Daily Archives: August 15, 2017

Two more waves crossing Atlantic as Hurricane Gert heads offshore Miami Herald Hurricane forecasters are tracking two more waves crossing the Atlantic as Hurricane Gert begins turning east and heads out to sea. In their 11 a.m. advisory, National Hurricane Center forecasters said Gert was headed northeast at about 10 mph and is ... First Alert Forecast: Hurricane Gert passes offshore, outlook to eclipse dayWECT-TV6 High Surf Advisory issued for Wednesday as Hurricane Gert passes well offshoreCapeCod.com News all 129 news articles »

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Two more waves crossing Atlantic as Hurricane Gert heads offshore - Miami Herald

A wide range of environmental, labor and community leaders yesterday joined in a chorus of support for Gov. Andrew Cuomos plan to encourage offshore wind projects in the waters surrounding New York State.

They spokeon August 14at the Queens Public Library in Rockaway Beach as the New York State Energy Research and Development Authoritygeared up forhearings regarding wind power.

NYSERDAs public meetings are part of a process through which the state is seeking to create an Offshore Wind Master Plan.

Gov. Cuomo is seeking for offshore wind power to help reach a target ofhalf of New Yorks power generated by renewable energy sources by 2030.

We have a deep, inherent responsibility to promote initiatives and technology that transition us away from fossil fuels, Citizens Campaign for the Environment Executive Director Adrienne Esposito said. A critical part of that transition is to harness the power of offshore wind.

She said that NYSERDAs Offshore Wind Master Plan will assist New York in changing our energy infrastructure and encourage well-sited offshore wind projects that benefit our environment, economy and public health.

Renewable Energy Long Island Executive Director Gordian Raacke called the upcoming public information meetings a great way to learn about the exciting opportunity we now have to meet New Yorks energy needs with offshore wind power.

Unions also supported the project, which would involve the construction of wind turbines in the water along with cables carrying power.

Offshore wind development will bring numerous benefits to Long Island and the rest of the state, said New York State Buildingand Construction Trades Council President Jim Cahill. It will create good jobs and create a new renewable energy economy that will benefit everyone.

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Environmentalists, union leaders push for offshore wind power - Long Island Business News (subscription)

Gardline operates survey vessels in addition to numerous smaller units, including crew transfer vessels and survey catamarans

Royal Boskalis Westminster has acquired all of the shares in Gardline Group, the UK-based company that specialises in marine geophysical surveys, offshore geotechnical services and environmental surveys.

With the acquisition, Boskalis has fulfilled its ambition to build a position in the offshore survey market and become a specialist provider of geotechnical surveys for the offshore oil and gas and renewables markets.

Gardline operates 15 survey vessels and 25 smaller units, including crew transfer vessels and survey catamarans.

The consideration paid, including assumed debt, amounts to approximately 40M (US$52M). Gardlines current annual revenue level is approximately 60-70M.

Boskalis says that, given the currently challenging near-term outlook, it does not expect the transaction to be EBIT accretive in the next few years, but positions Boskalis well for when the market recovers.

Gardline was established in 1969 and was a second-generation family-owned business. The company's principal offices are located in Great Yarmouth, UK with activity in the US, Brazil and Singapore. It employs approximately 750 people including a pool of 100 surveyors. Its core geographical market is northwest Europe, where Gardline is the main competitor of Fugro, a company that Boskalis built a position in last year and was said to be interested in acquiring.

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Gardline deal sees Boskalis acquire position in offshore survey market - OSJ Magazine

by Jim Praley Any sailor who uses AIS (Automatic Identification System) quickly comes to appreciate the safety advantages the system provides, allowing a boat to see traffic, whether commercial shipping or recreational crafts, at a significant distance, and to determine that traffics course, speed and closest point of approach.

Over the last several years offshore race safety regulations have evolved from recommending the use of an AIS receiver to requiring that in most races competing boats have an AIS transponder (receiver and transmitter) installed.

The World Sailing Offshore Special Regulations (OSR) expressly require the use of an AIS transponder on boats competing in Category 1, 2 and 3 races, and the US Sailing Safety Equipment Requirements (USSER) similarly mandate AIS transponders on races classified as Offshore.

The two sets of regulations are very specific about the equipment installation, requiring a transponder (not just a receiver) which either shares a masthead VHF antenna by way of a low loss antenna splitter, or uses a dedicated VHF antenna, at least 3 meters over the water and fed with coax having a maximum 40% power loss.

What the regulations dont address is whether the AIS has to be turned on.

Almost all AIS transponders have a stealth switch, allowing the units transmitter function to be turned off while continuing to receive other boats positions and display them on a chart plotter or laptop.

This summer I sailed in two offshore races the 474 nm Annapolis to Newport Race in early June and, in July, the 363 nm Marblehead to Halifax Race and the two events handled the issue differently.

Annapolis to Newport didnt specifically address AIS installation or use in either the Notice of Race or the Sailing Instructions, simply requiring that all competitors be in compliance with the USSER which contain the AIS requirement. I confess to having a hand in this since I chaired the event Organizing Committee.

Our reasoning was that by adopting the USSER by reference sailors wouldnt have to flip back and forth between the NOR and the regulations to determine the race equipment requirements. At the end of the day, however, we never dictated to competitors as to whether or when the AIS was required to be transmitting.

The Halifax Race, on the other hand, put the transponder requirement right up front in the NOR, even marking it in red type as a significant change from prior years. More significantly, the SIs required that:

Each boat shall start transmitting her position using her Automatic Identification System (AIS) beginning no later than 2000 ADT on the day of the start and ending no earlier than after she has entered the Northwest Arm in Halifax. So was there a difference in the race experience? In a word, yes.

In the Newport Race a significant number of our competitors chose to go to stealth mode shortly after the start, sometimes going live in high traffic areas where they definitely wanted to be noticed by the fishing fleet or ships running commercial traffic lanes at speed. This left us to guess our position relative to our competition.

By contrast, in the Halifax Race only a few of our class competitors ever dropped off the screen, probably due to the distances between us, and we were able to keep track of pretty much everyones position and speed we even set up a rudimentary spreadsheet to keep track of relative bearings gleaned from AIS to gauge our progress.

That tracking paid off in the middle of the night off the Nova Scotia coast when our sharp-eyed and likely over-caffeinated watch captain Brian Flynn checked the navigation laptop and noticed that several boats ahead of us had dramatically dropped speed, leading us to deduce that there was a hole in the breeze and head further east for an end-around move, likely improving our finish by several places and resulting in a podium finish.

(To be fair, in both races we carried Yellow Brick trackers which cant be turned off, but Yellow Brick position reports arent always real time and once we were out of cell phone range of land accessing the leaderboard via the limited bandwith of a Satphone became nearly impossible.)

The question then is: since AIS transponders are required by the applicable safety regulations, should boats be required to transmit throughout the race or should they have the option of running silent for tactical reasons?

One obvious argument against mandating transmission is that real time tracking can lead to a sheep mentality, with everyone following the leader. For my part, I like playing the chess board, knowing where my competition is and trying to find another way to go that might be faster, so mandatory transmitting is fine.

A lot of the safety advantages for which AIS was required in the first place go away when you dont turn it on and the other boat cant see you. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

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AIS Regulations for Offshore Racing - Scuttlebutt Sailing News

A coalition of business, environmental and community leaders hasbacked Governor Andrew Cuomos plan to make offshore wind the focus of New York'srenewable energy plan.

Ahead of a series of public meetings hosted by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), the New York Offshore Wind Alliance (NYOWA) has voiced its support for developing green energy off the state's coastline.

The meetingsare part of a process to create an Offshore Wind Master Planto aidGovernor Cuomos commitment to having50% of New Yorks power generated by renewable energy sources by 2030.

NYOWA director Joe Martens said: New York has a unique opportunity to become a national leader in offshore wind if it acts in a comprehensive and timely way.

"The Offshore Master Plan holds the key to creating a new clean energy economy that means emission-free offshore wind, new job-creating industries and economic opportunity, while reducing reliance on polluting fossil fuels and improving public health.

The NYOWA, a project ofthe non-profitAlliance for Clean Energy New York (ACE NY), was set up in 2016 to support the aim of creating 2.4GW of offshore wind power by 2030.

Its work is guided by a steering committee that includes representatives from the ACE NY, Deepwater Wind, Dong Energy, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club and the University of Delawares Special Initiative on Offshore Wind.

Image: reNEWS

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Wind alliance backs NY offshore - reNews

Every coastal country on Earth could meet its own domestic seafood needs through aquaculture using just a small fraction of ocean territory, a new study suggests.

There are only a couple of countries that are producing the vast majority of whats being produced right now in the oceans

A new study in Nature Ecology and Evolution, demonstrates the oceans potential to support aquaculture. Also known as fish farming, the practice is the fastest-growing food sector, and is poised to address increasing issues of food insecurity around the globe.

There is a lot of space that is suitable for aquaculture, and that is not whats going to limit its development, says lead author Rebecca Gentry, who recently completed her PhD at the School of Environmental Science & Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Its going to be other things such as governance and economics.

The first global assessments of the potential for marine aquaculture show the worlds oceans are rife with aquaculture hot spots that provide enough space to produce 15 billion metric tons of fin fish every year. Thats more than 100 times the current global seafood consumption.

More realistically, if aquaculture were developed in only the most productive areas, the oceans could theoretically produce the same amount of seafood that the worlds wild-caught fisheries currently produce globally, but in less than 1 percent of the total ocean surfacea combined area the size of Lake Michigan.

There are only a couple of countries that are producing the vast majority of whats being produced right now in the oceans, Gentry says. We show that aquaculture could actually be spread a lot more across the world, and every coastal country has this opportunity.

The United States, for example, has enormous untapped potential and could produce enough farmed seafood to meet national demand using only 0.01 percent of its exclusive economic zone,. Given that the US imports more than 90 percent of its seafood, aquaculture presents a powerful opportunity to increase domestic supply and reduce the nations seafood trade deficit, which now totals over $13 billion.

Like any food system, aquaculture can be done poorly; weve seen it

Marine aquaculture provides a means and an opportunity to support both human livelihoods and economic growth, in addition to providing food security, says coauthor Ben Halpern, executive director of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS). Its not a question of if aquaculture will be part of future food production but, instead, where and when. Our results help guide that trajectory.

To determine aquacultures global potential, the researchers identified areas where ocean conditions are suitable enough to support farms. They used synthesized data on oceanographic parameters like ocean depth and temperature and the biological needs of 180 species of finfish and bivalve mollusks, such as oysters and mussels.

The research team ruled out places that would come into conflict with other human uses, such as high shipping zones and marine protected areas, and excluded ocean depths that exceed 200 meters, following current industry practice to keep their assessment economically realistic. Their analysis did not consider all possible political or social constraints that may limit production.

Theres so much area available that theres a lot of flexibility to think about how to do this in the best way for conservation, economic development and other uses, says Gentry.

Aquaculture could also help make up for the limitations of wild-caught fisheries, says coauthor Halley Froehlich, a postdoctoral researcher at NCEAS. In the past two decades, the wild-caught industry has hit a production wall, stagnating at about 90 million metric tons, with little evidence that things will pick up.

Aquaculture is expected to increase by 39 percent in the next decade. Not only is this growth rate fast, but the amount of biomass aquaculture produces has already surpassed wild seafood catches and beef production.

Froehlich emphasizes that it will be crucial for science, conservation, policy, and industry to work together to proactively ensure fish farms are not just well placed but also well managed, such as balancing nutrient inputs and outputs to avoid pollution and monitoring for diseases. This study is a step in that direction.

Like any food system, aquaculture can be done poorly; weve seen it, she says, referring to the boom and bust of shrimp farming in the 1990s, a fallout of poor management. This is really an opportunity to shape the future of food for the betterment of people and the environment.

Additional researchers are from UC Santa Barbara; the Nature Conservancy; the University of California, Los Angeles; and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

This research is part of the Science for Nature and People Partnership, a collaboration of NCEAS, the Nature Conservancy, and the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Source: UC Santa Barbara

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Offshore farms could meet global fish demand - Futurity: Research News