Group items tagged

China Port Opens New Mediterranean Route.

64 migrants rescued at sea from open boat.

Ice-class tanker reaches remote port in Russian push to open Arctic Ocean to oil and gas shipments.

Sydney navy base opened to cruise ships.

Will Opening of Expanded Panama Canal Be Delayed?

Expanded Suez Canal Opening to High Hopes, Some Doubts.

Russia says high ice melt opens Arctic trade routes.

Audacious Open-ocean Ambush of Product Tanker in Gulf of Guinea.

Abbot Point coal port open to challenge over tugboat harbour left out of EIS.

The U.S. Coast Guard's Marine Board of Investigations for the El Faro's sinking opened its two-week series of public hearings Tuesday in Jacksonville, Florida, beginning with questions for Mr. Phillip MORRELL, TOTE Services' vice president of marine operations.

Singapore has joined the list of ports that will ban the use of open loop scrubbers in their waters.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Venezuelans stalking open seas as socialist economy collapses.

World's First Globally Available Autonomous Maritime Test Area Opened.

Sanchi's Black Box Opened -Iranian Media.

Tanzania Closes its Open Registry.

Indonesia to open another eight seaports for international trade.

Qatar opens biggest coast guard base.

Vanishing Arctic ice will open the way for more science voyages, analysis suggests.

Iran on track to open new oil terminal outside Gulf.

Most species of whales are vulnerable to vessel collisions, and the probability of lethality increases logistically with vessel speed. An Automatic Identification System (AIS) can provide valuable vessel activity data, but terrestrial-based AIS has a limited spatial range. As the need for open ocean monitoring increases, AIS broadcasts relayed over earth-orbiting satellites, satellite AIS (SAIS), provides a method for expanding the range of AIS broadcast reception. We used SAIS data from 2013 and 2014 to calculate vessel density and speed over ground around the coast of Washington state in the northwestern United States. Nearby shipping lanes connecting the Ports of Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, and in Canada, Vancouver, have the greatest density of vessel traffic arriving and departing. Knowledge of shipping activity is important in this area due to the nearby presence of NOAA designated Cetacean Density and Distribution Working Group's Biologically Important Areas (BIA) for large whale species vulnerable to vessel collisions. We quantified density and speed for each vessel type that transits through BIA's. We found that cargo and tanker vessels traveled the farthest distance at the greatest speeds. As ship-strike risk assessments have traditionally relied on terrestrial AIS, we explored issues in the application of SAIS data. Temporal gaps in SAIS data led to a resulting systematic underestimation of vessel speed in calculated speed over ground. However, SAIS can be helpful in documenting minimum vessel speeds across large geographic areas and across national boundaries, especially beyond the reach of terrestrial AIS receivers. SAIS data can also be useful in examining vessel density at broad scales and could be used to assess basin-wide open ocean routes. Future use of additional satellite platforms with AIS receivers and technological advances will help rectify this issue and improve data coverage and quality.