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Death toll from Lampedusa shipwreck rises to 18: Italian coast guard.

The hottest commodity in the saga of migrants risking death to reach European shores: decrepit wooden fishing boats. And Italy is asking the United States to supply drones that can identify them before they're packed with refugees and sent across the Mediterranean.

The hottest commodity in the saga of migrants risking death to reach European shores: decrepit wooden fishing boats. And Italy is asking the United States to supply drones that can identify them before they're packed with refugees and sent across the Mediterranean.

The owner of the U.S.cargo ship El Faro that sank in a powerful hurricane off theBahamas nearly a month ago has filed for protection in Florida federal court from claims it is liable for the deaths of its 33crew members.

Brendan Smialowski | AFP | Getty Images President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before walking to Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House November 29, 2018 in Washington, DC. President Donald Trump postponed a Saturday press conference designed to tout the "great success" of the Group of 20 meeting in Argentina, citing…

The death of Venice? City's battles with tourism and flooding reach crisis level.

How ships bring agonising death to last Greek whales.

Death toll in capsized Philippine ferries climbs to 31.

Offshore oil and gas accidents, deaths spike amid TRUMP administration's regulatory rollbacks.

Stricter limits on the sulphur content of shipping fuels are set to improve air quality along European coastlines and reduce the estimated 50,000 premature deaths caused each year by air pollution from ships. Parliament today approved legislation agreed with member states, which requires new general limits to be in place by 2020.

The world's leading maritime nations and representatives of ship owners and seafarers, are to address the issues of abandonment of seafarers and the rapid settlement of claims for compensation in the case of a seafarer's death or long-term disability at the first meeting of a Special Tripartite Committee established under the ILO's Maritime Labour Convention, 2006 (MLC, 2006).

The family of a crew member missing from the El Faro cargo ship is seeking $100 million in a negligence and wrongful death lawsuit against the owners and captain of the ship that sank off the Bahamas in a hurricane two weeks ago.

Unpublished study warns of the global health consequences of delaying by five years a cap on the sulphur content of shipping fuels.

Unpublished study warns of the global health consequences of delaying by five years a cap on the sulphur content of shipping fuels.

Death or injury to whales from vessel strike is one of the primary threats to whale populations worldwide. However, quantifying the rate of occurrence of these collisions is difficult because many incidents are not detected (particularly from large vessels) and therefore go unreported. Furthermore, varying reporting biases occur related to species identification, spatial coverage of reports and type of vessels involved. The International Whaling Commission (IWC) has compiled a database of the worldwide occurrence of vessel strikes to cetaceans, within which Australia constitutes ~7% (35 reports) of the reported worldwide (~471 reports) vessel strike records involving large whales. Worldwide records consist largely of modern reports within the last two decades and historical evaluation of ship strike reports has mainly focused on the Northern Hemisphere. To address this we conducted a search of historical national and international print media archive databases to discover reports of vessel strikes globally, although with a focus on Australian waters. A significant number of previously unrecorded reports of vessel strikes were found for both Australia (76) and worldwide (140), resulting in a revised estimate of ~15% of global vessel strikes occurring in Australian waters. This detailed collation and analysis of vessel strike data in an Australian context has contributed to our knowledge of the worldwide occurrence of vessel strikes and challenges the notion that vessel strikes were historically rare in Australia relative to the rest of the world. The work highlights the need to examine historical records to provide context around current anthropogenic threats to marine fauna and demonstrates the importance of formalized reporting structures for effective collation of vessel strike reports. This paper examines the issues and biases in analysis of vessel strike data in general that would apply to any jurisdiction. Using the Australian data as an example we look at what

Strikes between vessels and cetaceans have significantly increased worldwide in the last decades. The Canary Islands archipelago is a geographical area with an important overlap of high cetacean diversity and maritime traffic, including high-speed ferries. Sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus), currently listed as a vulnerable species, are severely impacted by ship strikes. Nearly 60% of sperm whales' deaths are due to ship strikes in the Canary Islands. In such cases, subcutaneous, muscular and visceral extensive hemorrhages and hematomas, indicate unequivocal antemortem trauma. However, when carcasses are highly autolyzed, it is challenging to distinguish whether the trauma occurred ante- or post-mortem. The presence of fat emboli within the lung microvasculature is used to determine a severe "in vivo" trauma in other species. We hypothesized fat emboli detection could be a feasible, reliable and accurate forensic tool to determine ante-mortem ship strikes in stranded sperm whales, even in decomposed carcasses. In this study, we evaluated the presence of fat emboli by using an osmium tetroxide (OsO4)-based histochemical technique in lung tissue of 24 sperm whales, 16 of them with evidence of ship strike, stranded and necropsied in the Canaries between 2000 and 2017. About 70% of them presented an advanced autolysis. Histological examination revealed the presence of OsO4-positive fat emboli in 13 out of the 16 sperm whales with signs of ship strike, and two out of eight of the "control" group, with varying degrees of abundance and distribution. A classification and regression tree was developed to assess the cut off of fat emboli area determining the high or low probability for diagnosing ship-strikes, with a sensitivity of 89% and a specificity of 100%. The results demonstrated: (1) the usefulness of fat detection as a diagnostic tool for "in vivo" trauma, even in decomposed tissues kept in formaldehyde for long periods of time; and (2) that, during

IOM reports that 16,927 migrants and refugees entered Europe by sea in 2017 through 1 March, about 80 percent arriving in Italy and the rest in Spain and Greece. This compares with 132,743 through the first 60 days of 2016.

The Protocol on Environmental Protection of the Antarctic Treaty stipulates that the protection of the Antarctic environment and associated ecosystems be fundamentally considered in the planning and conducting of all activities in the Antarctic Treaty area. One of the key pollutants created by human activities in the Antarctic is noise, which is primarily caused by ship traffic (from tourism, fisheries, and research), but also by geophysical research (e.g., seismic surveys) and by research station support activities (including construction). Arguably, amongst the species most vulnerable to noise are marine mammals since they specialize in using sound for communication, navigation and foraging, and therefore have evolved the highest auditory sensitivity among marine organisms. Reported effects of noise on marine mammals in lower-latitude oceans include stress, behavioral changes such as avoidance, auditory masking, hearing threshold shifts, and-in extreme cases-death. Eight mysticete species, 10 odontocete species, and six pinniped species occur south of 60°S (i.e., in the Southern or Antarctic Ocean). For many of these, the Southern Ocean is a key area for foraging and reproduction. Yet, little is known about how these species are affected by noise. We review the current prevalence of anthropogenic noise and the distribution of marine mammals in the Southern Ocean, and the current research gaps that prevent us from accurately assessing noise impacts on Antarctic marine mammals. A questionnaire given to 29 international experts on marine mammals revealed a variety of research needs. Those that received the highest rankings were (1) improved data on abundance and distribution of Antarctic marine mammals, (2) hearing data for Antarctic marine mammals, in particular a mysticete audiogram, and (3) an assessment of the effectiveness of various noise mitigation options. The management need with the highest score was a refinement of noise exposure criteria. Environment