The Herald | Take to 'High Seas' with new Indian Land mini-golf course opening soon The Herald High Seas Miniature Golf at 10001 Charlotte Highway will feature a pirate-themed course. The nautical theme is designed to look like a deserted island, and includes 18-holes in and around a pirate ship, a waterfall, tree houses and several lagoons. |
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Take to 'High Seas' with new Indian Land mini-golf course opening soon - The Herald
And so, the negotiations need to answer critical questions. How will marine protected areas be chosen? How much of the ocean will be set aside as sanctuaries? Will extraction of all marine resources be prohibited from those reserves as so-called no-take areas or will some human activity be allowed? Not least, how will the new reserve protections be enforced?
Russia, for instance, objected to using the phrase long term conservation efforts in the document that came out of the latest negotiations in July, instead preferring time-bound measures. The Maldives, speaking for island nations, argued that new treaty negotiations were urgent to protect biodiversity.
Several countries, especially those that have made deals with their marine neighbors about what is allowed in their shared international waters, want regional fishing management bodies to take the lead in determining marine protected areas on the high seas. Others say a patchwork of regional bodies, usually dominated by powerful countries, is insufficient, because they tend to agree only on the least restrictive standards. (The United States Mission to the United Nations declined to comment.)
The new treaty negotiations could begin as early as 2018. The General Assembly, made up of 193 countries, will ultimately make the decision.
A hint of the tough diplomacy that lies ahead came last year over the creation of the worlds largest marine protected area in the international waters of the Ross Sea. Countries that belong to the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, a regional organization, agreed by consensus to designate a 600,000-square-mile area as a no-fishing zone. It took months of pressure on Moscow, including an intervention by John F. Kerry, then the United States secretary of state.
The discussions around marine protected areas on the high seas may also offer the planet a way to guard against some of the effects of global warming. There is growing scientific evidence that creating large, undisturbed sanctuaries can help marine ecosystems and coastal populations cope with climate change effects, like sea-level rise, more intense storms, shifts in the distribution of species and ocean acidification.
Not least, creating protected areas can also allow vulnerable species to spawn and migrate, including to areas where fishing is allowed.
Fishing on the high seas, often with generous government subsidies, is a multibillion-dollar industry, particularly for high-value fish like the Chilean sea bass and bluefin tuna served in luxury restaurants around the world. Ending fishing in some vulnerable parts of the high seas is more likely to affect large, well-financed trawlers. It is less likely to affect fishermen who do not have the resources to venture into the high seas, said Carl Gustaf Lundin, director of the global marine program at the International Union for Conservation of Nature. In fact, Mr. Lundin said, marine reserves could help to restore dwindling fish stocks.
High-seas fishing is not nearly as productive as it used to be. Its not worth the effort, he said. Weve knocked out most of the catches.
Currently, a small but growing portion of the ocean is set aside as reserves. Most of them have been designated by individual countries the latest is off the coast of the Cook Islands, called Marae Moana or as in the case of the Ross Sea, by groups of countries. A treaty, if and when it goes into effect, would scale up those efforts: Advocates want 30 percent of the high seas to be set aside, while the United Nations development goals, which the nations of the world have already agreed to, propose to protect at least 10 percent of international waters.
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Nations Will Start Talks to Protect Fish of the High Seas - New York Times
After two years of talks, UN diplomats have recommended starting treaty negotiations to create marine protected areas (MPAs) in waters beyond national jurisdiction, reports the Straights Times.
Late last month countries worldwide tookthe first step to protect the high seas, and in turn begin the high-stakes diplomatic jostling over how much to protect and how to enforce rules.
"The high seas are the biggest reserve of biodiversity on the planet," Fiji's ambassador Peter Thomson, the current president of the UN General Assembly, said in an interview after the negotiations. "We can't continue in an ungoverned way if we are concerned about protecting biodiversity and protecting marine life."
But abroad range of interests are in play.Russian and Norwegian vessels go to the high seas for krill fishing; Japanese and Chinese vessels go there for tuna. India and China are exploring the seabed in international waters for valuable minerals.
Some countries resist the creation of a new governing body to regulate the high seas, arguing that existing regional organizations and rules are sufficient.
The negotiations must also still answer critical questions. How will marine protected areas be chosen? How much of the ocean will be set aside as sanctuaries? Will extraction of all marine resources be prohibited from those reserves -- as so-called no-take areas -- or will some human activity be allowed? Not least, how will the new reserve protections be enforced?
Russia, for instance, objected to using the phrase "long-term" conservation efforts in the document that came out of the latest negotiations in July, instead preferring time-bound measures.
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UN diplomats recommend start to high seas MPAs negotiations - Undercurrent News
NEW YORK More than half of the world's oceans belong to no one, which often makes their riches ripe for plunder.
Now, countries worldwide have taken the first step to protect the precious resources of the high seas. Late last month, after two years of talks, UN diplomats recommended starting treaty negotiations to create marine protected areas in waters beyond national jurisdiction - and in turn, begin the high-stakes diplomatic jostling over how much to protect and how to enforce rules.
"The high seas are the biggest reserve of biodiversity on the planet," Fiji's ambassador Peter Thomson, the current president of the United Nations General Assembly, said in an interview after the negotiations. "We can't continue in an ungoverned way if we are concerned about protecting biodiversity and protecting marine life."
Without a new global system to regulate all human activity on the high seas, those international waters remain "a pirate zone", he said.
Lofty ambitions, though, are likely to collide with hard-knuckled diplomatic bargaining.
Some countries resist the creation of a new governing body to regulate the high seas, arguing that existing regional organisations and rules are sufficient.
The commercial interests are powerful. Russian and Norwegian vessels go to the high seas for krill fishing; Japanese and Chinese vessels go there for tuna. India and China are exploring the seabed in international waters for valuable minerals.
Many countries are loath to adopt new rules that would constrain them.
So, the negotiations must answer critical questions. How will marine protected areas be chosen? How much of the ocean will be set aside as sanctuaries? Will extraction of all marine resources be prohibited from those reserves - as so-called no-take areas - or will some human activity be allowed? Not least, how will the new reserve protections be enforced? Russia, for instance, objected to using the phrase "long-term" conservation efforts in the document that came out of the latest negotiations in July, instead preferring time-bound measures.
The Maldives, speaking for island nations, argued that new treaty negotiations were urgently needed to protect biodiversity. Several countries, especially those that have made deals with marine neighbours about what is allowed in their shared international waters, want regional fishing management bodies to take the lead in determining marine protected areas.
Others say a patchwork of regional bodies, usually dominated by powerful countries, is insufficient, because they tend to agree only on the least restrictive standards.
The new treaty talks could begin as early as next year. The General Assembly, made up of 193 countries, will ultimately make the decision.
Fishing on the high seas, often with generous government subsidies, is a multibillion-dollar industry, particularly for high-value fish like the Chilean sea bass and bluefin tuna served in luxury restaurants worldwide. Ending fishing in some vulnerable parts of the high seas is more likely to affect large, well-financed trawlers.
It is less likely to affect fishermen without the resources to venture into the high seas. In fact, marine reserves could help to restore dwindling fish stocks.
NYTIMES
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Nations hope to protect fish of the high seas - The Straits Times
The United Nations has advanced a step closer to an international treaty to protect marine life on the high seas, with an aim of setting up a mechanism for creating marine protected areas in areas beyond national jurisdictions.
International waters outside countries exclusive economic zones make up 60 percent of the ocean and cover almost half of the surface of the earth. The waters are rife with marine life, including many threatened species, but are subject to little governance.
The new treaty would update the 35-year-old United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea by adding provisions for marine conservation.
In the last several decades, the array of human-caused threats to the ocean has surged. Fishing pressures have increased, noise from heavy ships disrupts marine mammals, gyres of plastic waste swirl and oil spills slick the waters. Additionally, rising ocean temperatures and higher acidity resulting from humanitys carbon emissions threaten whole ecosystems.
UNCLOS was negotiated at a time when we could not foresee the human footprint stretching into the deep ocean or the high seas, and so it left this vast expanse of ocean unprotected, Peggy Kalas, the coordinator of the High Seas Alliance, told SeafoodSource. We need the new treaty to close this gap.
Passing a treaty update is a long and complicated process, Kalas said. In July, a preparatory committee recommended advancing to an Intergovernmental Conference, which is the body that would debate the actual treaty text. The United Nations General Assembly needs to approve the Intergovernmental Conference, which could convene as soon as 2018. A couple of years of negotiations would follow, and the U.N. could finalize a new treaty as soon as the end of 2019.
Though the decades-old UNCLOS treaty addresses deep-sea mining and freedom of the high seas in areas beyond national jurisdictions, it doesnt address biodiversity. At the time, scientists had barely discovered some of the most exotic deep-sea habitats and creatures, such as undersea vents and organisms that dont depend on sunlight.
Human pressures on marine life have since ramped up, with technology enabling fishing farther and deeper than previously imagined. When the UNCLOS treaty was first enacted in 1982, humanity was catching roughly two million metric tons of fish per year, according to Douglas McCauley, an ecologist and conservation biologist at University of California, Santa Barbara. Today, catches are closer to five million MT.
We are fishing on the high seas with more tech and more power than ever before, McCauley told SeafoodSource. The biggest trawler today is a vessel of about 14,000 gross MT. There was nothing like that on the sea several decades ago.
Climate change threatens fisheries, and the seafood they provide; the ocean has absorbed more than 90 percent of the heat from man-made climate change. The cost of rising temperatures and more acidic waters could be dire: one study pegged the cost to global fisheries under a high carbon dioxide emissions scenario at USD 10 billion (EUR 8.5 billion) in annual revenue, McCauley said.
Advocates say that marine protected areas and a mechanism for creating them in the new treaty are needed to allow fish and other organisms a protected space to adapt to fast-changing marine conditions.
By increasing the productivity of marine life, large reserves would reduce the risk of localized extinction and increase population sizes, thereby increasing resilience to stress and promoting adaptation, Gladys Martinez, an attorney with the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense, a pan-American advocacy group, told SeafoodSource.
Like the international Paris Climate Accord that most of the worlds nations agreed to in November 2015, an updated high seas treaty would demonstrate collective commitment to tackling an environmental threat to the global commons, Martinez said. But unlike the Paris agreement, the high seas treaty would not specifically address climate change-causing carbon emissions.
The road to an updated high seas treaty will be long, with potential opposition from the fishing industry and deep-sea energy developers, Martinez said.
These industries have greatly benefited from the lack of international regulations, so it is in their interest to preserve the status quo as much as possible, she said.
Negotiators will also have to overcome ignorance about the importance and value of the high seas and the risks of failing to act, Kristina Gjerde, the senior high seas advisor at the International Union for Conservation of Nature, told SeafoodSource. But international collaboration on marine science will help overcome that, Gjerde added.
Marine protected areas, a more standardized process for assessing environmental impacts and scientific capacity building and sharing will all be needed to address the gaps left in the UNCLOS, Gjerde said.
What the (UNCLOS) drafters did not envisage was the cascade of cumulative impacts now assaulting our ocean that requires a more coherent, comprehensive and coordinated response, Gjerde said.
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Treaty to enable high seas marine protected areas takes step forward - SeafoodSource (blog)
It will be levied at the time of Customs clearance
New Delhi, August 2:
High-sea sale transactions or imports will attract Integrated Goods and Services Tax (IGST) only once at the hands of last importer on the final price of the item, said the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC).
The clarity was need as it was impacting imports in many crucial sectors such as power and telecom.
The GST Council has already decided that IGST on high-sea sale transactions of imported goods, whether one or multiple, shall be levied and collected only at the time of importation that is when the import declarations are filed before the Customs authorities for the customs clearance purposes for the first time, said the CBEC, adding that the IGST would be levied on the final value of the product.
However, the importer or the last buyer in the chain would be required to furnish the entire chain of documents such as original invoice, high-seas-sales-contract, details of service charges and commission paid to establish a link between the first contracted price of the goods and the last transaction, it added.
High-sea sales of imported goods are akin to inter-State transactions, stressed the CBEC. Under GST laws, IGST, which is refundable, is levied on imports and exports.
The confusion had arisen as high-sea sale transactions or such imports go through multiple buyers, where in the original importer sells the goods to a third person before the goods are entered for customs clearance.
Questions had arisen both within industry and tax officials whether IGST would be levied for each transaction, which would make it cumbersome and expensive.
Tax experts welcomed the move but said that the government also needs to clarify whether such sales would exempt on the hands of the high-seas seller and consequently trigger the reversal of input credit.
There was lot of confusion in the industry on the taxability of high-seas sale i.e. whether it is taxable twice or only once in the hands of the ultimate importer, said Abhishek Jain, Tax Partner, EY.
According to Pratik Jain, Partner and Leader Indirect Tax, PwC: It states that IGST would only apply in the hands of ultimate importer and the sales made by intermediary company would not be liable.
(This article was published on August 2, 2017)
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High-sea sales to attract IGST only once, clarifies CBEC - Hindu Business Line
As the human population continues to rise and the amount of industry increases, almost no part of the globe feels the burdens of this activity more than the oceans. Whether its temperature change, oxygen or carbon dioxide content, or other characteristics, the study of the oceans will continue to be an ongoing scientific endeavor. The one main issue, though, is just how big the oceans really are. To study them in-depth will require robots, and for that reason [Mike] has created an autonomous boat.
This boat is designed to be 3D printed in sections, making it easily achievable for anyone with access to a normal-sized printer. The boat uses the uses the APM autopilot system and Rover firmware making it completely autonomous. Waypoints can be programmed in, and the boat will putter along to its next destination and perform whatever tasks it has been instructed. The computer is based on an ESP module,and the vessel has a generously sized payload bay.
While the size of the boat probably limits its ability to cross the Pacific anytime soon, its a good platform for other bodies of water and potentially a building block for larger ocean-worthy ships that might have an amateur community behind them in the future. In fact, non-powered vessels that sail the high seas are already a reality.
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Playbill is thrilled to announce that Tony nominee Carmen Cusack will join the ninth voyage of Playbill Travels Broadway on the High Seas in 2018.
Previously scheduled to perform on Broadway on the Danube River with Michael Feinstein this November, Cusack will now reprise her leading role in Bright Star at Los Angeles Ahmanson Theatrethe performance for which she earned her Tony nod.
But Playbill Travel will still see the talents of the woman who has played such roles as Nellie Forbush in South Pacific, Elphaba in Wicked, Dot in Sunday in the Park With George, Fantine in Les Misrables, and more. Cusack will instead climb aboard Ponants five-star expedition yacht Le Solal in July 2018 alongside previously announced performers Drama Desk nominee Sierra Boggess, Tony nominee Jarrod Spector, Tony nominee Rob McClure, four-time Tony nominee Judy Kuhn, and two-time Tony winner Christine Ebersole. Sirius XM radio host and Playbill columnist Seth Rudetsky returns as Chatterbox host and music director.
Having served over 1,000 passengers across visits to the most stunning locales on the planet (from the coast of Italy to the Caribbean, from the jungle of Vietnam to the isles of Greece), Playbill Travel combines the best of Broadway talent with the epitome in fine dining and accommodations. On this journey to Iceland, visitors will experience the richness of Icelandic culture and the breathtaking natural sites of the Arctic Circle by day and the intimate solo shows of stage greats by night.
From Reykjavik, the worlds most northerly capital, sail the rugged fjrds of northwest Iceland; see the fabulous wildlife and Atlantic puffin in colonies on Grimsey Island; visit the small Icelandic town of Akureyri before venturing to nearby Lake Myvatn and the astonishing Godafoss waterfall; and call at Heimaey Island, home to the infamous Eldfell volcano.
For booking and inquiries please visit PlaybillTravel.com.
If you cannot wait until July 2018 to experience the unparalleled experience in entertainment and exploration that Playbill Travel has to offer, join us on the Rhine River August 1320 or on the Danube River November 310. For travel and talent details visit PlaybillTravel.com.
Playbills first-ever river cruise sails from May 2128.
LOVE THE THEATRE? CHECK OUT THE PLAYBILL STORE FOR MERCHANDISE!
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Tony Nominee Carmen Cusack Joins Playbill Travel's Broadway on the High Seas: Iceland - Playbill.com
Inexpensive seafood can come at a high price. To make as much money as possible, its not uncommon for fishing vessels to spend more than a year at sea, fishing continuously, without supervision; some vessels spend as much as 525 straight days at sea, and others have logged 503 continuous days. This practice is only possible due to transshipment the high-seas transfer of seafood catches between ships and global fish stocks and human rights are taking the hit.
The U.S. is the worldssecond largest market for seafood. Americans eat almost 16 pounds a year each, spending $96 billion (and that doesnt include fish used in pet food). But 90 percent of that seafood is imported, and the odds are good that it was passed from one ship to another in international waters, where a whole range of illegal things may have happened.
Transshipment takes place when large fishing boats unload their catches to refrigerated cargo vessels, also known as reefers. Its technically legal, and provides a cost-effective method for fishing boats to remain at sea and prolong their fishing trips without needing to head to port between catches. But because transshipment often happens far from monitoring eyes, it also has beenlinked to illegal, unreported and unregulated (commonly referred to as IUU) fishing, along with human trafficking, slavery and other criminal endeavors, including drug and illegal wildlife trade.
IUU fishing encompasses a grab bag of activities, not all strictly illegal. Fishing is illegal if it breaks national fishery laws or international fishing agreements examples include fishing in prohibited areas or using illegal equipment. Unreported and unregulated fishing activities arent necessarily illicit it might mean fishing in unregulated waters, or not reporting discarded fish. Illegal fishing can be difficult to accurately assess, but estimates say its responsible for $23 billion in economic losses.
Illegal fishing can be difficult to accurately assess, but estimates say its responsible for $23 billion in economic losses.
In an effort to curb IUU, safeguard sovereign fish stocks and strengthen ecological protections, NGOs and governments have taken an increasing global focus on transshipment practices in recent years. And several new projects are using technology to create the biggest and most accurate picture of transshipment to date.
Until recently, there was no global data on transshipment. A patchwork of regulation means there is no cohesive strategy and oversight, and no regulation that clearly explains what transshipment should and shouldnt do, said Tony Long, director of theEnd Illegal Fishing Project at the Pew Charitable Trusts.
"Different countries have different resources and different capacities, and some have signed up to some agreements, some to other agreements, and some have signed up to none at all," said Long. "So its an absolute playground for anyone who wants to take advantage of that situation." Additionally, many transshipment reefers fly underFlags of Convenience, meaning theyre intentionally registered in foreign countries with lax regulations, a practice linked to problems ranging from labor abuses to safety violations.
Arecent paper published in the journal Marine Policy examined high-seas transshipment (in ocean areas outside of territorial waters or exclusive economic zones) and regulations in 17 regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs), and assessed the potential advantages of stopping the practice altogether. While there have been more regulations created in the last 20 years and improved enforcement, according to the studys lead author, Christopher Ewell, there also has been a "huge influx into the high seas by fishing fleets. As coastal waters have become overexploited, theyve ventured off into the open ocean. People call it the 'the last frontier.'"
This uptick in open ocean activity has prompted a slew of new tracking efforts, including The Pew Charitable Trusts project managed by OceanMind (originally Eyes on the Seas), Fish-i and Global Fishing Watch.
Global Fishing Watch was launched in 2016, and is a collaboration between conservation nonprofits Oceana and SkyTruth and Google. It uses automatic identification system (AIS) messages the tracking system most ships have onboard to avoid at-sea collisions to track commercial fishing and uncover possible transshipping events. The organization created a database of refrigerated cargo vessels and then analyzed ship movements and behaviors to identify likely transshipments. The project has created the most comprehensive picture of ocean fishing ship movements to date.
John Amos founded Shepherdstown, West Virginia-based SkyTruth in 2001 to use satellite and aerial imagery to monitor environmental issues. (The organization revealed the full extent of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010.) Global Fishing Watch came about after Google invited SkyTruth to explore ways of combining SkyTruths expertise with Googles technology, including the companys cloud infrastructure, for ocean conservation. Separately, Oceana approached Google with interest in also using AIS data, and Google connected the two organizations.
Global Fishing Watch just released the first round of results. It gathered 21 billion AIS messages broadcasted between 2012 and 2016, and mapped 91,555 potential and likely instances of transshipment.
Despite the increased attention to IUU fishing and human rights issues on boats, transshipment hasnt been banned in most places.
"As we worked with the data, we realized we could tell in many cases what a vessel was up to based on way the vessels were moving on the water," said Amos. "It didnt really hit home until we put their AIS data broadcast on a map."
Lacey Malarky, an analyst of illegal fishing and seafood fraud at Oceana, and co-author of a report based on Global Fishing Watch data,"No More Hiding at Sea: Transshipping Exposed," said that collecting this data at a global scale hasnt been possible until now.
The biggest remaining challenge, however, is that boats can turn off AIS systems, meaning these results only provide a conservative estimate. "This data is just showing fishing vessels and refrigerated cargo vessels that had their AIS on, so its likely transshipping is happening on a much larger scale," said Malarky.
Vessel monitoring systems (VMS) are another type of vessel tracking technology, but these are proprietary, expensive, and the data is usually kept private. Indonesia recently announced that it would be the first country to make all its flagged vesselsVMS data public, and its included in Global Fishing Watch data. Peru followed with a commitment to make its VMS data public.
Governments benefit from sharing this information because it can help monitor their own waters by increasing access to shipping data and put more eyes on vessel activity. In Indonesia, it could help make the countrys recent fishing reforms more lasting. "VMS data is an obvious way to give the public the ability to engage and monitor whats happening and have the public participate in exerting Indonesian sovereignty of Indonesian waters," said SkyTruths Amos.
Despite the increased attention to IUU fishing andhuman rights issues on boats, transshipment hasnt been banned in most places. To date, only one regional fishery management organization has instituted a total ban, and six have partial bans. The biggest concern is the economic losses that could be incurred by making vessels return to port. And, as Ewell points out, the voting members of many management organizations are the heads of fishing companies. However, while ecological conservation and labor problems may not be at the forefront of their decisions, they tend to be sensitive to market forces.
"As those companies face pressures based on consumer activism or increased attention around this issue, there could be a shift towards these kinds of bans," said Ewell.
The best hope for cleaning up transshipment, said Pews Long, is to focus on the seafood economy, beginning with the markets. Explaining how illegal transshipping transactions potentially could taint every step of their supply chain, thereby putting their companies at risk, could persuade fishing companies to voluntarily commit to ethical transshipping contract terms.
The next step would be to convince policy-makers to comply as well, which is what thePort State Measures Agreement does, effectively creating a system of premium ports that commit to step up their patrolling for and seizure of IUU catches. (Japan recently ratified the agreement; the most populartransshipping ports have not.)
The good news is that some big companies are paying attention to transshipment. Nestl, Mars and Thai Union which brings Chicken of the Sea tuna to American grocery store shelves and also provides fish products for major pet food brands are a few major companies that have pledged to improve supply chain transparency and "reduce or eliminate" transshipped products.
The Global Fishing Watch site is free to the public, designed with the goal of making this information available to anyone who needs it, including curious consumers. Oceanas Malarky hopes the tool takes off.
"We hope everyday citizens use it to become aware of where seafood is coming from, governments to monitor their waters and see where vessels are fishing within their [exclusive economic zones], and NGOs to advance their work," she said.
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Summertime. Vacation time. No time to let your guard down. Traditionally, crime goes up during warmer weather, with property crimes and aggravated assaults on the rise. In some locations, murder rates increase, too. When temperatures rise, there are more windows left open, more sweaty and irritated people seeking relief outside, and more alcoholic beverages consumed in public, all of which can prompt bad behavior.
Maybe you and your family have decided to take an ocean cruise to get away from it all this summer. Well, beware, because there is crime on the high seas, too sometimes violent crime. And consider this: A vessel might be registered in the Bahamas, headquartered in Miami, traveling in international waters and carrying passengers from any number of foreign countries, so law enforcement jurisdiction is murky.
If the ship departs from, say, Florida, and a crime is committed onboard, the local police might investigate once the cruise liner returns to port. The feds have jurisdiction if a crime has occurred against a U.S. national on a ship that has departed or will arrive back in the States. The FBI might be assigned to investigate. But these professionals will be days removed from when the crime was committed. Every detective will tell you that evidence gathered immediately following a crime is often crucial to prosecution.
The cruise industry says it caters to more than 24 million customers each year and that crime rates on board one of those massive floating hotels is a small fraction of the comparable rates of crime on land.
But on dry land, you can immediately call 911 for help. You likely have a cop shop a few minutes driving distance from your location and a fully equipped hospital nearby. On a cruise ship, perhaps hundreds of miles out at sea, youve got ... well, youve got whatever the ship has to offer.
An official with the Cruise Lines International Association insists there is robust security onboard to assure passengers are safe. But lets get real: Any security officers are working for the cruise line, and their primary allegiance may not be to a victimized passenger. Their efforts gathering evidence, taking witness statements or tracking down suspects may be lacking.
NBC News has reported extensively on cruise line crime and calculated that of the 92 alleged crimes reported on cruise ships last year, 62 were sexual assaults. Im guessing here, but I bet the combination of hot temperatures and free-flowing booze tends to reduce passengers inhibitions. But most frightening is that a majority of the sexual assaults be they committed by crew members or passengers were never prosecuted. A congressional report from a few years ago found that minors were the victims in a third of those sexual assaults.
The dirty secret in the cruise line industry is that crime does occur on cruise ships and very often law enforcement isnt notified, evidence isnt preserved, people arent assisted, said Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. He is sponsoring a bill in the U.S. Senate that would require cruise lines to report any claim of criminal activity to the FBI within four hours, turn over all video evidence, earmark cases in which youngsters are involved and include a federal officer called a sea marshal on each ship. Id like to add that each vessel be equipped with a proper evidentiary rape kit.
NBCs reporting included stories about victimized teenage girls, one of whom tried to commit suicide after she alleged that she was given alcohol and raped onboard a cruise to the Virgin Islands. Another teen interviewed claimed she was sexually assaulted by a crew member in the ships gym. Jim Walker, a Miami attorney, said his firm has represented many victims of alleged cruise ship crime, including one who was just 3 years old.
The average passenger load on an ocean liner is about 3,000. But some mega-cruise liners can hold up to 6,000. Whenever you get that many people in a finite space, lulled by adult activities over here and supervised children and youth activities over there, trouble can develop.
Im sure the cruise lines do their very best to fully vet and hire suitable employees. It would not be in their best interest to do otherwise. But this summer, if you are taking the family on a once-in-a-lifetime cruise to paradise, dont let your guard down. Have a wonderful vacation, but realize that crime can happen anywhere, and you and yours are not immune.
Diane Dimond is a syndicated columnist and television reporter of high-profile court cases.
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DIANE DIMOND: Hit the high seas, but be careful | Opinion ... - Stillwater News Press
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HATTERAS ISLAND, N.C. The south end of the Outer Banks of North Carolina is a long way from the hills of West Virginia, but no matter where you go, youll find Mountaineers everywhere.
I grew up in Webster County in the town of Cowen. My moms family are long time Webster County folks, said Captain Jay Kavanagh owner and Captain of Bite-Me Charters. I left the state and went to college in Virginia and then came back to Morgantown to go to graduate school.
Kavanagh still maintains deep roots in the Mountain State. He proudly explained the wood trim on the interior of the boats cabin was cut and custom milled on the Cherry River in West Virginia.
Armed with a Masters Degree in Forestry, Kavanagh headed for the Carolina Coast after graduation and went to work in the North Carolina fishing industry. He also married into a fishing family. Jays wife is a native of the Outer Banks. Her family has owned the best known gathering spot for sportsmen in the region Frisco Rod and Gun for many years. In 2000, Kavanagh took the plunge, bought his boat, and decided to try his luck in the charter business. Seventeen years later, hes still going strong.
We have great fishing all year round out of Hatteras and we do run charters 12 months out of the year, of course were not as busy in the winter time, he explained. Typically spring and fall are good fishing for your meat fish, tuna, dolphin, and wahoo. Summertime is good fishing for dolphin and bill fish. We have great fishing all year long, it just depends on what you want to try to catch.
I chartered a trip with Captain Jay on the Bite-Me as an added activity to an Outer Banks vacation in June.
We have a lot of people who schedule a trip around their vacation, he said. Late summer we move the boat up to Oregon Inlet because the marlin bite actually moves up there. This is a good place to catch a big blue marlin. Thats the largest of the bill fish species.
During 2017, as of our trip, the Bite-Me had boated 7 blue marlin, four of them above 400 pounds and two at more than 500 pounds. The blue marlin are released and anglers proudly display a marlin flag in the end of the day photo.
The day starts early with scenery only few get to enjoy. The sun made a dramatic rise on the Atlantic and seeped through a pallet of low hanging clouds. Boats began the run out of Hatteras Harbor for the Gulf Stream in a row. Its a short trip. Trolling starts 20 miles off shore less than an hours run from land.
Thats one good thing, were fairly close to the Gulf Stream, Kavanagh explained. Hatteras Island sticks way out into the ocean so were closer to the fishing.
First mate Catlin Cat Peele set various lines at various depths in hopes of raising fish. A mix of live bait, artificial streamers and chains of colorful teasers bounce along the surface in the boats wake trying to attract anything hungry. The sunrise continued to create a spectacular early morning backdrop.
Although finicky at first, after several hours Captain Jay found what he was hunting, floating grass.
Thats sargassum grass, sometimes called gulf weed. It grows on the surface out here in the Gulf Stream and its really the beginning of life, he said. If you can find that grass you can generally find life.
Kavanagh, from experience, noted the last large patch of grass on the downwind side is typically where the dolphin or mahi-mahi will school up to feed. His prediction was as solid as a bird dog pointing quail. Moments after the first pass there were more bites than there were people on board to handle a rod. As quickly as Cat unhooked a fish and tossed it into the ice chest, the same line would hit the water and immediately have another fish on.
Their schooling instinct is so strong, as long as you leave one hooked in the water, theyll stay with you, Kavanagh said. You saw that, they followed us around like puppy dogs.
The flurry of activity came in two waves. Both lasted 7 to 10 minutes and produced a total of 25 fish. Content with enough dolphin to satisfy our appetite and make a successful trip, we changed tactics in search of something larger. Kavanagh radioed other captains in the vicinity of his discovery and told them to have at it. Cat set different rigs and we pulled to the outskirts of our honey hole. The new goal was to find marlin, wahoo, tuna or sail fish.
Primarily this time of year were fishing for dolphin and bill fish species, he explained. But we could also possibly catch yellowfin tuna, blackfin tuna, wahoo, king mackerel, amberjack, just about anything that swims.
Those bigger fish werent to be for us on this day as my crew became sun weary. We headed for home with a mess of fresh fish and memories of a fantastic trip. A lot of West Virginians head for the Outer Banks on their vacation week, why not spent at least one day of your beach week aboard the Bite Me with a fellow West Virginian.
You can learn more about Bite Me Charters at their website or Facebook page.
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Summertime. Vacation time. No time to let your guard down. Traditionally, crime goes up during warmer weather, with property crimes and aggravated assaults on the rise. In some locations, murder rates increase, too.
When temperatures rise, there are more windows left open, more sweaty and irritated people seeking relief outside, and more alcoholic beverages consumed in public, all of which can prompt bad behavior.
Maybe you and your family have decided to take an ocean cruise to get away from it all this summer. Well, beware, because there is crime on the high seas, too sometimes violent crime. And consider this: A vessel might be registered in the Bahamas, headquartered in Miami, traveling in international waters and carrying passengers from any number of foreign countries, so law enforcement jurisdiction is murky.
If the ship departs from, say, Florida, and a crime is committed onboard, the local police might investigate once the cruise liner returns to port. The feds have jurisdiction if a crime has occurred against a U.S. national on a ship that has departed or will arrive back in the States. The FBI might be assigned to investigate. But these professionals will be days removed from when the crime was committed. Every detective will tell you that evidence gathered immediately following a crime is often crucial to prosecution.
The cruise industry says it caters to more than 24 million customers each year and that crime rates on board one of those massive floating hotels is a small fraction of the comparable rates of crime on land.
But on dry land, you can immediately call 911 for help. You likely have a cop shop a few minutes driving distance from your location and a fully equipped hospital nearby. On a cruise ship, perhaps hundreds of miles out at sea, youve got . . . well, youve got whatever the ship has to offer.
An official with the Cruise Lines International Association insists there is robust security onboard to assure passengers are safe. But lets get real: Any security officers are working for the cruise line, and their primary allegiance may not be to a victimized passenger. Their efforts gathering evidence, taking witness statements or tracking down suspects may be lacking.
NBC News has reported extensively on cruise line crime and calculated that of the 92 alleged crimes reported on cruise ships last year, 62 were sexual assaults. Im guessing here, but I bet the combination of hot temperatures and free-flowing booze tends to reduce passengers inhibitions. But most frightening is that a majority of the sexual assaults be they committed by crew members or passengers were never prosecuted. A congressional report from a few years ago found that minors were the victims in a third of those sexual assaults.
The dirty secret in the cruise line industry is that crime does occur on cruise ships and very often law enforcement isnt notified, evidence isnt preserved, people arent assisted, said Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. He is sponsoring a bill in the U.S. Senate that would require cruise lines to report any claim of criminal activity to the FBI within four hours, turn over all video evidence, earmark cases in which youngsters are involved and include a federal officer called a sea marshal on each ship. Id like to add that each vessel be equipped with a proper evidentiary rape kit.
NBCs reporting included stories about victimized teenage girls, one of whom tried to commit suicide after she alleged that she was given alcohol and raped onboard a cruise to the Virgin Islands. Another teen interviewed claimed she was sexually assaulted by a crew member in the ships gym. Jim Walker, a Miami attorney, said his firm has represented many victims of alleged cruise ship crime, including one who was just 3 years old.
The average passenger load on an ocean liner is about 3,000. But some mega-cruise liners can hold up to 6,000. Whenever you get that many people in a finite space, lulled by adult activities over here and supervised children and youth activities over there, trouble can develop.
Im sure the cruise lines do their very best to fully vet and hire suitable employees. It would not be in their best interest to do otherwise. But this summer, if you are taking the family on a once-in-a-lifetime cruise to paradise, dont let your guard down. Have a wonderful vacation, but realize that crime can happen anywhere, and you and yours are not immune.
* Diane Dimond is an investigative journalist and syndicated columnist.
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For me its the summer of heaven, said Reid Pauyo, 53.
Pauyo was sitting contentedly last Thursday atop the new rush hour ferry from 34th Street to Glen Cove, Long Island. The Stevie Wonder song Dont you worry bout a thing was playing softly over speakers on the enclosed top deck. The bluffs and beaches of Great Neck and Port Washington breezed by, the lights of the Gatsby mansions just winking on. Pauyo gestured magnanimously. He was the only person in the echoing compartment.
With necessary Amtrak repairs causing what Gov. Andrew Cuomo called a summer of hell now upon us, the MTA has been challenged to make life as un-miserable as possible for commuters traveling into and out of the city in the face of canceled or rerouted LIRR trains. Alternative travel plans were drawn up, including the temporary four-times-daily ferry. The hellscape started a week ago, and then: mostly nothing.
New York City-bound trains were more crowded than usual last week. There were confused Long Islanders rerouted to Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn, but few nightmares yet. Riders are MTA-trained enough to know that things could get worse, dispensation provided by wise preparation and the fact that Penn Station work is only beginning. But while they wait for the other shoe to drop (maybe its dropping as you read), the Glen Cove ferrygoers were enjoying their unexpected ride all 35 or so on the boat built for more than 200.
Raj Wakhale of Huntington, for example, was sitting good-humoredly on the open deck despite a slight drizzle. Nursing a beer and toasting the landscape, he praised the spaciousness compared to the usual squeezing on the train. You werent sweating on the guy next to you or smelling his beer. He said there had been free food at the Glen Cove Ferry terminal in the morning. Im sure were paying for it somehow, allowed Wakhale, 48.
For Pauyo, the Glen Cove resident enjoying his solitude out of the rain, the boat actually made his commute much easier. His office is right next to the Wall Street drop-off for the morning ferry. Couldnt be easier.
That may not be true for the many who find the ride too long or inconvenient factors in the dampening of demand for the Glen Cove-Manhattan ferry, which has been an elusive goal for decades. Another factor: potential unreliability, as was the case on Friday when two of the four runs were cancelled due to morning engine problems.
Pauyo says the better way to make ferry service sustainable is similar to what the MTA was forced to do this summer: use the bounty of NYs waterways and create an alternative to the train, not a replacement. Then price and size the boats for demand, and re-format the ride to make it competitively pleasant (Pauyo is, you may have guessed, a banker). He said there were easy ways to spruce up the ferry, one of a varied fleet the MTA is using have more outdoor seating, for example, perhaps flat screen TVs or outlets for your phone. At the moment, the enclosed deck sported only a sad string of party lights and a single wilted houseplant.
The alternative transportation strategy is similar to what Mayor Bill de Blasio is trying in the city with a ferry service that launched this spring. Because each boat has about the capacity of a single subway car the system wont a replacement for other modes of transportation. But its certainly pleasant during warm months, particularly when compared with the subways, whose burden it might ease.
In some ways, subway riders are having a truer summer from hell this year, with delays and malfunctions abounding. Ferrygoers generally knew how lucky they had it last week, a much nicer experience than LIRR or subway riders faced. Glen Cove Deputy Mayor Barbara Peebles, a longtime ferry advocate, says shes not surprised to hear about the good experiences, though she had expected many more commuters to try the option even with the limited schedule.
She says she went to sleep the night before launch day thinking were gonna need a bigger boat.
They didnt, and what she hopes will become a popular permanent ferry is off to a slow start. But maybe people will eventually be drawn by a potentially not-so-hellish season on the waves.
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A crew of improbable New Zealand heroes was honored on a wintry July 11 with a parade that drew throngs of jubilant Kiwis to the streets of Wellington. Members of Emirates Team New Zealand (ETNZ) had just returned from Bermuda, where they had become the underdog winners of the America's Cup sailing race. Their victory over titleholders Oracle Team USA was sweet redemption: ETNZ had blown a commanding lead over Oracle in the 2013 competition. In this year's rematch, however, the relatively underfunded Kiwis parlayed a blend of skill and technological ingenuity to take down their rivals, lavishly backed by tech billionaire Larry Ellison. ETNZ's stunning win offers a chance to delve into the world of elite sailing, an international sport in which technology and innovation rule the seas and national identity is as slippery as a deck in a storm.
On the surface, sailing seems a decidedly anachronistic sport, conjuring images of a suntanned septuagenarian in Sperry Top-Siders. After all, the sail itself is an outmoded technology, and the grand prize of sport sailing the America's Cup is celebrated as the oldest trophy in sports. In reality, modern sailing keeps pace with Formula One in its cutting-edge design and the relentless pursuit of innovation, and the America's Cup has historically been contested by the best available vessels, be they schooners in the 1851 inaugural, sloops in the 1880s, the J-class in the 1930s, or the high-tech catamarans used today.
The race's constantly evolving technology is a result of what might be the most flexible and dynamic governing apparatus in all of sports. While there are a formal America's Cup committee and rule-making organs, the major dictates of each iteration of the race are largely up to the previous winner. That's right: The race location, vessel type and a slew of other rules and regulations are determined by the defending champions, who historically have been free to stack the deck in their favor. In years past, this led to a fairly one-sided competition, with the New York Yacht Club enjoying a streak of victories from 1851 through 1980. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the club's teams enjoyed the patronage of some wealthy household names: J.P. Morgan, Ted Turner and a variety of Vanderbilts. In an effort to spread the appeal of the sport in recent times, the competition has been made slightly more egalitarian, but titleholders still hold a considerable edge; only one team has ever failed to repeat its victory at least once.
Ellison, the founder of the Oracle brand and the eponymous sailing team, has emerged as an interesting standard-bearer for the sport: He spends relentlessly in the pursuit of victory but has also endorsed rules and structures to help grow sailboat racing beyond its traditional audience. At the defending Oracle team's direction, the 2013 Cup races were held in San Francisco Bay, bringing the action closer to spectators on the shore. That series also saw the introduction of the catamaran-style vessels that have nearly quadrupled racing speeds. Ellison's team staged its impressive, come-from-behind victory that year. Its run of eight straight wins to clinch a 9-8 triumph garnered a good deal of extra media attention for the race and the sport.
Following its 2013 heartbreak, ETNZ appears to have pulled out all the stops en route to a resounding defeat of Ellison's squad in June. The Kiwis' most novel innovation was to install a set of hydraulic power-generating stationary bicycles in their boat to replace the traditional hand-cranked systems that have long been the norm. This made for curious viewing: To casual spectators, it looked as if the boats were paddle-driven by cyclists. Of course, this was not the case, but the bicycle system gave the team massive gains in efficiency while literally freeing up hands on deck. It had been developed under a shroud of secrecy and unveiled only a few months before the competition; only one other team attempted to install a similar setup. ETNZ also relied on some of the sport's most sophisticated data systems, using a blend of telemetry, GPS and drone footage to gain every possible advantage.
Naturally, the boats don't sail themselves, and the ETNZ sailors, under the leadership of skipper Glenn Ashby and helmsman Peter Burling, emerged as the competition's most capable group in terms of foiling. This occurs when the catamaran builds up enough speed that the craft's twin hydrofoils raise the main hull out of the water. The hydrofoils, in turn, reduce friction with the water enough to push the boat to speeds that can exceed those of the wind. The New Zealanders' advantage in foiling came in part because they were the first to employ the approach. New Zealand relied on a shrewd interpretation of the race's rules in 2013 to pioneer foiling, which has quickly become a standard technique across the sport. Between its clandestine innovation and rule-pushing tactics, the upstart squad bested the field in the qualification rounds this year and cruised to a 7-1 victory over Oracle in the final race series.
The relatively open competitive structures also lead to interesting moments of collaboration, rivalry and subterfuge that are matched only by professional wrestling. After the Italian Luna Rossa syndicate, challengers to ETNZ for the next cup, withdrew from this year's race in protest of the reduction and standardization of vessel size, it turned over some of its resources to ETNZ in the process. After the ETNZ boat capsized during the qualifying tournament, the team reached out to Groupama Team France, which had already been eliminated, for support and equipment. The French initially refused (allegedly at the urging of Oracle), then promised help in exchange for a payment of 300,000 euros before withdrawing the offer.
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The America's Cup: A High Seas Expression of Pure Capitalism - STRATFOR
New Delhi: It was a daring rescue operation at high sea and it started with a distress call off the Andaman Islands. MV ITT PANTHER, a general cargo vessel was making its way from Kolkata to Port Blair with an 11 member crew.
In the early hours of July 20 the weather condition turned rough, with strong monsoon winds and waves as high as four to five meters. The situation became critical when the vessel started tilting dangerously because of the shifting of cargo. The ship was abandoned.
As the crew members got on to their rafts, a distress call was made to the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Port Blair. Reacting almost immediately the Indian Coast Guard launched its aircraft to locate the 11 people adrift at sea. On receiving coordinates ships ICGS Rajkamal and ICGS Bhikaji Cama moved in swiftly despite the inclement weather. ICGS Rajkamal reached the adrift crew members by late afternoon, just as the PANTHER sank in the Bay Of Bengal, some 400 kms away from Port Blair.
The 11 crew members rescued by the Coast Guard are now safe and dry in Port Blair. The number of search and rescue operations go up considerably for the Coast Guard during monsoon months. So far 18 missions have been conducted in high sea where 33 lives have been saved.
Pictures and videos of the rescue show how the Indian Coast Guard is living up to its motto of " Vayam Rakshama - We Protect"
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Rescue on the High Seas, Coast Guard Saves 11 Crew of Sinking Ship - News18
Summertime. Vacation time. No time to let your guard down. Traditionally, crime goes up during warmer weather, with property crimes and aggravated assaults on the rise. In some locations, murder rates increase, too. When temperatures rise, there are more windows left open, more sweaty and irritated people seeking relief outside, and more alcoholic beverages consumed in public, all of which can prompt bad behavior.
Maybe you and your family have decided to take an ocean cruise to get away from it all this summer. Well, beware, because there is crime on the high seas, too sometimes violent crime. And consider this: A vessel might be registered in the Bahamas, headquartered in Miami, traveling in international waters and carrying passengers from any number of foreign countries, so law enforcement jurisdiction is murky.
If the ship departs from, say, Florida, and a crime is committed onboard, the local police might investigate once the cruise liner returns to port. The feds have jurisdiction if a crime has occurred against a U.S. national on a ship that has departed or will arrive back in the States. The FBI might be assigned to investigate. But these professionals will be days removed from when the crime was committed. Every detective will tell you that evidence gathered immediately following a crime is often crucial to prosecution.
The cruise industry says it caters to more than 24 million customers each year and that crime rates on board one of those massive floating hotels is a small fraction of the comparable rates of crime on land.
But on dry land, you can immediately call 911 for help. You likely have a cop shop a few minutes driving distance from your location and a fully equipped hospital nearby. On a cruise ship, perhaps hundreds of miles out at sea, youve got well, youve got whatever the ship has to offer.
An official with the Cruise Lines International Association insists there is robust security onboard to assure passengers are safe. But lets get real: Any security officers are working for the cruise line, and their primary allegiance may not be to a victimized passenger. Their efforts gathering evidence, taking witness statements or tracking down suspects may be lacking.
NBC News has reported extensively on cruise line crime and calculated that of the 92 alleged crimes reported on cruise ships last year, 62 were sexual assaults. Im guessing here, but I bet the combination of hot temperatures and free-flowing booze tends to reduce passengers inhibitions. But most frightening is that a majority of the sexual assaults be they committed by crew members or passengers were never prosecuted. A congressional report from a few years ago found that minors were the victims in a third of those sexual assaults.
The dirty secret in the cruise line industry is that crime does occur on cruise ships and very often law enforcement isnt notified, evidence isnt preserved, people arent assisted, said Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. He is sponsoring a bill in the U.S. Senate that would require cruise lines to report any claim of criminal activity to the FBI within four hours, turn over all video evidence, earmark cases in which youngsters are involved and include a federal officer called a sea marshal on each ship. Id like to add that each vessel be equipped with a proper evidentiary rape kit.
NBCs reporting included stories about victimized teenage girls, one of whom tried to commit suicide after she alleged that she was given alcohol and raped onboard a cruise to the Virgin Islands. Another teen interviewed claimed she was sexually assaulted by a crew member in the ships gym. Jim Walker, a Miami attorney, said his firm has represented many victims of alleged cruise ship crime, including one who was just 3 years old.
The average passenger load on an ocean liner is about 3,000. But some mega-cruise liners can hold up to 6,000. Whenever you get that many people in a finite space, lulled by adult activities over here and supervised children and youth activities over there, trouble can develop.
Im sure the cruise lines do their very best to fully vet and hire suitable employees. It would not be in their best interest to do otherwise. But this summer, if you are taking the family on a once-in-a-lifetime cruise to paradise, dont let your guard down. Have a wonderful vacation, but realize that crime can happen anywhere, and you and yours are not immune.
To find out more about Diane Dimond, visit her website at http://www.dianedimond.com.
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DIANE DIMOND: Be careful on the high seas - Examiner Enterprise
Through the lens of the submarines periscope, the tramp steamer looks like a bathtub toy as it bobs on the waves.
But to the German U-boat captain observing his prey from six feet below the surface of the North Atlantic, its the perfect victim. A lone merchant ship sailing between New York and Liverpool in the summer of 1916, with no destroyers to escort it.
The U-boat skipper briefly considers firing a torpedo at the ship. But why waste a precious tin fish on a helpless rustbucket when his submarine only carries six torpedoes? And so the U-boat rears out of the ocean like a prehistoric sea monster, its crew emerging to man the deck guns. Soon the merchant ship shudders under the impact of a cannon shell. The ship comes to a stop as its crew scrambles to the lifeboats.
Suddenly, panels and hatches on the steamer slide open. Flame and smoke erupt as it fires a broadside of high explosives into the stunned submarine. Its gunners swept off the deck and its hull punctured, the submarine sinks beneath the waves. The unlucky U-boat was the victim of a Q-ship, an armed merchant vessel (or a warship disguised as a merchant ship) that cruises the sea lanes in search of unwary submarines.
Q-ships are gone, and so are U-boats. Any modern submarine skipper who surfaces his boat to sink a target, rather than blasting it with a missile or torpedo from miles away, deserves to be shot out of his own torpedo tube.
And yet, for the newest scourge of the high seas, Q-ships may be the answer.
Hybrid warfarethat witches brew of regular and irregular warfare, covert special forces (like Russias little green men in Crimea), and state-sponsored insurgents and criminal gangsis already a fact of life on land in conflicts such as Ukraine. Now its coming to the water.
Old-fashioned criminal piracy already flourishes off the coast of Africa and in Southeast Asian waters. China has used merchant ships and fishing boats to harass U.S. Navy warships in the South China Sea.
Former U.S. Navy admiral James Stavridis has warned that worse is coming. Nations will employ little blue sailors to conduct hybrid maritime warfare in coastal waters.
Instead of using force directly from identifiable gray hull navy platforms, hybrid warfare will feature the use of both civilian vessels (tramp steamers, large fishing vessels, light coastal tankers, small fast craft, and even low slow skiffs with outboard engines), Stavridis wrote.
Their targets wont be just merchant ships; they will hit oil platforms and mining rigs. They will operate under plausible deniability: go ahead and prove that Russia or China was behind that innocent-looking trawler that blew up a container ship.
And thats where todays Q-ships would come in. Like decoy cops trolling for muggers, these vessels could be disguised as cargo ships or yachts. The concept isnt new. Back in 1675, Englands HMS Kingfisher, camouflaged to resemble a merchantman, was used to trap Algerian pirates in 1681.
The heyday of the Q-ship was World War I, when the British deployed hundreds of ships. Most were merchant vessels with hidden armament, but a few were special-built warships. They werent particularly effective, sinking perhaps ten U-boats at a cost of sixty-one Q-ships.
Yet despite the unfavorable math, the covert sub killers actually helped achieve a decisive result. Strange as it may sound in twenty-first-century naval warfare, Imperial Germany had initially waged its submarine campaign in accordance with maritime law, which held that merchant ships could only be sunk if submarines surfaced to give the crew and passengers adequate warning to abandon ship before sinking them. But the threat of Q-ships induced Germany to switch to unrestricted submarine warfare, where subs remain submerged and torpedo their targets without warning. This meant sinking American ships, which gave President Woodrow Wilson an excuse to enter the war against Germany.
Modern Q-ships probably wont drive off the little blue men. But it might make them a lot more cautious. Imagine their surprise when they discover that beneath the rust are well-trained sailors and commandos with machine guns, rocket launchers and a detachment of commandos. At the very least, theyll be armed with something more than Britney Spears songs.
Of course, this isnt a risk-free option. Q-ships could be sunk by little blue men. And there is always the chance that a nervous Q-ship might accidentally sink an innocent vessel by mistake, generating an embarrassing outcry.
It could also ratchet up the level of violence on the sea as everyone gets a bit more trigger-happy. But thats the point of a Q-shipnot to make life easy for pirates.
Michael Peck is a contributing writer for the National Interest. He can be found on Twitter and Facebook.
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How America Can Fight Back Against Hybrid War on the High Seas - The National Interest Online (blog)
HYDERABAD: A mobile app, SARAT (Search And Rescue Aid Tool), that can help save lives and find lost objects at sea was released on Monday. The versatile tool has been developed by Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (Incois), Hyderabad, which is an autonomous agency under the ministry of earth sciences. The SARAT app can assist in the search for over 64 types of missing 'objects', including boats, ships and people. While the web version was released last year, the mobile app will be available for download from the Google Play Store. "Conducting search and rescue operations at sea is extremely challenging and can be compared to the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack. Typically, search and rescue operations are most frequent during bad weather over the high seas, when fisherfolk inadvertently venture out and their vessels capsize," Incois said. The system mainly enables the Indian Coast Guard, Navy and Coastal Security Police to minimise search time during various operations to reduce loss of life, injury and property damage. In such exigencies, quick action is vital and hence this mobile app has been developed to make this system conveniently available to all, Incois said. The accuracy of SARAT is validated using a network of drifting buoys and other instruments. The system proved its mettle earlier by successfully assisting in the recovery of the Indian Coast Guard's missing Dornier aircraft off Chennai coast in 2015.
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An app to track missing people on high seas - Times of India
At the United Nations in New York, the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) is representing shipowners at a UN Preparatory Committee which is developing a new legal instrument, under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which will apply to high seas areas beyond national jurisdiction.
The principal aim of this UN work is to address the vacuum that exists with respect to issues such as preserving global fish stocks from unregulated fishing, and damage to marine ecosystems from ocean acidification and plastics caused by land based agriculture and industry.
ICS says that developing new measures applicable to the high seas is undoubtedly a very important and legitimate exercise, but that it wishes to ensure that the interests of shipping will not be unwittingly damaged.
The new UN instrument is likely to permit area-based management tools such as Marine Protected Areas being developed for the high seas, as well as potentially addressing complex issues, such as liability for environmental damage, for which shipping already has very detailed global regulations in place.
ICS therefore fully supports the statement made to the UN meeting by the shipping industrys global regulator, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), setting out the extent to which shipping already enjoys a long-established and very comprehensive framework of IMO Conventions and rules which are implemented and enforced on a worldwide basis.
Kiran Khosla
From New York, ICS Director Legal Affairs, Kiran Khosla, commented: Whatever might be decided in the future, great care should be taken by governments with regard to the maintenance of freedom of the high seas, rights of navigation currently enshrined within UNCLOS, and the current balance that exists between the rights and obligations of flag states, coastal states and port states.
She added In the context of regulating international shipping, the current balance has worked very well, as shown by the dramatic reduction in the number of pollution incidents from ships. It will therefore be important for the UN Committee to take account of any potential overlap or duplication with existing IMO Conventions, as well as the mechanisms that already exist for compensating oil pollution damage from ships, with up to one billion US dollars already being available to compensate those affected by a single spill regardless of fault.
The work of the UN Preparatory Committee should eventually lead to a high level Diplomatic Conference, possibly within the next two years, which is expected to adopt a new UNCLOS agreement on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction. Source: ICS
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High Seas Governance Must Take Account of Existing IMO Framework - Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide
THE HAGUE, Netherlands An international arbitration panel on Thursday granted Slovenia unhindered access to the high seas for the first time since the breakup of the former Yugoslavia as part of a ruling aimed at settling a long-running territorial dispute between Slovenia and Balkan neighbor Croatia.
It remains to be seen if the ruling can be enforced. Croatia walked out of the arbitration in 2015 and does not recognize the panel's findings.
"We do not consider ourselves obliged by this ruling," Croatian TV quoted Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic as saying. "And we do not intend to implement its content."
The five-judge tribunal granted Slovenia much of the Bay of Piran, off the Adriatic coasts of the two countries, and gave Slovenia a 2.5-nautical-mile wide, 10-nautical-mile long "junction" or corridor linking its territorial waters and international waters.
The panel's president, Judge Gilbert Guillaume, said the junction allows "uninterrupted and uninterruptable" access for ships and aircraft of all nationalities between international waters and Slovenia's territorial waters.
Slovenia's Prime Minister Miro Cerar described the ruling as "historic" and called for its implementation, but he said it did not meet all of the country's expectations.
"The ruling will be respected." Cerar said. "The ruling is final and obligatory for both states, Slovenia and Croatia."
The panel also established Slovenia and Croatia's land border, but very little of that remained in dispute.
Arbitration was supposed to ease tensions between the Balkan neighbors but instead underscored sensitivities between states that emerged from the breakup of the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.
The two countries agreed to arbitration in 2009 in a deal that also led to Slovenia dropping its opposition to Croatia's European Union membership.
Croatia turned its back on the arbitration following revelations that the Slovenian judge on the panel had violated its rules. The court ruled last year that the violations did not entitle Croatia to terminate arbitration or affect the panel's power "to render a final award independently and impartially."
The arbitration panel left open the door to more talks, saying that "the rights and obligations of Croatia and Slovenia established by this award shall subsist until they are modified by agreement between those two states."
____
Associated Press writers Jovana Gec in Belgrade and Ali Zerdin in Ljubljana, Slovenia, contributed.
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Arbitration panel grants Slovenia access to high seas - Fox News