which he had just testified about a couple of days prior to our meeting. One thing that really grabbed his attention was some of the eye-popping stats I shared with him comparing the safety of using water versus its other modal counterparts. Although I’m sure he already knew the safety advantages, he commented that this information “needed to get out there”.
The Secretary was very gracious and accommodating and said I could follow up after our meeting with a few questions I had for him about his views on the future of “America’s Marine Highways”.
After a month with just a few minor obstacles to overcome, such as “Snowmaggedon”, a DOT furlough, etc., I’ve received his answers and they are listed below. (I only bring up the delay because one of the questions was regarding the TIGER Grants which were yet to be announced.)” [Continue Reading →]
Part of the Milstein Science Series At The American Museum of Natural History
WHEN: Sunday, March 14, noon–4 pm
WHERE: Milstein Hall of Ocean Life, first floor – The American Museum of Natural History
WHAT:
In 2008 Marcus Eriksen sailed 2,600 miles from California to Hawaii on a raft made from 15,000 plastic bottles to raise awareness of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. He recently returned from a voyage through the Sargasso Sea, researching plastic debris trapped in the rotating North Atlantic gyre in the Atlantic Ocean.
Join Dr. Eriksen, director of research and education at California’s Algalita Marine Research Foundation, as he discusses the severe impact of plastic marine pollution in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Learn about the research he conducted on his voyages, see samples of the plastic debris he discovered, and find out what you can do to help solve the world-wide problem of plastic waste.
Moderating the afternoon will be Eugenia Naro-Maciel, marine biodiversity scientist at the Museum’s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation (CBC), who will discuss her own research on the effects of pollution on Sea Turtles. Wildlife expert Jarod Miller will have live animals threatened by plastic debris.
Are you going? Send in a review of the event for a free gCaptain t-shirt. Send reviews to info@gcaptain.com or by posting your review to this thread in the gCaptain forum
Wärtsilä, in consortium with IMS Ingenieurgesellschaft mbH, has been engaged by RWE Innogy, the renewable energy arm of the German utility company RWE, as its designer to provide the basic design and consultancy services for a jack up crane vessel. Two such vessels with GL class-approval have been ordered by RWE Innogy to be used for constructing offshore wind farms. The shipbuilding contracts have been awarded to Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co. Ltd. (DSME), and delivery of the vessels is scheduled for late 2011.
Tailored specifically for year-round construction of offshore wind farms, the Wärtsilä-IMS advanced jack-up crane vessel is designed to remain operational under harsh Northern European sea and wind conditions. It also sets new standards for reliability and environmentally sound operation.
The basic design by Wärtsilä-IMS takes into account the specialised needs involved for the construction of offshore wind farms. The vessels are 100 metres long and 40 metres wide, and feature an 800-ton crane for transporting and handling the foundations for the latest generation of up to 5MW and 6 MW offshore wind turbines, as well as the turbine towers, nacelles, rotors and blades. The vessels have sufficient deck area and deadweight capacity to carry the components for up to four complete wind turbine units or several foundations. For operation in shallow water, a four-point mooring system is used, while in deeper waters a DP2 dynamic positioning system controlling steerable thrusters is employed.
The vessels are designated to undertake foundation and turbine installation at RWE Innogy’s currently planned wind farms – “North Sea East”, “Innogy North Sea 1” and “Gwynt y Môr”.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — It looks like ice — but this ice could one day be used to heat your home.
It’s actually not ice at all, but crystallized natural gas, and if scientists can figure out how to harvest it cheaply enough, it could become a vast new source of energy available in just about every country in the world.
The big advantage to these crystals, known as methane hydrates, are their abundance. They are found beneath the sea floor off every continent, and under the arctic tundra.
Plus, they’re estimated to hold twice as much carbon as all the known reserves of oil, coal and natural gas combined.
“The potential is enough to power humanity from now until the asteroid hits,” said Peter Tertzakian, chief energy economist at ARC Financial, a Calgary-based private equity firm.
But citing cost and the abundance of conventional natural gas, Tertzakian said this resource will likely “remain on the margins” for two or three decades.
STOCKHOLM – A gas company building an underwater pipeline in the Baltic Sea has found a dozen centuries-old shipwrecks – some of them unusually well preserved.
The oldest wreck probably dates to medieval times and could be up to 800 years old, while the others may be from the 17th to 19th centuries, Peter Norman of Sweden’s National Heritage Board said yesterday.
“They could be interesting, but we have only seen pictures of their exterior. Many of them are considered to be fully intact. They look very well preserved,’’ Norman said.
Thousands of wrecks – from medieval ships to warships sunk during the world wars of the 20th century – have been found in the Baltic Sea, which doesn’t have the ship worm that destroys wooden wrecks in saltier oceans.
The latest discovery was made during a search east of the Swedish island of Gotland by the Nord Stream consortium, which is building a 750-mile pipeline between Russia and Germany.
The 12 wrecks were found in a 30-mile-long, 1.2-mile-wide corridor, according to a Nord Stream spokeswoman.
The Heritage Board said three have intact hulls and are upside down at a depth of 430 feet.
It’s unclear whether any of them will be salvaged, but the board said it hopes divers will explore them.
Yesterday we showed you maps of the tsunami created by the February 27th 8.8 magnitude Chilean earthquake. Today we follow up with a collection of videos of the actual tsunami as it reached shores along the Pacific. All videos are aggregated by the International Tsunami Information Centre.
An International Post-Tsunami Field Survey is being coordinated by UNESCO Santiago, ITIC, and local scientists. This Survey will officially start on Monday, March 8. For more information contact the ITIC Director, Laura Kong (l.kong@unesco.org)
The 27 February 2010 magnitude 8.8 Chilean earthquake and tsunami caused damage and over 700 deaths in the coastal regions of central Chile. Following the earthquake, the NOAA Tsunami Warning Centers issued warnings for locations all over the Pacific from Antarctica to Seward, Alaska. As a result of the warnings, although tsunami waves of between 3-6 feet and strong currents were observed in many locations, no lives were lost outside of the epicentral region. Unfortunately, lives were lost due to the tsunami in Pelluhue and Dichato in central Chile and on Robinson Crusoe Island located near the epicenter. The highest tsunami amplitudes, of several meters, were observed in the Juan Fernandez Islands and Talcahuano, Chile. Information is still being gathered and assessed.
According to the National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC, http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/hazard/) Global Historical Event databases, this is the largest instrumental earthquake observed in Chile since the 1960 magnitude 9.5 Valdivia earthquake and tsunami that killed over 1,200 people, including 60 deaths in Hawaii. Globally, this is the 6th largest instrumental earthquake and one of 280 deadly tsunamis.
The U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort pulled up anchor Tuesday in Port-au-Prince and began the long trip home to Baltimore, ending its role in Operation Unified Response-Haiti.
The ship’s departure brings to a close a dramatic naval mission launched three days after the Haitian earthquake Jan. 12, when the ship’s crew ended scheduled maintenance midway and set sail to provide medical relief to a nation whose hospitals and clinics lay in ruins.
From Jan. 19 to Feb. 27, doctors treated nearly 1,000 patients, performed 843 surgeries, carried out 37 amputations, repaired dozens of bone fractures and delivered nine babies, says Capt. James Ware, the ship’s commanding officer. By late February, Ware says in an e-mail, the Haitian government began working with the Pan American Health Organization and other groups to improve the medical care on shore “with the ambition of building back to pre-earthquake medical levels.”
White House spokesman Tommy Vietor says the time has come to call the Comfort home. “The doctors on the USNS Comfort did a heroic job treating patients following the earthquake in Haiti and provided essential short-term support, but the Comfort is not a long-term solution,” he says.
NEW YORK (TheStreet) — About half a decade after the first maritime shipping concerns sold shares to the public on U.S. stock exchanges, another fleet of IPOs is preparing to set sail into the capital markets of New York.
Kicking it off on Wednesday is the expected pricing of two new issues — an owner of dry-bulk vessels called Baltic Trading and an oil-tanker outfit called, straight-forwardly enough, Crude Carriers.
Both names have established provenances. Baltic, which will trade under the symbol BALT, was formed by Peter Georgiopoulos, the impresario behind the tanker operator General Maritime(GMR) (the first shipping company to go public on the New York Stock Exchange, back in 2001), as well as the dry-bulk ship owner Genco Shipping & Trading(GNK) and the ship-fuel transporter Aegean Marine(ANW).
Crude Carriers, which will trade under the ticker CRU, was formed by Capital Maritime & Trading, a privately held Greek company that owns and manages tankers as well as dry-bulk carriers. Capital Maritime is the baby of Evangelos Marinkais, who also took public Capital Product Partners(CPLP) in 2007 on Nasdaq. Capital Product owns 19 of the kind of tankers that carry wet cargoes other than petroleum, known in the industry as “product tankers.”
Yet another shipper filed a prospectus in February: Scorpio, an Italian shipping group, hopes to float shares of its fleet of three Panamax chemical tankers under the name Scorpio Tankers.
Some observers have wondered at the timing of this latest IPO push. The first wave occurred during boom times, when global trade was brisk and shipping rates high. Not so in early 2010; only a year ago, the marine transport business had fallen to its lowest ebb in decades. Rates cratered and share prices in the sector have yet to recover.
This post is brought to us by Peter Mello of Sea-fever.org (via NOAA), in two seperate installments. The first post a map of Ocean Energy Distribution Map from Chile Earthquake Tsunami (shown above). Peter writes:
8.2-foot tsunami wave expected to strike Hilo, Hawaii 11:05 a.m. local time (4:05 p.m. ET) according to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. Tsunami advisory extended to Oregon, Washington, parts of Alaska, coastal British Colombia by West Coast Alaska Tsunami Warning Center
This YOUblog featured article was submitted by one of gCaptain’s top contributors, Ordinaryseaman, otherwise known as Anthony, who was recently accepted to PMI’s Workboat Mate Program.
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Howdy everyone!
For those who don’t know, PMI and their sister school MITAGS offer an excellent program for entry level and experienced mariners to obtain a mate’s license aboard tugs, research vessels, OSV’s, and small cruise ships. The 2 year program alternates classroom training and working aboard vessels in a format that lets you get your mate’s license in much less time – and for much less money – than the typical “hawsepipe” system of working your way up the ladder. More information can be found at www.workboatacademy.com
This is the first post in a series detailing my experiences as a cadet at Pacific Maritime Institute in Seattle Washington. My hope is to give those considering becoming a cadet some insight into what it’s like to be a cadet. I will try to post as often as my tight schedule of school, studying, and working a night job allows. Feel free to PM or email me with any questions you may have – Anthony
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