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In the shadow of alarming global statistics showing a continual increase in the number of piracy and armed robbery attacks against merchant ships, an international gathering of key maritime stakeholders discussed the major risks in a changing threat environment.

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China has published new regulations designating three areas as sulphur control areas effective January 1st 2019. Eleven key ports are allowed to impose requirements for fuel burned at berth as early as January 1st 2016. Mandatory port requirements will go into force January 1st 2017 for all ports in designated areas.

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Updated December 02, 2018 10:09:23 Photo: The giant waterslide at Kulin in WA's Wheatbelt is attracting tourism dollars. (ABC Great Southern: Mark Bennett) As capital cities get bigger and country towns get smaller, the question of how to attract skilled people to regional Australia has never been so pertinent. Key points The tiny town of…

Posted December 02, 2018 09:07:33 Photo: High temperatures are forecast for Sunday. (ABC News: Shelley Lloyd) Residents in bushfire-affected areas of Queensland are being reminded to stay alert, with temperatures in parts of the state set to soar into the mid-40s today. Key points: Fire crews bracing for a testing 24-48 hours, with no rain…

Despite reduced activity in the Western Indian Ocean Region in recent years, pirate networks responsible for the original Somali piracy crisis have sustained themselves through small-scale attacks and involvement in an array of maritime crimes. The spate of attacks over the last few months off the Horn of Africa, apparently triggered by perceived vulnerability in vessels transiting the area, may point to an elevated risk for a return of piracy. This is a key issue raised in the State of Maritime Piracy 2016, published today by Oceans Beyond Piracy (OBP). This annual reportanalyzes the human and economic impacts of maritime piracy and robbery at sea off the Horn of Africa, in the Gulf of Guinea, Asia, and for the first time, Latin America.

As changing climates cause Arctic ice to recede, allowing for more ship traffic, the noise from anchored and moving vessels is another stress on the region's sea life, including a key species in the ecosystem - Arctic cod.

With around 90% of world trade carried by ships, making sure a vessel follows the fastest route has clear economic benefits. By merging measurements from different satellites, ESA is providing key information on ocean currents, which is not only making shipping more efficient but is also helping to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

As underwater noise from ship traffic increases, profound effects on the marine environment highlight the need for improved mitigation measures. One measure, reduction in ship speed, has been shown to be one of the key drivers in reducing sound source levels of vessels. In 2017, a study began to assess the impacts of increasing commercial shipping traffic on sperm whales in Northwest Providence Channel, northern Bahamas, an international trade route that primarily serves the southeast US. Ship data were collected from an Automatic Identification System (AIS) station combined with recordings from an acoustic recorder to measure underwater sound levels and to detect the presence of sperm whales. Here we analyze a subset of these data to opportunistically investigate potential changes in ship traffic before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. These data span one calendar year from October 2019 to October 2020. A pre-COVID-19 dataset of 121 days, from a recorder approximately 2 km from the shipping route was compared to a 134-day dataset collected during COVID-19 from the same site, comprising 2900 and 3181 ten-minute recordings, respectively. A dramatic decrease in ocean noise levels concurrent with changes in shipping activity occurred during the pandemic. The mean pre-COVID-19 power density level in the 111-140 Hz 1/3-octave band was 88.81 dB re 1 μPa (range 81.38-100.90) and decreased to 84.27 dB re 1 μPa (range 78.60-99.51) during COVID-19, equating to a 41% reduction in sound pressure levels (SPL). After differences in seasonal changes in wind speed were accounted for, SPL decreased during the pandemic by 3.98 dB (37%). The most notable changes in ship activity were significantly reduced vessel speeds for all ship types and fewer ships using the area during the pandemic. Vessel speed was highly correlated to SPL and the only ship-based variable that predicted SPLs. Despite the opportunistic nature [i.e., not a standard before-after-control-impact (BACI) stud

Globally, movements of commercial vessels can facilitate the spread of marine non-indigenous species (NIS) beyond their current biogeographic ranges. Authorities at potential destination locations employ a number of biosecurity risk assessment strategies to estimate threat levels from potential origin locations, vulnerability levels of specific destination regions, or the consequences of successful establishment of particular NIS species. Among the many factors and processes that have an influence on the probability that NIS will survive transport and establish successfully at new locations, vessel type has been identified as an important risk factor. Different vessel types have different structural and operational characteristics that affect their overall level of marine biosecurity risk. Several recent studies have examined subsets of vessel types or vessel characteristics for their ability to spread NIS. While high-quality information is available via these endeavors, it is fragmented and not readily available as an integrated resource to support biosecurity regulators or other end-users. In this study, we synthesize available empirical data on a wide range of vessel types and characteristics to develop a framework that allows systematic quantification of the relative risk of NIS transfer by common commercial vessel types. We explain our approach for constructing the framework, from selection of key risk factors for inclusion, to selection of which datasets to use for those risk factors. The framework output is a set of risk scores which denote the relative biosecurity risk of common commercial vessel types. To demonstrate a potential application of our framework, we applied the risk scores to vessel visit data for commercial ports around New Zealand and assigned a relative risk level per port based on the arrival frequencies of different vessel types. The resulting per-port risk levels matched closely with the results of a prior benchmark study that employed sta