Category Archives: High Seas

I could not keep my eyes off the graves, could not stop staring at them even as I walked away, turning repeatedly to look over my shoulder at them as I slogged my way across the gravel-strewn shore of Beechey Island until they disappeared from view.

It was profoundly saddening to contemplate their presence on a low-lying, windswept outpost of the Canadian Arctic, to imagine the fear and loneliness those buried here must have felt as they faced death in the harshest of conditions, thousands of miles and a world removed from their homes. And yet, they were the lucky ones, the first casualties of an expedition that vanished 173 years ago while searching for the fabled Northwest Passage between Atlantic and Pacific, whose remaining members met their doom after their ships became frozen in never-yielding sea ice, who perished one by one waiting for a summer that never came.

Not until 1906 was the Northwest Passage eventually transited by ship; the feat would not be repeated for nearly 40 years. Since then, as Arctic sea ice has rapidly dwindled, almost 300 transits have been made of the Passage, the bulk of them since 2007; 24 took place in 2019. On this day, I arrived courtesy of that most modern of intrusions into remote areas: a passenger ship called the Ocean Endeavour, chartered by a company called Adventure Canada. What was once the graveyard of Victorian explorers is now a destination for any sufficiently adventurous and well-financed tourist.

The Arctic is warming, and its sea ice is melting, prompting fevered dreams of ever-easier access, and a renewed jockeying among Arctic nations for status, profit and ownership.

Journeying through the Passage over the best part of three weeks in September yielded the expected fruits of an Arctic journey. A passing ice floe hosted a polar bear seemingly just minutes removed from killing a seal, the victims blood leaving a crimson trail on the ice. A diversion into a bay revealed first a polar bear feasting on a beached beluga carcass, then another bear on an opposite cliff and then two more, and finally an abundance of harp seals and seabirds thrashing through the water as they feasted on a banquet of Arctic cod. We stepped on the low-lying beach of the tiny Jenny Lind Island, randomly named after a Swedish opera singer, and squinted through binoculars at musk oxen in the distance. We passed through the narrow confines of the Bellot Strait, its eponymous co-discoverer a French explorer who was blown off the ice and to his death in the freezing water below, the cliffs on its southern side marking the northernmost point of mainland North America.

We encountered less than a handful of other ships: a Canadian coastguard icebreaker which, a few weeks earlier, had deployed to help the Ocean Endeavour through some stubborn summer ice and a pair of other passenger vessels. There was nothing, at any point in the journey, to suggest that this barely trafficked waterway might be at the heart of an international dispute, let alone the subject of multiple studies into its viability as a commercial shipping route.

But covetous eyes gaze upon the Northwest Passage, more so as Arctic ice retreats; establishing authority over the Passage proffers the prospect of establishing control over access, and there is no consensus as to where that authority lies.

As far as Canada is concerned, there is no controversy over the matter. Citing among other things legal precedent and historic use particularly a millennium or so of use by Inuit Ottawa considers the Northwest Passage to be its internal waters. The United States, brandishing a different legal case and echoing its longstanding position on such matters elsewhere, counters that it is an international strait, an area of high seas that connects two bodies of water which is open for peaceful use by a vessel from any state.

The dispute did not really flare up until the SS Manhattan, a US-flagged oil tanker, transited the Passage (with some difficulty) from east to west and back again in 1969, carrying a symbolic barrel of Prudhoe Bay oil on the return trip, accompanied by a US Coast Guard icebreaker, without seeking authorization. Ultimately, the two countries negotiated an Agreement on Arctic Cooperation, in which they effectively agreed to disagree on the matter. But as Arctic ice melts, so too does the veneer of friendly differences.

The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, argued in a fiery speech to the Arctic Council in May that Arctic sea lanes could become the 21st-century Suez and Panama Canals, and dismissed Canadas claims to the passage as illegitimate. Of late, China increasingly interested in the possibilities of Arctic shipping lanes and a relatively recently minted observer to the Arctic Council has weighed in, last year publishing an official Arctic policy that, among other positions, gently echoed the American stance on the matter of access to polar passageways.

That such disagreements are articulated at all is testament to the promise that the Northwest Passage is perceived to offer. That promise is perhaps best encapsulated in numbers: numbers such as 15,700 (the distance in kilometers from Yokohama to Rotterdam via the Passage) and 7,600 (the number of kilometers shorter that route would be relative to the Panama Canal), numbers that to some conjure a vision of the Northwest Passage providing a bustling corridor between Pacific and Atlantic and finally fulfilling a destiny centuries in the making.

Queen Elizabeth is said to have waved from her palace window as Martin Frobisher set out on his first expedition to find the Passage in 1576, such was the import attached to establishing a trade route to the Pacific. But the history of the search for the Northwest Passage is a catalogue of incremental successes interspersed with misery and misfortune.

In 1611, having mapped the river and the bay that are now named after him, Henry Hudsons attempts to probe farther west into the ice and the unknown ended with his crew mutinying and sending him overboard in a lifeboat, never to be seen again. Eight years later, Jens Munk and his band of 65 men made it as far as Hudson Bay, and spent the winter near the mouth of Churchill River; racked by cold, scurvy and probably trichinosis from eating insufficiently cooked polar bear meat, none bar Munk and two others survived to see the following spring.

It was in such inauspicious footsteps that Sir John Franklin, and the 128 officers and men of HMS Erebus and Terror, followed as they sailed out of the River Thames on 19 May 1845 on the most ambitious and extensively equipped expedition to the Passage yet. Whaling ships spied them in upper Baffin Bay, just east of the entrance to the Passage, on 26 July; and shortly thereafter the expedition vanished without trace.

Subsequent searches turned up clues: the graves on Beechey Island, where the ships spent the winter of 1845-86; a note indicating that by 22 April 1848, the ships had been trapped in ice for over 18 months, Franklin and 23 others had died, and the remaining crew was setting out south across land in search of safety; Inuit stories of starving white men who had died, one by one, in the snow.

In 2008, the then Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper, launched a major effort to find the wrecks of the Erebus and Terror. The goal of the search was not, wrote author Paul Watson in his book Ice Ghosts: The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition, purely historical or archeological; rather it was part of his strategy to mold public opinion, with the Northwest Passage a powerful tool for stirring Canadian nationalism in the twenty-first century. Harpers intent, Watson asserted, was to shore up support for a muscular assertion of Arctic sovereignty, laying claim over a vast stretch of the Arctic seabed, straight up to the North Pole.

As the ice retreats, revealing a potentially resource-rich seabed below, Canada is not alone in its designs on the broader Arctic. In 2007, a Russian submarine planted a rust-proof titanium flag on the seabed at the North Pole, and in October of this year, Russias ministry of defense proclaimed that it had collected enough evidence to support its claims to much of the Arctic Ocean.

Meanwhile, Denmark has laid down its own metaphorical marker, based on a claim that a large area up to and beyond the North Pole is connected to the continental shelf of Greenland which, of course, the Trump administration earlier this year expressed a desire to buy. (That US interest recently prompted the Danish defense intelligence service to declare the island the countrys number one national security priority, ahead of terrorism and cybercrime).

Russia actually supports Canadas position on the Northwest Passage because it considers itself to have similar dominion over the Northeast Passage, which the country refers to as the Northern Sea Route and which stretches above Russias northern coast, from the Bering Strait to the Barents Sea. With a strong assist from Russian investment in ports and infrastructure, the Northern Sea Route is already proving commercially viable: it is estimated that 29m tons of shipments will pass through its waters this year, a 40% increase on 2018; Vladimir Putin has set a target of 80m tons of goods a year by 2024.

And while the 800 or so vessels that transit all or part of the NSR annually is hardly enough to threaten the approximately 15,000 that transit the Panama Canal each year, it is far ahead of the Northwest Passage.

The Northwest Passage remains relatively narrow and relatively shallow, and even in a warming world its twisting straits remain vulnerable to blockage from the sea ice that breaks up and sweeps down from the Arctic Ocean. The Northern Sea Route, in contrast, has no winding narrows with which to contend; there is essentially only the Russian coast to the south and the Arctic Ocean and its retreating sea ice to the north, and its waters are considerably deeper.

For all the hype about its potential, for all the lives that have been lost and the ships that have been wrecked attempting to map its contours, for all the butting of diplomatic heads, it may well be not the Northwest Passage, but the Northern Sea Route that ultimately provides the Arctic pathway which so many have for so long desired.

Harpers Northwest Passage initiative did have some success. In 2014, searchers found the wreck of HMS Erebus; three years later, they also found the almost perfectly preserved wreck of HMS Terror.

Two years after that, I and others from the Ocean Endeavour stood on a barge and watched as underwater archeologists explored the nooks and crannies of, and retrieved artifacts from, the Erebus wreck below us. We were the first visitors to the wreck site, and the personal nature of some freshly retrieved artifacts was jarring. I looked at the shoe that one archeologist tenderly tended to and wondered who might have worn it, and how and when he died. What would he have thought of the notion that, almost 200 years after he set sail, the Northwest Passage would still exercise the thoughts of so many? Would he even recognize it? Certainly, on this day, with ice nowhere to be seen, it would have seemed very different from the horrible place in which he had been trapped, and in which his ship had sunk.

I tried to imagine his hopes and aspirations, and the life he had lived on board, as I peered over the side of the barge and pictured the Erebus in its final resting place, in the dark, turbid waters beneath my feet.

Excerpt from:

The race to lay claim on the Bering Strait as Arctic ice retreats - The Guardian

Credit: Greenpeace Southeast Asia

By The Maritime Executive 2019-12-09 16:47:24

Human Rights Day is observed every year on December 10, the day the United Nations General Assembly adopted, in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: a milestone document proclaiming the inalienable rights which everyone is inherently entitled to as a human being regardless of race, color, religion, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Available in more than 500 languages, it is the most translated document in the world.

Article 1 states: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Coinciding with the day, Greenpeace Southeast Asia has released a report in which 13 foreign distant water fishing vessels have been accused of forced labor and other human rights abuses against migrant fishers from Southeast Asia. Seabound: The Journey to Modern Slavery on the High Seas presents a snapshot of the living and working conditions of migrant fishers - mainly from Indonesia and the Philippines - who end up working onboard foreign owned distant water fleets.

Four main complaints wereidentified: deception involving 11 foreign fishing vessels; withholding of wages involving nineforeign fishing vessels; excessive overtime involving eightforeign fishing vessels; physical and sexual abuse involving sevenforeign fishing vessels.

The report also reveals a system of recruitment that traps many Indonesian migrant fishers in conditions of forced labor. One Indonesian migrant fisher onboard Taiwan owned fishing vessel Chin Chun 12 claimed to have not received any salary for the first six months; while another Indonesian migrant fisher onboard Taiwan fishing vessel Lien Yi Hsing 12 reportedly received only $50 in the first four months.

According to the Taiwan Fisheries Agency, as of June 2019, some 21,994 migrant fishers from Indonesia and 7,730 from the Philippines are reportedly working on Taiwanese distant water fishing vessels. These two countries combined represent the majority of migrant fishers on Taiwans distant water fleets a $2 billion industry and one of the top five distant water fishing fleets on the high seas.

The report is available here.

Taiwanese Power Imbalance

Human Rights at Sea has released a new case study on the working conditions for fishers in the Taiwanese fishing industry. It highlighting the power imbalance between migrant fishers, vessel owner, and the recruitment and manning agencies resulting in inappropriate arbitrary termination of the work contract by employer and the denial of workers rights for sick leave. The case study also highlights the need to align national polices and standards with international convention.

Taiwan is in the process of adopting the ILO C188 Work in Fishing Convention with the associated safety, labor and social welfare standards. Yet, evidence continues to be made available that recruitment and manning agency actions are often sub-standard.

The new report Labour Disputes Reveal a Worrying Power Imbalance and Vulnerability of Migrant Fishermen in Taiwans Fishing Industry highlights ongoing incidents which demonstrate gaps in fair management practices for the protection of fishers. It compares the study material with established ILO 188 standards, as well as standards within Taiwanese domestic law for the protection of workers.

The report is available here.

Geneva Declaration on Human Rights at Sea

Also on World Human Rights Day 2019, from within the shipping industry, a merchant crew of 11 seafarers in eight languages show their solidarity and support in a video message to Human Rights at Sea and its work developing the Geneva Declaration on Human Rights at Sea, the online platform which is formally launched today.

I am a sailor, and I stand up for human rights at sea, was the message.

Blood Phosphate

New Zealand's Rail and Maritime Transport Union (RMTU), representing port workers at Lyttelton port, handed a letter of protest to the captain of a ship carrying Blood Phosphate mined in the Western Sahara. The Federal Crimsonarrived at the port just before midnight on December 8. Shewas chartered by agrochemical company Ravensdown and is carrying 50,000 tons of phosphate. She was also met by a peace flotilla of 15 kayaks, a yacht, and a ferry filled with more than 100 school children. A further 80 human rights activists sang Sahrawi songs of freedom from land, reports Stuff.

Morocco has occupied Western Sahara since 1975. Over 173,000 Sahrawis have been living in refugee camps in Algeria for the past 43 years. In April, Amnesty International reported continued human rights violations in Western Sahara, including arbitrary restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association, particularly of people supporting self-determination for Western Sahara. The indigenous Sahrawi people accuse New Zealand fertilizer companies of helping to support their oppression.

The rest is here:

Human Rights Day: Free and Equal - The Maritime Executive

Stena Line Senior Master Matthew Lynch has described his appointment as Captain of the companys newest ferryStena Estridas the highlight of his sailing career to date.

MASTERS OF THE HIGH SEAS: (l-r) Senior Master Matthew Lynch is pictured on board Stena Lines newest ferry Stena Estrid with crew members Cora Bonham, John Thomas, Mark Connell, Ian Grimes, David Morris, Jason Rafferty, Marc Young and Stephen Davies. Captain Matt and his crew are currently steering Stena Estrid on its 10,000 mile journey from the AVIC Weihai Shipyard in China, where it was built, to the Irish Sea where it will start service on the Holyhead to Dublin route in January.

Captain Matt (40), an experienced seaman of 24 years, is currently steeringStena Estridon its 10,000 mile journey from the AVIC Weihai Shipyard in China, where it was built, to the Irish Sea where it will start service on the Holyhead to Dublin route in January.

The Senior Master role carries a lot of responsibility in terms of leading the team and ensuring Stena Line standards are met, but Matt is looking forward to taking over the reins on boardStena Estrid.

Basically, Im the man in command, explains Matt, with responsibility for implementing Stena Lines policies and ensuring that service standards are put in place and maintained, whilst providing the crew with all the support and assistance they need while away from home.

The best bit though is that I get to drive the ship! he said enthusiastically.

So what does Captain Matt make of the new vessel so far?

All I can say is Wow! continued Matt. Anyone who knows me knows that my expectations are always very high andStena Estridhas far exceeded them! Ive worked on passenger vessels for 24 years seven on cruise ships and 17 on ferries and this ship really is revolution not evolution.

On first boarding the ship, I was struck by the quality of the build and finish. Everywhere you go on board, spaces are bright and airy with large picture windows and the skylight bringing in lots of natural light. Even the car decks are bright from the LED lighting.

Shes very smooth and quiet at sea, so much so that I was standing on the bridge before we departed China and I had to double-check the engineering team had actually started the engines!

At present, as we make our way to the Irish Sea with a much-reduced crew of 27 and no passengers, Im pleased to say thatEstridis a very capable and comfortable ship at sea, performing well in all the conditions she has faced so far.

A couple of weeks into our journey, Im still amazed at how little engine power the ship uses to propel itself, which shows an excellent hull design and importantly ensures that less fuel is burned, resulting in fewer emissions.

Im really looking forward is driving the ship into Holyhead for the first time and welcoming the rest of my crew on board to see their reaction toEstrid! I am confident they will be just as impressed as I am with the ship. Equally, I cannot wait to see how the ship is received by our guests. I believe they are going to be blown away by it! he added.

Part of a multi-million-pound investment in the Irish Sea region,Stena Estridwill be amongst the most advanced vessels in operation andlarger than todays standard RoPax vessels.

At 215 metres in length,Estridwill carry up to 120 cars and 1,000passengers, with a freight capacity of 3,100 lane meters, representing a massive 50 per cent increase in freight tonnage on the Holyhead to Dublin route.

She is the first of five next generation Stena Line RoPax vessels to be completed at the AVIC Weihai Shipyard with a further two sister ships also scheduled to join her on the Irish Sea both operating on the Liverpool to Belfast route.

Stena Eddais expected to arrive next spring with a third vesselStena Emblato be introduced on the in early 2021 increasing freight capacity between Liverpool and Belfast by 20 per cent.

Read more from the original source:

Captain Matt is Master of the High Seas - HGV Ireland.com

Wherever we humans go, we leave behind a mess. That goes for space, too.

Today, our species is responsible for more than 500,000 pieces of junk hurtling around Earth at phenomenal speeds, and if we don't start actively removing the largest pieces, the risk of collisions will only grow worse.

"Imagine how dangerous sailing the high seas would be if all the ships ever lost in history were still drifting on top of the water,"saysJan Wrner, European Space Agency (ESA) director general.

"That is the current situation in orbit, and it cannot be allowed to continue."

It's almost as if we need a tow truck to remove all the thousands of failed satellites from our orbit; incidentally, that's exactly what the ESA is working on.

By 2025, the agency plans on launching the world's first orbiting junk collector, a four-armed robot that tracks down space waste like Pac-Manin a maze.

The first-of-its-kind mission, known as ClearSpace-1, will start out small, collecting only a single piece of space junk to prove the concept works. The target in this case is called Vespa, a leftover remnant from ESA's Vega rocket launch in 2013.

This piece of junk weighs roughly the same as a small satellite and has a simple shape that should make it easy to grab with four robotic arms. Once it's safely in the arms of the garbage collector, it will then be dragged out of orbit and allowed to burn up in the atmosphere.

Unfortunately, this will also destroy the collector, but in the future, the agency hopes to create a way for the robot to safely eject the rubbish and continue capturing and de-orbiting other pieces.

The ultimate goal is to create a spacecraft that can propel and direct itself in low orbit with a "high level of autonomy", according to the Swiss startup, ClearSpace, which is in charge of designing the machine.

"The space debris issue is more pressing than ever before. Today we have nearly 2,000 live satellites in space and more than 3,000 failed ones," says ClearSpace CEO Luc Piguet.

"And in the coming years the number of satellites will increase by an order of magnitude, with multiple mega-constellations made up of hundreds or even thousands of satellites planned for low Earth orbit."

Creating a network of garbage collectors for these satellites comes with its challenges. Powering a spacecraft, after all, costs a lot of money, and while scientists have been exploring cheaper options for years - like using the garbage it collects as fuel- nothing has so far come to fruition.

The ClearSpace mission is set to cost 117 million euro (US$129 million), but another company based in Tokyo called Astroscale may beat it to the punch. Itplanson launching its first demonstrations within the year, but whether or not it can prove cost-efficient is another matter. Watch this space.

See the original post here:

The First Mission to Remove Space Junk From Orbit Has Just Been Commissioned - ScienceAlert

Next month, the BBC plans to air a docudrama, titled The Children, about some of the roughly 700 young Holocaust survivors who came to Britain in the aftermath of World War II. Rosie Whitehouse writes that the complete story is rather different from the redemptive, feel-good tale being advertised:

After the war the British government offered a home to 1,000 Jewish orphans. But only 731 visas were issued: many of the youngsters point-blank refused to accept the offer from the country they had come to see as an enemy. The orphans wanted to travel to Palestine, but the British, in control of the Mandate territory, were blocking their route with Royal Navy patrols.

This did not deter the Jewish teenagers. They rejected the British visas to join thousands of others attempting to enter Palestine on illegal immigrant ships. A hundred youngsters tried to break through the British blockade on the Josiah Wedgwood, a former Canadian corvette. The survivors joined battle against the Royal Navy sailors who had boarded their illegal immigrant boat on the high seas off the Haifa coast, pelting them with potatoes and tinned food.

Meanwhile the Jewish Brigade, a British military unit recruited from Jews living in the Land of Israel, offered a different choice to a group of young survivors in Italy:

Just like the Boys, [as they were known], who came to Britain, the teenage survivors in Italy were taken to hostels to recuperate. Their new home was the stunning Villa Bencist in Fiesole, above Florence. . . . The Jewish soldiers helped [them] rebuild their lives, filling their charges with a love of Palestine and a deep Zionist commitment, but also giving them a wider education.

None of this is likely to appear in The Children. The Villa Bencist cannot be considered a British triumph. It was, however, a humanitarian one.

Read more at Standpoint

More about: Holocaust survivors, Mandate Palestine, United Kingdom, Zionism

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Applauding Britain for Taking in Young Holocaust Survivors, the BBC Covers Up the Country's Disdain for Their Wishes - Mosaic

Dec 13, 2019 09:36 AM EST

(Photo : European Space Agency)The ClearSpace-1 mission aims to retrieve a cone-shaped debris that was once part of an ESA spacecraft launched in 2013.

Cleaning the space is probably something the common people have never heard of nor have even think of, but the European Space Agency (ESA) announced on Monday that they will be launching a space robot to do thefirst space cleanup mission.

According to the space organization,space junk, including chunks of dead satellites and discarded rockets, were piling up on the Earth's orbit.

To eliminate the extraterrestrial junkyard, the Swiss startup ClearSpace developed a four-armed robot that will be launched to the space to grab the cone-shaped rocket debris that was once part of the rocket launched by ESA six years ago.

Once the robot has successfully latched onto it, it will return to the Earth and be incinerated as it dives down, according to the ESA.

Luc Piguet, the founder of ClearSpace, said in a press release that the mission is timely because there is more space junk than functioning satellites.

The space mission, dubbed as ClearSpace-1, will be launched in early 2020. If it's successful, more will follow until it officially begins about five years from now.

The Clean-up Effort

The world has been dealing with space wasteland for a few decades already. Before this space clean-up mission, multiple ideas were already proposed before by multiple space agencies, including ESA. Some of those are launching junk-collecting nets and harpoons.

Other than this robot, some technologies are currently being developed. For instance, Japan is developing a satellite that uses magnets to collect debris. Last year, the UK also made an experimental device that involved net launchers.

Unfortunately, progress is slow because of financial incapacity. For instance, the prototype released by the UK had caused around $17 million, which is already considered as cheap for such missions. The ClearSpace-1 has a budget amounting to $111 million.

But other than collecting the debris, independent companies like SpaceX are developing satellites programmed to return to the Earth once its usability has ended. It is a prevention tactic.

There is currently still no international settlement regarding space waste accumulation.

Why does it matter?

According to ESA, at least 170 million pieces of space debris has accumulated in the world's orbit ever since the first space mission--theSputnik 1satellite of Soviet Union--was launched in 1957. These are mostly dead satellites, rocket boosters, and some small space collision debris.

The movement of this cosmic debris, with some of them moving faster than a bullet, could cause space collision and damage our satellites -- which play a major role in transferring essential information likeweather forecasts and GPS. It can also pose a threat to man-operated spacecraft and kill the astronauts working inside.

The director of ESA,Jan Woemer, compared it to sailing to high seas if ship debris were still floating on the top of the water. He said it is dangerous and must be eliminated right away.

The ESA also added that without intervention, it is almost impossible for this debris to leave our orbit. And even if the space launches will be discontinued immediately, the junks will break down into pieces through collisions and worsen the problem.

ALSO READ: Why Billion-Dollar Space Debris Endangers Your Signal Reception

2018 NatureWorldNews.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

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ESA to Launch Its First Space Cleaning Robot - Nature World News

This week in future tech, researchers in Australia are the latest to find a way of producing hydrogen fuel significantly cheaper and more sustainably.

Advances in the production of hydrogen fuel are coming thick and fast, with researchers from the University of New South Wales in Australia being the latest to announce a substantial breakthrough. Publishing their findings in Nature Communications, the researchers said they found a new method that can produce the fuel much cheaper and more sustainably than todays technologies.

They were able to capture hydrogen in electrolysis using low-cost metals such as iron and nickel as catalysts, which speed up this chemical reaction while requiring less energy.

The abundant metals iron and nickel would replace the much rarer metals of ruthenium, platinum and iridium that are currently used.

At the moment in our fossil fuel economy, we have this huge incentive to move to a hydrogen economy so that we can be using hydrogen as a clean energy carrier, which is abundant on Earth, said Prof Chuan Zhao.

Weve been talking about the hydrogen economy for ages, but this time it looks as though its really coming.

An international research team is confident that its new research will help solve the massive issue of lithium waste during lithium-ion battery recycling. While the battery technology developed bythis years winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry has revolutionised the world, lithium is a rare element that is often very expensive to reclaim from batteries.

In the recycling process, the raw material is incinerated, and copper and nickel from the batteries are recycled. But in this combustion process, the lithium is lost. However, a team led by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology believes it is on the way to achieving 100pc recycling of lithium from electric vehicle (EV) batteries.

Leading the project, called Libres, researcher Sulalit Bandyopadhyay is developing a process to recover lithium, nickel and cobalt from what is called a black mass. Black mass is a black powder that consists of the materials in the battery that are active, meaning the material that is found on the electrodes.

We plan to launch a pilot plant in 2024 and a full-scale plant in 2027, said Bandyopadhyay.

Irish firm Cubic Telecom has announced the signing of a deal with UK auto newcomers Arrival and Charge to provide connectivity software for their EV fleets. The technology will be deployed in selected EV models from 2020 in the UK, followed by elsewhere in Europe and North America.

Founded four years ago, Arrival has built modular EVs from scratch with a range of up to 300km. It is currently undergoing trials with DHL, UPS, Royal Mail and is partnered with John Lewis Partnership ahead of full-scale production in 2021.

As part of the deal, Cubic Telecom will also provide its connectivity software to Arrivals sister company, Charge Automotive, for specialist EVs including retrofitted classic cars. It will initially be used in a fleet of 1960s-styled electric Mustangs with telemetry, software updates, multimedia streaming, maps and internet surfing.

According to The Guardian, ESA plans to launch a four-armed robot rubbish collector into orbit to deal with the growing space junk problem. The 120m ClearSpace-1 mission is a testbed for future, larger junk collectors.

Set for launch in 2025, it will only collect a single piece of junk called Vespa, which was left in orbit 800km above Earth back in 2013. It was selected because of its sturdy shape and strength, which should prevent ClearSpace-1s arms breaking it up.

ESA director general Johann-Dietrich Wrner warned last month that up to two-thirds of the satellites launched into orbit since 1957 are now dead. If left up there, they could collide with other satellites providing vital communication relays to Earth, or could threaten astronauts aboard the International Space Station.

Now, he said: Imagine how dangerous sailing the high seas would be if all the ships ever lost in history were still drifting on top of the water.

That is the current situation in orbit, and it cannot be allowed to continue.

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Originally posted here:

Australian team finds way to produce hydrogen fuel cheaper than ever - Siliconrepublic.com

Indonesia used 9.8 billion plastic bags every year. Almost 95% of it would end up as waste which throws and end up in the ocean into pollution. Pollution drastically affects the sea environment, killing thousands of marine life like marine mammals, sea turtles, and sea birds. Many rare sea plants have become extinct due to discarding plastic wastes in the seas. Pollution does not only affect marine life and their environment, but it also affects mankind. Contaminated water supplies and food chain cause damages and health problems. Responding to this issue, a group of President University Communication Studies students batch 2017 conducted an event entitled Sea Kepper in Citepus Beach, Palabuhan Ratu. The event gave environmental education to the youth who are still in high school and encourage the youth to take part in the action of saving the earth.

Sea Keeper conducted in three days. In the first two days, Communication Studies Students in collaboration with Greeneration Foundation did Socialization Day to schools near Pelabuhan Ratu (11/22-23). They visited several schools, among others SMPN 1 Palabuhanratu, SMPN 3 Palabuhanratu, and SMKN 1 Palabuhanratu. In Socialization Day, Sea Kepper spread awareness in keeping the ocean clean where normally in high school students current ages, they are passive in maintaining the environment in the future.

Saeful Hamdi, Communication and Branding Manager of Greeneration Foundation as one of the speakers in Sea Kepper event said, Not only human health that is disturbed due to waste problems, but sea animals also experience it. Many of these marine animals think that microplastic is their food (plankton), but unfortunately, its only plastic. This situation should make us start to act.

As the main event, Sea Kepper conducted Beach Clean-Up Movement (11/24). The event was attended by representatives of the Environmental Agency Sukabumi District Dedem Sunegar, Head of the Garbage Transport Section of the Environmental Agency Sukabumi District Endang Suherman, representative of the Military Command Palabuhan Ratu Pelda Dodi Salawudi, Ch, and the Police of Palabuhan Ratu, Akp Oki Eka Kartikayana, S.Pd. in Beach Clean-Up Movement, students with all societies around Pelabuhan Ratu cleaned up the trash around the beach and collected it. To immediately handed over to the Department Environment. All of the trashes was directly put into the garbage grinder, so residents and students understood that the trashes was immediately processed properly.

This movement invites all societies, not only Pelabuhan Ratu residents, to be more aware of the dangers of plastic waste. This movement is also accompanied by the distribution of stainless straw aimed at the community better-using items that can be reused (reusable) because no matter how small our efforts to not use plastic is very meaningful to our world.

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Sea Keeper : Save Life, Save the Ocean - QS WOW News

Since the first season aired in May 2019, High Seas, also called Alta Mar in Spanish, has caught the attention of fans of murder-mysteries. And within months it has added to Netflixs portfolio of foreign-language shows. Packed with drama, suspense, thrill, and high tension, the Spanish series is just on point with its entertainment quotient. Set in the backdrop of 1940s Spanish culture, the spectacular and grand setting makes the series a delightful visual treat.

High Seas Season 1 dropped on Netflix on May 24, 2019, with eight episodes. Season 2 of the series will drop another eight episodes on November 22, 2019.

High Seas follows the story of sisters Carolina and Eva Villanueva, who embark on a journey from Spain to Brazil on a luxury cruise. And in the course of their travel across the high seas, they discover some dark secrets within their family accompanied by disturbing events, murders, conspiracy and a lot more than they had expected. Season 1 explores the beginning of Eva and Carolinas journey aboard the luxury vessel, heading to Spain from Brazil, along with 1600 passengers. From accidentally injuring a young woman to being key suspects of her murder, the sisters get entwined in unexpected conspiracies, family secrets, and uncanny events onboard that spin their lives out of control. The first season saw endless twists and turns of characters and their motives, peppered with some tension-filled moments like Carolinas wedding, weaved into a murder plot. Taking off from where they left off season 1, season 2 promises a joyride through the vintage grandeur of the elite Spanish family. As the journey continues, more dirty secrets of the Villanueva family unravel, while Eva and Carolina try to protect themselves from being swept away by the dangerous events.

The ensemble cast of High Seas presents some of the most recognized names in Spanish entertainment. Jose Sacristan features as the captain of Barbara de Braganza, the luxury cruise liner, where all the drama unfolds.

Ivana Baquero

Ivana Baquero plays the character of Eva Villanueva. Eva is recognized for her roles in Pans Labyrinth and The Shannara Chronicles. In 'High Seas', she plays the role of the seemingly smarter, even though not as extrovert as her sister, Eva, steals the heart of the officer played by Jon Kortajarena, thus getting roped into the case further. As one of the lead characters on the show, Ivana will be back with more drama and suspense in season 2.

Jon Kortajarena

Model and actor Jon Kortajarena plays Nicolas Vasquez, the Chief Officer of the ship.Jon shot to fame with his modeling stints with leading fashion brands like Just Cavalli, Versace, Giorgio Armani, Bally, Etro, Trussardi, Diesel, Mangano, Lagerfeld, Pepe Jeans but notably, H&M, Zara, Guess and Tom Ford. In 'High Seas' he plays the character of the officer aboard the luxury cruise ship who digs into the murder of a mysterious woman, while he also steals Eva's heart. His role has remained quite significant to the plot throughout season 1 and he will be back in Season 2.

Other cast members include Daniel Ludh, Alejandra Onieva, Laura Pratts, Manuela Velle, and Eloy Azorin.

The mystery-drama-thriller is directed by Carlos Sedes who also serves as the executive producer for the show. The concept was developed by Ramon Campos and Gema R. Neira. The show for Netflix is produced by Campos, in association with Teresa Fernandez Valdes.

Sneak a peek at the grander, bolder, and more exciting all-new season of High Seas. Hold on to what you can, a storm is coming with waves of great changes. The second season of #AltaMar docks on November 22.

Get ready for another binge-watching session as Netflix drops all eight episodes of the original Spanish series on November 22, 2019.

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High Seas Season 2: Release date, plot, cast, trailer, and everything you need to know about the Spanish mur - MEAWW

The high seas remain an often-dystopian realm where the scant laws that do exist are frequently ignored. This has led to overfishing, illegal dumping, and other environmental abuses that are closely linked to human rights violations aboard thousands of vessels.

By IanUrbina November20,2019

There are few remaining frontiers on our planet. But perhaps the wildest, and least understood, are the worlds oceans: Too big to police and under no clear international authority, these immense regions of treacherous water play host to rampant criminality and exploitation of the marine life below the surface and the humans working the boats above it.

Consider the perils facing the tens of millions of people working aboard one of thousands of illegal fishing vessels on the high seas. At least one ship globally sinks every three days. Private security forces operating at sea are a $20 billion business, and when these mercenaries kill, governments rarely respond because no country holds jurisdiction in international waters. And what transcends all borders are the compounding environmental threats imposed by humans.

The urgency of this crisis is real. Operating with virtual impunity on the high seas, fleets from Spain, China, South Korea, Taiwan, and other countries are at the heart of an illicit seafood trade that generates an estimated $160 billion in annual sales. The trade in illegal fish has grown over the past decade as improved technology stronger radar, bigger nets, faster ships has enabled fishing vessels to plunder the oceans with remarkable efficiency.

Stories from these depths together formed The Outlaw Ocean, a New York Times series and book, that took me more than five years to report on every continent and every ocean. My reporting revealed the disturbing reality of a floating world that connects us all, a place where anyone can do anything because no one is watching. For all its breathtaking beauty, the ocean is also a dystopian place, home to dark inhumanities.

I met a Cambodian migrant, who had been shackled by the neck on a trawler catching fish destined for American shelves. Captive at sea for three years, this Cambodian was an all too common example of a wider problem known as sea slavery that ensnares tens of thousands of men and boys on fishing boats each year globally.

In the case of Thailand, where this abuse is common, men or boys from surrounding countries such as Laos, Cambodia, or Myanmar are often offered a job in construction or some other lucrative industry by a human trafficker. This trafficker typically tells the potential worker that they can help the worker get into the country and that the debt incurred during passage will be settled up later. The worker soon finds out that he is not in fact destined for a job in construction, but is going to work on a fishing boat. When he arrives at port, the debt the worker accrued is used to sell him to the fishing boat captain. Sometimes these boys and men are kept captive at sea for several years before they escape or are released.

Off the coast of South Africa, I shadowed a Tanzanian stowaway who, discovered at sea by an unwitting and angry fishing boat crew, was sent overboard on a makeshift dingy and left to die in the middle of the ocean, hundreds of miles from land as a storm approached. This grim phenomenon, known as rafting, has become a more common way to dispose of migrants and stowaways, especially in the wake of new rules imposed after September 11 and recent anti-immigration policies that have raised penalties for captains who arrive in port with unplanned guests onboard.

Crew members on a Korean fishing boat being arrested by Sierra Leone fishery inspectors in 2017 after illegal fishing gear was found onboard. Pierre Gleizes / Greenpeace

At another point during my reporting, I embedded on a roach-infested Thai purse seiner, where 40 trafficked Cambodian boys worked 20-hour days, barefoot, rain or shine, on a slippery deck, just one misstep from disaster. That first night I tried to sleep on the floor as most do. I was soon awakened by rats crawling across my legs, dozens more scurrying all around me and the rest of the crew. Long-haul fishing isnt just the worlds most dangerous profession, its also in many places the most gruesome.

In the South Atlantic, I joined the longest law-enforcement chase in nautical history. A vigilante conservation group called Sea Shepherd was attempting what no government had been willing to do. These advocates were trying to stop a ship that for nearly a decade had fished illegally and largely unobstructed in Antarctic waters, profiting to the tune of more than $76 million. Even though Interpol had placed this illegal ship on its so-called Purple Notice list essentially an arrest-on-sight list no one with the authority or responsibility to act did so.

The bottom line is that this realm, which happens to cover two-thirds of the globe, is home to an assortment of extra-legal actors. They range from traffickers and smugglers, pirates and mercenaries, wreck thieves and repo men, to elusive poachers and vigilante conservationists, clandestine oil-dumpers, shackled slaves, and cast-adrift stowaways. Many of these actors flourish in the absence of governance. And, importantly, many of the more urgent problems they are countering or creating involve an interplay between human rights and environmental abuses.

Combating these issues is complex. Most commercial fishing occurs offshore, out of view and reach of authorities. Vessels often change their name, call sign, or flag to avoid detection. The global economy has also become accustomed to tangled and convoluted supply chains where it is very difficult if not impossible (perhaps by design) to discern whether forced labor is being used to move goods across the ocean or catch the fish that ends up on our dinner plates. Globalization has allowed companies to rely on more international and tangled supply chains so as to tap cheaper ingredients and labor. The consequence is savings for consumers, but, if we are honest, we also have to admit permitting the abuses that allow for these cheaper prices be they a failure to pay workers anything close to appropriate wages, or a decided policy of unsustainable fishing that is destined to cause stocks to collapse.

We are all the beneficiaries of the lawlessness on the high seas, where 90 percent of all the products we consume come by way of ships, and the commercial channels are usually unbothered by the government and, therefore, rules. We have been able to access impossibly cheap products that arrive to our shelves with incredible speed. We are deeply dependent on the ocean: 50 percent of our oxygen comes from the ocean, and in some coastal communities in Africa and Asia, 70 percent of the protein people consume comes from the sea. All of these types of abuses, whether theyre human rights abuses, or environmental crimes, stem from a core problem, which is a lack of governance at sea, especially on the high seas.

There are three ways in which misbehavior happens offshore routinely and with impunity: too few rules, a lack of enforcement, and insufficient awareness of what is happening there. All of these problems are also connected in the sense that they occur with a certain tacit complicity from all of us who live on land.

Author Ian Urbina boarding a fishing boat off the Philippines while investigating the mysterious death of a deckhand. Adam Dean for the New York Times.

Seafood may be having its moment of reckoning, not unlike what occurred previously with blood diamonds, sweat-shop garments, and dolphin-free tuna, where companies and consumers say that they are willing to accept higher prices for goods that can actually be traced from bait to plate. Admittedly, because the sea is so far from inspectors and watchful eyes, it will be difficult for companies to track their products better and publicly prove that abuses are not baked into their production process. But if the will is there, spurred by consumer demand, companies and governments can accomplish this level of accountability and transparency.

If countries were serious about combating human rights, labor, and environmental abuses at sea, they would step up legal protections, at-sea patrols, and, most especially, inspections when ships dock. Broadly speaking, there need to be more rules, more proactive enforcement of those rules, and more awareness of what is happening out there.

A global ban on fishing on the high seas? The time is now. Read more.

It would also be perilous to ignore the way that environmental abuses contribute to and derive from human rights and labor crimes. When considering solutions, it seems prudent to consider not just the fish but also the fishers. It is often ill advised to push policy fixes that help to ensure that a fish hasnt been caught using illegal gear or ensuring that it hasnt been pulled from water where its forbidden, without also ensuring that the people doing the actual fishing were not sea slaves.

When it comes to this woefully out-of-sight, out-of-mind realm, solutions exist to many of the most vexing challenges, particularly illegal fishing and human trafficking. More often, however, what has been missing is the political and societal will to tackle these issues now.

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Lawless Ocean: The Link Between Human Rights Abuses and Overfishing - Yale Environment 360