Category Archives: High Seas

high seas, in maritime law, all parts of the mass of saltwater surrounding the globe that are not part of the territorial sea or internal waters of a state. For several centuries beginning in the European Middle Ages, a number of maritime states asserted sovereignty over large portions of the high seas. Well-known examples were the claims of Genoa in the Mediterranean and of Great Britain in the North Sea and elsewhere.

The doctrine that the high seas in time of peace are open to all nations and may not be subjected to national sovereignty (freedom of the seas) was proposed by the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius as early as 1609. It did not become an accepted principle of international law, however, until the 19th century. Freedom of the seas was ideologically connected with other 19th-century freedoms, particularly laissez-faire economic theory, and was vigorously pressed by the great maritime and commercial powers, especially Great Britain. Freedom of the high seas is now recognized to include freedom of navigation, fishing, the laying of submarine cables and pipelines, and overflight of aircraft.

Read More on This Topic

international law: High seas and seabed

Traditionally, the high seas beyond the territorial waters of states have been regarded as open to all and incapable of...

By the second half of the 20th century, demands by some coastal states for increased security and customs zones, for exclusive offshore-fishing rights, for conservation of maritime resources, and for exploitation of resources, especially oil, found in continental shelves caused serious conflicts. The first United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, meeting at Geneva in 1958, sought to codify the law of the high seas but was unable to resolve many issues, notably the maximum permissible breadth of the territorial sea subject to national sovereignty. A second conference (Geneva, 1960) also failed to resolve this point; and a third conference began in Caracas in 1973, later convening in Geneva and New York City.

See the article here:

high seas | maritime law | Britannica

For the second time in three years, a San Diego U.S. attorney was honored with the Coast Guards highest civilian award for prosecutions targeting cocaine traffickers on the high seas.

Former U.S. Attorney Robert Brewer accepted the Distinguished Public Service Award earlier this month from Rear Adm. Brian Penoyer, a district commander, on behalf of the agencys commandant. It is the guards highest public honor, other than the gold and silver lifesaving medals.

In 2018, then-U.S. Attorney Adam Braverman a career drug prosecutor who had been approved by Congress to fill in between official Obama and Trump nominees received the same award. Brewer succeed Braverman as President Donald Trumps pick, and he served for two years before resigning at the end of February with the change in administrations.

Both awards illustrate the ramped up focus on the Eastern Pacific Ocean. The route has shifted to the east over the past few decades as trafficking organizations sought to avoid heavy drug enforcement on the once dominant Caribbean route, and as cocaine producers realized it was cheaper to outsource its smuggling to Mexican cartels.

Bulk cocaine often goes by sea from South and Central America, then is offloaded on spots along Mexicos western coast before being smuggled on established land corridors through the U.S.-Mexico border.

Former U.S. Attorney Robert Brewer speaks at a news conference in this 2020 file photo in San Diego.

(Ariana Drehsler/For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

As Coast Guard and Navy operations have expanded in the area, so have interdictions. In fiscal 2019 the Coast Guard seized 175 metric tons from the Eastern Pacific, with much of the contraband found on sleek, low-profile and go-fast vessels designed to blend into the ocean horizon.

In April 2020, Trump ordered an enforcement surge in the Western hemisphere, spurring accompanying prosecutions in San Diego. The results: the conviction of six defendants in two jury trials, the prosecution of crewmembers aboard 20 vessels and the arrests of key organizers in Central and South America, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office.

One semi-submersible vessel stopped more than 500 nautical miles off Central America in August 2020 was loaded with more than 2,000 kilograms of cocaine worth an estimated $35 million, prosecutors said. Its operator, a Colombian national, had already been convicted and served prison time in the U.S. for similar exploits.

The overall prosecutorial effort effectively stymied the flow of maritime smuggling and delivered a major setback to numerous drug trafficking organizations, the award states.

During Brewers tenure, the U.S. Attorneys Office indicted 125 high-level targets as investigators worked up the chain of command, and dismantled major organizations in Colombia, Ecuador and Guatemala, the award states. Also seized in connection with the San Diego-based investigations were 45 metric tons of cocaine and $4.5 million in bulk cash.

One of those targets is Iram Adonas Mrida Cobn, who was extradited to San Diego earlier this month on a 2019 federal grand jury indictment charging him with an international conspiracy to distribute cocaine.

The Coast Guard seizes a semi-submersible off the coast of Central America in August 2020 carrying 2,000 kilograms of cocaine.

(Courtesy of U.S. Attorneys Office)

Mrida Cobn, who goes by the nicknames El Dorado or Bucfalo, was arrested by Guatemalan authorities in April at an upscale shopping center in Guatemala City.

The U.S. indictment does not include details of the case. However, the Guatemalan government said he and his partners in a criminal organization are suspected of transporting multiple tons of cocaine from South America through Central America and Mexico to be distributed in the United States. The group has been under investigation since 2016.

At the award ceremony on Dec. 15, Brewer reflected on the honor.

This very special award is really a reflection on the entire U.S. Attorneys Office for the Southern District of California, he said. It is a tribute to the hard work of the dedicated and innovative team that made these prosecutions possible.

After stepping down as U.S. attorney, Brewer returned to San Diego law firm Seltzer Caplan McMahon Vitek as of counsel focusing on civil litigation and white-collar defense. President Joe Biden has yet to name his nominee for the office.

See the article here:

Coast Guard award recognizes focus on high seas cocaine-trafficking prosecutions - The San Diego Union-Tribune

The 2022 EPCOT International Festival of the Arts is just around the corner, and artist Dave Perillo has revealed a look at two of his upcoming four offerings that honor the history of Walt Disney World.

EPCOT fanatics are sure to love this piece honoring Maelstrom, the high-seas adventure that operated at the Norway Pavilion from 1988 to 2014. According to Perillo, his favorite part of the ride was the three-headed troll which sent guests back, back, over the falls, so he was determined to include it in the piece.

For Magic Kingdom lovers, the Orange Bird flies high above Sunshine Tree Terrace, Citrus Swirl in hand in this piece.

Additionally, Perillo provided a look at his process with this original concept sketch for the piece.

Perillo, whose art has been featured at previous festivals, will be available to sign his work at the Wonderground Gallery tent near the France Pavilion from January 15-21. You can get a full look at his signing schedule here!

The 2022 EPCOT International Festival of the Arts runs from January 14 through February 21, 2022.

As always, keep following WDWNT for all of your Disney Parks news, and for the absolute latest, follow WDW News Today on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Related

More here:

Dave Perillo Reveals Maelstrom, Orange Bird Art Coming to the 2022 EPCOT International Festival of the Arts - wdwnt.com

Royal Caribbean announces new nine-month world cruise

If nine months on a cruise ship sounds good to you, we have the trip for you!

Staff video, USA TODAY

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating Royal Caribbean's Odyssey of the Seas ship as it continues to sailwith more than 50 cases of COVID onboard.

"CDC is investigating the recent increase in COVID-19 cases identified on Royal Caribbean Internationals (RCI)Odyssey of the Seas," CDC spokesperson David Daigle told USA TODAY Thursday."All cases appear to be mild or asymptomatic. Additionally, there have been no COVID-19 related hospitalizations, medical evacuations, ventilator use, or deaths from this ship."

Fifty-five passengers and crew members tested positive for COVID-19 on Royal Caribbean's Odyssey of the Seas cruise ship, which departed Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Saturday for an eight-night Caribbean trip, a spokesperson for Royal Caribbean told USA TODAY Wednesday.

The health agencyis working closely with Royal Caribbean and will "consider multiple factors" before marking the ship as "Red" status at which point it would be required to return to port.

As of Thursday afternoon, Odyssey of the Seas was classified as "Yellow" status meaning the "CDC has investigated and ship remains under observation."

Odyssey of the Seas is currently sailing in the Caribbean and is due to return to Fort Lauderdale on Sunday.

The ship, whichreturned briefly to port on Sunday to disembarka passenger with COVID-19, is carrying 3,587 passengers and 1,599 crew.With vaccinations required among all crew members and guests 12 and older, 95% of those on board were fully vaccinated, according to Royal Caribbean.

"During routine weekly testing of our fully vaccinated crew members, there were test results that came back positive for COVID-19,"the company said in a statement shared by spokesperson Lyan Sierra-Carolate Tuesday night."Close contacts were quickly identified, and they each immediately went into quarantine."

The passengers and crewwho tested positiveand their close contactsare quarantining, according to Royal Caribbean. Those who tested positive areeither mildly symptomatic or asymptomatic andbeing monitored by an on-board medical team.

Royal Caribbean announced Wednesday that the cruisewill notstop in Curacao or Aruba as planned.

"The decision was made together with the islands and out of an abundance of caution due to the current trend of cases in the destination communities and having COVID-19 positive cases on board ...representing 1.1% of the onboard community," according to a statement shared by Sierra-Caro.

After disembarking, she tested positive: A cruise line didn't provide a COVID test to a symptomatic passenger

Royal Caribbean's newest ship: Odyssey of the Seas, makes brief return to port due to COVID

Weekly testing of crew members is one of the protocols on Royal Caribbean's ships, part of a "multilayered set of comprehensive health and safety measures,"the company said.Other protocols includeenhanced cleaning, a vaccine requirement for passengers and crew, and the use of masks, among others.

"In an abundance of caution for the well-being of our guests and crew, adjustments have been made toOdyssey of the Seasschedule of shows and activities on board the Dec. 18 sailing," Royal Caribbean said in thestatement shared by Sierra-Caro.

The CDC has been working with global public health experts andindustry partners to learn about omicron, Daigle said. "We are still learning how easily it spreads, the severity of illness it causes, and how well available vaccines and medications work against it."

He continued that "cruise travel is not a zero-risk activity."

The likelihood of contracting COVID-19 on cruise ships is "high because the virus spreads easily between people in close quarters aboard ships," Daigle said.

The CDC advises people who are not fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to avoid cruise travel and advises travelers get a booster shot if eligible.

'Everything was so confusing': 48 people test positive for COVID on Royal Caribbean Symphony of the Seas ship

View post:

The CDC is investigating Royal Caribbean's Odyssey of the Seas with 55 COVID cases onboard - USA TODAY

KODIAK ISLAND, Alaska Forces profound and alarming are reshaping the upper reaches of the North Pacific and Arctic oceans, breaking the food chain that supports billions of creatures and one of the worlds most important fisheries.

In the last five years, scientists have observed animal die-offs of unprecedented size, scope and duration in the waters of the Beaufort, Chukchi and northern Bering seas, while recording the displacement and disappearance of entire species of fish and ocean-dwelling invertebrates. The ecosystem is critical for resident seals, walruses and bears, as well as migratory gray whales, birds, sea lions and numerous other animals.

Historically long stretches of record-breaking ocean heat and loss of sea ice have fundamentally changed this ecosystem from bottom to top and top to bottom, say researchers who study its inhabitants. Not only are algae and zooplankton affected, but now apex predators such as killer whales are moving into areas once locked away by ice gaining unfettered access to a spoil of riches.

Scientists describe whats going on as less an ecosystem collapse than a brutal regime shift an event in which many species may disappear, but others will replace them.

You can think of it in terms of winners and losers, said Janet Duffy-Anderson, a Seattle-based marine scientist who leads annual surveys of the Bering Sea for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations Alaska Fisheries Science Center. Something is going to emerge and become the more dominant species, and something is going to decline because it cant adapt to that changing food web.

A team from The Times traveled to Alaska and spoke with dozens of scientists conducting field research in the Bering Sea and high Arctic to better understand these dramatic changes. Their findings suggest that this vast, near-polar ecosystem stable for thousands for years and resilient to brief but dramatic swings in temperature is undergoing an irreversible transition.

Its like the gates of hell have been opened, said Lorenzo Ciannelli, a fisheries oceanographer at Oregon State University, referring to a once ice-covered portion of the Bering Sea that has largely disappeared.

Since 2019, federal investigators have declared unexplained mortality events for a variety of animals, including gray whales that migrate past California and several species of Arctic seals. They are also examining large die-offs or wrecks, as avian biologists call them in dozens of seabird species including horned puffins, black-legged kittiwakes and shearwaters.

At the same time, they are documenting the disappearance of the cold pool a region of the northern Bering Sea that for thousands of years has served as a barrier that protects cold-water species, such as Arctic cod and snow crab, from subarctic species, such as walleye pollock and Pacific cod. In the last five years, many of these Arctic species have almost entirely disappeared from the northern Bering, while populations of warmer-dwelling fish have proliferated.

In 2010, a federal survey estimated there were 319,000 metric tons of snow crab in the northern Bering Sea. As of this year, that number had dropped by more than 75 percent. Meanwhile, a subarctic fish, the Pacific cod, has skyrocketed going from 29,124 metric tons in 2010 to 227,577 in 2021.

Whether the warming has diminished these super-cold-water species or forced them to migrate elsewhere farther north or west, across the U.S.-Russia border, where American scientists can no longer observe them remains unclear. But scientists say animals seem to be suffering in these more distant polar regions too, according to sporadic reports from the area.

Which gets to the basic challenge of studying this ecosystem: For so long, its remoteness, freezing temperatures and lack of winter sunlight have made the region largely inaccessible. Unlike in temperate and tropical climates, where scientists can obtain reasonably accurate population counts of many species, the Arctic doesnt yield its secrets easily. That makes it hard to establish baseline data for scores of species especially those with little commercial value.

That part is really frustrating, said Peter Boveng, who studies Arctic seals for NOAAs Alaska Fisheries Science Center. He said he and his colleagues wonder if the information they are now gathering is truly baseline data, or has already been shifted by years of warming.

Only recently have he and other scientists had the technology to conduct these kinds of counts using cameras instead of observers in airplanes, for instance, or installing sound buoys across the ice and sea to capture the movement of whales, seals and bears.

Were only just beginning to understand what is happening up there, said Deborah Giles, a killer whale researcher at the University of Washingtons Center for Conservation Biology. We just couldnt be there or see things in the way a drone can.

The dramatic shifts that Giles, Boveng and others are observing have ramifications that stretch far beyond the Arctic. The Bering Sea is one of the planets major fishing grounds the eastern Bering Sea, for instance, supplies more than 40 percent of the annual U.S. catch of fish and shellfish and is a crucial food source for thousands of Russians and Indigenous Alaskans who rely on fish, birds eggs, walrus and seal for protein.

Globally, cold-water ecosystems support the worlds fisheries. Halibut, all of the cod, all of the benthic crabs, lobsters. This is the majority of the food source for the world, said NOAAs Duffy-Anderson.

The potential ripple effect could shut down fisheries and leave migrating animals starving for food. These include gray whales and short-tailed shearwaters a bird that travels more than 9,000 miles every year from Australia and New Zealand to feed in the Arctic smorgasbord before flying home.

Alaska is a bellwether for what other systems can expect, she added. Its really just a beginning.

::

Flying along the southeastern coastline of Alaskas Kodiak Island, Matthew Van Daele wearing a safety harness tethered to the inside a U.S. Coast Guard MH-60T Jayhawk leaned out the helicopter door, scanning the beaches below for dead whales and seals.

The clouds hung low, so the copter hugged close to the sandstone cliffs that rise from this green island, which gets about 80 inches of rain and 60 inches of snowfall every year. Although few dead animals were spotted on this September afternoon, plenty of furry brown Kodiak bears could be seen bounding across open fields and along the beaches, trying to escape the ruckus of the approaching chopper.

Theres one! yelled Van Daele, natural resources director for the Sunaq Tribe, speaking through the intercom system to the choppers pilots as he pointed to a rotting whale carcass on the beach.

The pilots circled and deftly landed on a little strip of sand, careful to keep the rotor blades from hitting the eroding wall of rock on the beachs edge.

Joe Sekerak, a NOAA enforcement officer, jumped out after Van Daele, holding a rifle should hungry Kodiak bears arrive to challenge the small team in its attempt to examine the whale carcass.

According to Van Daele, the whale had been dead several weeks; her body was in poor shape, with little fat.

Since 2019, hundreds of gray whales have died along North Americas Pacific coastline, many appearing skinny or underfed.

Although researchers have not determined the cause of the die-off, there are ominous signs something is amiss in their high Arctic feeding grounds.

Were used to change around here, said Alexus Kwatchka, a commercial fisherman who has navigated Alaskan waters for more than 30 years. He noted some years are cold, some are warm; sometimes all of the fish seem to be in one area for a few years, and then resettle elsewhere.

This fall has been extremely cold in Alaska; the town of Kotzebue, in the northwest, hit minus-31 degrees on Nov. 28 the record low for that date. This follows several years of record-setting warmth in the region.

What is new, said Kwatchka, is the persistence of this change. Its not like it gets super warm for one or two years and then goes back to normal, he said. Now the changes last, and he said hes encountering things hes never seen before such as gray whales feeding along the beaches of Kodiak, or swimming in packs.

Usually there are whales just scattered around the island, he said. But Ive seen them kind of bunched up and podded up, and Im seeing them in places where I dont ordinarily see them.

In September, an emaciated young male gray whale was seen off a beach near Kodiak, behaving as though it were trying to feed, scooping material from the shallow shore bottom and filtering it through his baleen, a system many leviathans use to separate food from sand and water.

Three weeks later, that same young male washed ashore dead, not far from where he had been spotted previously.

Dozens of scientists validated Kwatchkas observations, describing these periods of intense ocean heat and cooling as stanzas, which are growing more extreme and lasting longer than those of the past.

Thats a problem, said Duffy-Anderson, because the longer you stress a system, the deeper and broader the impacts and therefore the harder for it to bounce back.

While its always possible the current stanza is temporary and the ecosystem could reset itself, that is unlikely, said Rick Thoman, an Alaska climate specialist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Due to atmospheric warming, the worlds oceans hold so much excess heat that its improbable the Chukchi Sea will ever be covered again with thick, multiyear ice, he said. Nor will we see many more years where the spring ice extends across the Bering, he said.

Even though Nome saw one of its coldest Novembers in 100 years of record keeping, and King Salmon a town of roughly 300 near Katmai National Park and Preserve recorded its all-time lowest November temperatures, the escalator of warming is going up, Thoman said.

He conjured up an image of a 5-year-old running up and down an ascending escalator. Somebody standing off of the escalator might say, oh, it looks like the kid is going down. But as we know, the escalator is continuing to go up.

What weve seen in the Bering Sea in recent years is, he added, unprecedented.

::

Lee Cooper and Jackie Grebmeier, researchers at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, have visited these waters every year since the 1980s, when they were graduate students at the University of Alaska. Their initial proposal centered on one basic question: What makes these Arctic-like waters of the northern Bering Sea so productive?

It was tough work. So much of the ocean was frozen, and therefore inaccessible. Other researchers faced the same challenge.

When we started out, we couldnt get north into the Bering Strait area because of ice until mid-June, said Kathy Kuletz, a bird biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who has been researching the northern Bering Sea and high Arctic since 2006 and studying Alaskan birds since 1978. Even then, it wasnt until late June that you could get into the Chukchi. And thats certainly not been the issue since, lets see, about 2015 or so.

Researchers are focused on ice or the lack of it because the frozen ocean is the foundation of the regions rich ecosystems. It not only keeps the waters beneath it cool, but a layer of algae grows on the underside of these ice sheets the key to the entire food web.

For eons, as the sun moved south in autumn and the temperatures dropped in the high latitudes, Arctic sea ice thickened near the North Pole. At its edges, it reached its frosty fingers into the inlets along the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, winding its way south through the Bering Strait and into the northern Bering Sea. By March, the northern Bering Sea was typically a vast field of white ice, its edges marked by broken sheets that had been pushed into a vertical position by whipping winds and churning currents below.

But for the last 50 years, as the regions warm stanzas have increased in duration and intensity, that seasonal ice has dwindled.

A 2020 study published in the journal Science documented a reduction in ice extent unlike any other in the last 5,500 years: Its extent in 2018 and 2019 was 60 percent to 70 percent lower than the historical average. In an Arctic report card released just this week, federal scientists called the regions changes alarming and undeniable.

Long before the sea was named for the 18th century Danish cartographer and Russian naval explorer Vitus Jonassen Bering, the icy water body consisted of two distinct ecosystems one subarctic, the other resembling the high Arctic. Fish in the subarctic zone such as Pacific cod were deterred by the frigid temperatures of the cold pool, which hover just below 32 degrees. But other fish such as Arctic cod, capelin and flatfish evolved to thrive in this environment, with the cold pool serving as a protective barrier.

Now that thermal force field has all but vanished.

Lyle Britt, director of the Resource Assessment and Conservation Engineering division of the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, leads annual trawl surveys in the Bering Sea, part of a U.S. effort to systematically monitor commercial fish populations and their ecosystems. The federal government has conducted a survey of the eastern Bering Sea every year since 1982 with the exception of 2020, when COVID grounded the personnel and boats. Federal surveying of the northern Bering Sea began in 2010 amid concerns about the loss of seasonal sea ice; the government has surveyed it a total of five times.

With each survey, Britt and his mariner colleagues navigate the sea as if tracing over the same piece of graph paper, year after year, with 520 evenly dispersed stations at 20-mile intervals. At each one 376 in the eastern Bering Sea and 144 in the northern Bering Sea they stop to collect environmental data, such as bottom- and surface-water temperatures, as well as a sampling of fish and invertebrates, which they count and weigh.

Data from a Bering Sea mooring shows the average temperature throughout the water column has risen markedly in the last several years: in 2018, water temperatures were 9 degrees above the historical average.

Not only have the scientists noticed, so too have the fish.

Consider the plight of the walleye pollock also known as Alaska pollock one of the regions most important fisheries.

While adult walleye pollock are averse to super cold water, juveniles are known to gravitate to the interior of the cold pool. In this protective chilly dome, the young fish are not only walled off from cold-hating predators, but as their metabolisms slow in the frigid temperatures, they can gorge on and grow from the Arctic ecosystems fatty, rich food sources.

With the cold pool gone, theres no refuge for small fish seeking to grow big, said Duffy-Anderson. Instead, the adult fish can now move into those spaces.

So what has happened to the Arctic fish? Have they just moved north, following the cold water?

Its not that simple, said Britt. The northern Bering Sea is very shallow. When ice is not there to cover it, it warms up quickly and can exceed temperatures detected in the subarctic southern Bering Sea.

So we dont fully understand all the implications of why the fish are moving in the directions and patterns that they are, he said. But in some places particularly the places that once harbored cold-loving fish such as Arctic cod and capelin they are just gone.

In a healthy Arctic system, thousands of bottom-dwelling species bottom fish, clams, crabs and shrimp-like critters feast on the lipid-rich algae that falls from the ice to the bottom of the sea. But in a warm-water system, the algae gets taken up in the water column, said Duffy-Anderson.

The healthy system is highly energy-efficient with sediment-dwelling invertebrates and bottom fish feeding on the rain of algae, and then birds and large-bodied mammals, such as walrus and whales, scooping them up.

One of the things Im really concerned about is that the whole food web dynamic kind of comes apart, she said. As warmer waters and animals infiltrate the system, you put more links in the food chain, and then less and less of that energy is transferred efficiently. And that is what were beginning to see.

Ice is also essential habitat for some Arctic mammals. As with gray whales, several types of ice seals which include ringed, spotted and bearded seals started showing up skinny or dead around the Chukchi and Bering seas in 2018, spurring a federal investigation. These Arctic-dwelling species rely on sea ice to pup, nurse and molt. Without it, they spend more time in the cold water, where they expend too much energy. Young seals are particularly vulnerable; their chances for survival plummet without the ice, said the Alaska Fisheries Science Centers Boveng.

There are also reports of killer whales also known as orcas showing up in areas they havent been spotted before, feeding on beluga whales, bowheads and narwhals, said Giles, the University of Washington orca researcher.

They are finding channels and openings through the ice, and in some cases preying on animals that have never seen killer whales before, she said.

Climate scientists worldwide have long warned that as the planet warms, humans and wildlife will become more vulnerable to infectious diseases previously confined to certain locations and environments. That dynamic could be a factor in the massive die-off of birds in the Bering Sea experts estimate at least tens of thousands of birds have died there since 2013.

The culprit was avian cholera, a disease not previously detected in these high latitudes, and one that elsewhere rarely fells seabirds such as thick-billed murres, auklets, common eiders, northern fulmars and gulls.

Toxic algae associated with warmer waters has also been detected in a few dead birds (and some healthy birds) in the Bering Sea, said Robb Kaler, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and may have been responsible for the death of a person living on St. Lawrence Island.

Kuletz, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist who has been observing birds in Alaska since the late 1970s, said shes never before seen the large-scale changes of recent years. In 2013, the dead birds did not show signs of being emaciated, but in 2017, hundreds to thousands more began to wash up dead on beaches with clear signs of starvation, she said.

Thereve always been little peaks of die-offs that would last a year or so, but then things would go back to normal, she said. These animals are resilient. They can forgo breeding if they arent getting enough nutrition.

Not all bird species are suffering. Albatross, which are surface feeders, are booming, underscoring for Kuletz the idea that there could be winners and losers in the changing region. Albatross do not nest in Alaska. They only come in the summer to feed, and are therefore not tied to eggs or nests while looking for food.

Yet for some scientists, it isnt easy to reconcile how a system in balance could so quickly go off the rails, even if some species adapt and thrive as others struggle.

For me, its actually very emotional, said Thoman, the University of Alaska climate specialist, recalling his elementary school days, when he read Jack Londons To Build a Fire and other stories from the Arctic.

The environment that he described, the environment that I saw going through National Geographics in the 1970s? That environment doesnt exist anymore.

Susanne Rust, Los Angeles Times

More articles from the BDN

Here is the original post:

Climate change is wreaking havoc in the Arctic and beyond - Bangor Daily News

Software is Eating the World

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Thomas Jefferson, "Declaration Of Independence," 1776

Marc Andreessens most famous prophecy, that software is eating the world is continually proving its remarkable prescience. Not only is software transforming most business models, but it is also disrupting the largest enterprise in human history the nation state. In each industry disrupted by digital innovation, previously impossible economic efficiencies have been unlocked, making the lives of consumers easier and cheaper. But what happens when digital innovation disrupts modernitys dominant enterprise, the state?

To understand the implications of nation-state disruption, we must first understand the purpose of its business model.

In a most basic sense, nation states are compulsory territorial monopolies equipped with the power to impose taxation (property extractions) on taxpayers to fund the protection of taxpayer life, liberty and property. Read that definition again, slowly. Upon careful reading, it becomes immediately clear that the nation state is a self-contradictory enterprise: a property protection service that funds itself by violating the property of its customers.

Anyone that has studied basic economics will quickly realize that nation states, as monopolies, must be overcharging for these protection services, and that the quality of their services must be suboptimal. In other words, nation states are businesses incentivized to increase their own tax revenues while at the same time decreasing the quality of protection services they provide. No wonder virtually every taxpayer worldwide is dissatisfied with their government!

If nation-state tax rates were negotiable, and if citizens had the option to secede and self-organize new states, then the economic exchanges involved would be strictly voluntary. In such a scenario, the nation state would become a non-coercive organizational model, and tax payments would be optional, as customers dissatisfied with the quality of services rendered could secede and start their own states. As Ludwig von Mises wrote on these two essential conditions for non-coercive statism:

...whenever the inhabitants of a particular territory, whether it be a single village, a whole district, or a series of adjacent districts, make it known, by a freely conducted plebiscite, that they no longer wish to remain united to the state to which they belong at the time, their wishes are to be respected and complied with. This is the only feasible and effective way of preventing revolutions and international wars.

Peaceful secession is not something typically afforded by states historically. For instance, during the years leading up to The American War of Southern Independence (commonly called the Civil War in the U.S.), the South attempted many times to secede peacefully, but the Union refused to allow it, and applied political pressure until war broke out within the divided young nation. If Mises conditions are considered deeply, and taken to their ultimate conclusions, the right to secede peacefully effectively renders the state a voluntary club or membership organization, where taxes are essentially nothing more than club dues either paid voluntarily or not at all in the case of secession.

So, what does this all have to do with the disruptive potential of the Digital Age? Well, as Andreessen so brilliantly presaged: Software is eating the world

and that includes the state.

[The State] forbids private murder, but itself organizes murder on a colossal scale. It punishes private theft, but itself lays unscrupulous hands on anything it wants, whether the property of citizen or of alien.

Albert Jay Nock, On Doing The Right Thing, 1928

...the advent of the cybereconomy will bring competition on new terms to provision of sovereignty services. A proliferation of jurisdictions will mean proliferating experimentation in new ways of enforcing contracts and otherwise securing the safety of persons and property.

James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg, The Sovereign Individual, 1997

Digital technology has already radically transformed, or even completely disrupted, several industries. As of the time of this writing in late 2021, digitizations impact on the integrity of social institutions is being widely felt as well. Among those at risk of being eaten by software stand even modernitys largest and most dominant institutions: the nation state and (its primary apparatus of surreptitious property violation) the central bank. If digital technology is to transform these monolithic institutions, it will need to provide ways for citizens to peacefully secede and voluntarily self-organize within new structures of governance.

In 1849, Gustave de Molinari a prominent French economist and teacher of Vilfredo Pareto wrote a systemic and trenchant takedown of the traditional structure of governance under statism. With great theoretical rigor and apparent clairvoyance, Molinari argued that it is always in the best interest of consumers that all economic exchange remain absolutely free and voluntary, even in the industry monopolized by all states security and violence. With astonishing accuracy, Molinari predicted the consequences of the monopolization of security and violence:

If, on the contrary, the consumer is not free to buy security wherever he pleases, you forthwith see open up a large profession dedicated to arbitrariness and bad management. Justice becomes slow and costly, the police vexatious, individual liberty is no longer respected, the price of security is abusively inflated and inequitably apportioned, according to the power and influence of this or that class of consumers.

Gustave de Molinari (translated by J. Huston McCulloch), The Production Of Security, 1849

In the Digital Age, through the advent of peer-to-peer telecommunications technologies and, more recently, peer-to-peer private money in bitcoin, people today are radically empowered to live independent of the state.

Today, if a nation state increases taxes too aggressively, a citizen can move their capital into bitcoin, and secede by renouncing their citizenship and circumventing any potential exit tax. With encrypted messaging applications, nation states can no longer sequester or censor private communications. This makes self-organization of large groups much easier, more flexible and resistant to coercion. Taken in combination, these options to exit and self organize change the nature of relations between citizens and nation states to something that looks more like voluntary clubs instead of tax farms.

Digital technology makes possible the Misesian conditions for effective, non-coercive models of human organization within novel structures of governance. Since coercion cannot effectively sway digital interactions, individuals facing rising coercion by insolvent nation states will increasingly come to rely on digital rails to move their ideas and capital.

In these international waters of the Digital Age, overly taxed or otherwise coerced individuals will take refuge from nation-state predation. And since most nation states today are totally insolvent after decades of capital confiscation and misallocation, their future efforts to increase tax revenues will push citizens to shelter their capital by any means necessary. As the ultimate offshore bank, bitcoin is the obvious tool of choice in the face of rising monetary and fiscal policy aggressions.

Such digital high seas are a sudden transformation of the technological realities of the world, and represent an extreme disruption event for the business model of statism which generates revenues exclusively through coercion, compulsion and violence. It is extremely difficult to coerce an individual when their capital is held outside central-bank-controlled monetary networks. Compulsion becomes near impossible when individuals are able to break their physical identity from their digital identity and capital. Finally, the risk-to-reward ratio of violence is significantly increased when guns can be 3D printed and money can be kept in theft-proof custody schemas (like geographically-distributed Bitcoin multisig arrangements).

The result will likely be a flow of talent, experience and capital into those jurisdictions where people receive the highest-quality security services at the most fair price. In many ways, we can view the ongoing digitization of human relations as the disruption of coercion.

As alternative forums for human action, the coercion-resistant channels characterizing the nascent Digital Age will be increasingly preferred by individuals as opposed to living under the thumb of the state. By empowering individual choice, coercion is becoming a less profitable business strategy. For these reasons, software is eating the world, and that includes the state.

This is a guest post by Robert Breedlove. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

Read more:

Software Is Eating The State - Bitcoin Magazine

A police special team has seized 21kg heroin, worth about 21 crore in the international market, and arrested six persons in this connection.

According to Superintendent of Police S. Jayakumar, a police special team, which was monitoring Tooveypuram area on Tuesday night following information about drug smuggling, picked-up one Ansar Ali, 26, of Thoothukudi while he was moving around in suspicious manner near Tooveypuram Park. When the police frisked him, it was found that he was carrying a few packets with white powder, suspected to be heroin.

Based on the information provided by him, the police also nabbed his associates Marimuthu, 26, and Imran Khan, 27, also from Thoothukudi, from whom the police recovered a few more packets with white powder, totally weighing about 162gm.

When we grilled the trio, it led to the arrest of three more persons, all fishermen, who had kept 21kg heroin in a hideout in Tharuvaikulam near Thoothukudi, in the early hours of Wednesday, Mr. Jayakumar said.

During investigation, the police found that the arrested fishermen found a parcel floating when they were fishing near Minicoy Islands about ten months ago. On finding the parcel containing heroin, which might have been dumped into the sea by the drug smugglers on seeing the Indian Coast Guard and Indian Navy patrolling, the fishermen had brought it to Thoothukudi to be sold to the persons who were in need of the drug.

Since the patrolling Indian Coast Guard and the Indian Navy used to check the fishing boats in the high seas for drugs and other banned articles, the smugglers might have dropped the parcel into the sea on seeing the patrol ships nearing their boats, Mr. Jayakumar said.

Without knowing the value of the drug, which costs about 1 crore a kilo in the international market they had sold it for 1.50 lakh per kg. While the other crew in the mechanised fishing boat have confirmed that they had retrieved the mysterious packet from the sea and were unaware of the material packed in it, the three fishermen under the police custody now are suspected to have sold the heroin to Ansar Ali and others.

Originally posted here:

A total of 21kg heroin seized in Thoothukudi; six arrested - The Hindu

Heres What You Need to Remember:In the end, the United States would have occupied the vast bulk of Canada, at the cost of most of its Pacific possessions.

The end of a war only rarely settles the central questions that started the conflict. Indeed, many wars do not end in the traditional sense; World War II, for example, stretched on for years in parts of Eastern Europe and the Asia-Pacific.

Even as the guns fell silent along the Western Front in 1918, the United States and the United Kingdom began jockeying for position. Washington and London bitterly disagreed on the nature of the settlements in Europe and Asia, as well as the shape of the postwar naval balance. In late 1920 and early 1921,these tensions reached panic levelsin Washington, London and especially Ottawa.

The general exhaustion of war, combined with the Washington Naval Treaty, succeeded in quelling these questions and setting the foundation for the great Anglo-American partnership of the twentieth century. But what if that hadnt happened? What if the United States and United Kingdom had instead gone to war in the spring of 1921?

The Liberation of Canada

The U.S.-Canadian border would have constituted the central front of the War of 1921. Although Washington maintained good relations with Ottawa, war plans in both the United States and the United Kingdom expected amultiprongedinvasion into Americas northern neighbor, designed to quickly occupy the country before British (or Japanese) reinforcement could arrive. Canadian declarations of neutrality would have had minimal impact on this process. Plans for initial attacks included the seizure of Vancouver, Winnipeg, the Niagara Falls area and most of Ontario.

Given the overwhelming disparity between available U.S. and Canadian military forces, most of these offensives would probably have succeeded in short order. The major battle would have revolved around British and Canadian efforts to hold Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and especially the port of Halifax, which would have served both as the primary portal for British troops and as the main local base for the Royal Navy.U.S. military planners understood that Halifaxwas the key to winning the war quickly, and investigated several options (including poison gas and an amphibious assault) for taking the port.

Assuming they held the line, could British and Canadian forces have prevented the severing of supply lines between Halifax and the main cities of Quebec and the Great Lakes region? Unlikely. The U.S. Army would have had major advantages in numbers, logistics, and mobility. Ottawa and Toronto might each have proven too big to swallow and digest quickly, but severing their connection to the Atlantic would have made the question of their eventual surrender only a matter of time.

And what about Quebec? The nationalism of the early twentieth century did not look kindly on large enclaves ofethno-linguisticminorities. Moreover, the United States had no constitutional mechanisms through which it could offer unique concessions to the French speaking majority of the province. In this context, Quebecois leaders might have sought an accord with Washington that resulted in Quebecs independence in exchange for support for the American war effort, and Washington might plausibly have accepted such an offer. An accord of this nature might also have forestalled French support from their erstwhile British allies. If not, the U.S. Army planned to seize Quebec City through an overland offensive through Vermont.

Operations in the Atlantic

British war planning considered the prospect of simply abandoning Canada in favor of operations in the Caribbean. However, public pressure might have forced the Royal Navy to establish and maintain transatlantic supply lines against a committed U.S. Navy. While it might have struggled to do this over the long term, the RN still had a sufficient margin of superiority over theUSNto make a game of it.

Theeight standard-type super-dreadnought battleships of theUSNflatly outclassed any British warship on any metric other than speed. TheUSNalso possessed ten older dreadnoughts, plus a substantial fleet of pre-dreadnoughts that would have undertaken coastal defense duties. The United States did not operate a submarine arm comparable to that of Imperial Germany, and what boats it had lacked experience in either fleet actions or commerce raiding.

For its part, the Royal Navy had at its disposal nine dreadnoughts, twenty-three super-dreadnoughts and nine battle cruisers. The British ships were generally older, less well armored and less heavily armed than their American counterparts. Nevertheless, the Royal Navy had the benefit of years of experience in both war and peace that theUSNlacked. Moreover, the RN had a huge advantage in cruisers and destroyers, as well as a smaller advantage in naval aviation.

But how would the RN have deployed its ships? Blockading the U.S. East Coast is a far more difficult task than blockading Germany, and theUSN(like the High Seas Fleet) would only have offered battle in advantageous circumstances. While the RN might have considered a sortie against Boston, Long Island or other northern coastal regions, most of its operations would have concentrated on supporting British and Canadian ground forces in the Maritimes.

Operations in the Pacific

Both the United States and the United Kingdom expected Japan to join any conflict on the British side. The connections between the Royal Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy ran back to the Meiji Restoration, and Tokyo remained hungry for territory in the Pacific. In the First World War, Japan had opportunistically gobbled up most of the German Pacific possessions, before deploying a portion of its navy in support of Entente operations in the Mediterranean. In the case of a U.S.-UK war, theIJNwould likely have undertaken similar efforts against American territories. These included many of the islands that Japan invaded in 1941 and 1942, although the invasions would have moved forward without the benefit of years of careful preparation.

Given the strength of theIJN(four battle cruisers, five super-dreadnoughts, two dreadnoughts) and the necessary commitment to an Atlantic first strategy, the United States probably could not have held the Philippines, Guam, Wake, Midway or most of the other Pacific islands. Hawaii might have proven a bit too far and too big, and it is deeply unlikely that the Japanese would have risked a land deployment to western Canada (although U.S. planners feared such an eventuality), but the war would have overturned the balance of power in the Western Pacific.

Would It Work?

The British Army and the Royal Navy could, possibly, have erected a credible defense of Nova Scotia, preventing the United States from completely rolling up Canada. London could also have offered support for resistance forces in the Canadian wilderness, although even supplying guerilla operations in the far north would have tested British logistics and resolve.

In the end, however, the United States would have occupied the vast bulk of Canada, at the cost of most of its Pacific possessions. And the Canadians, having finally been liberated by their brothers to the south? Eventually, the conquest and occupation of Canada would have resultedin statehood for some configurationof provinces, although not likely along the same lines as existed in 1920 (offering five full states likely would have resulted in an undesirable amount of formerly Canadian representation in the U.S. Senate). Theprocess of political rehabilitationmight have resembled the Reconstruction of the American South, without the racial element.

The new map, then, might have included a United States that extended to the Arctic, an independent Quebec, a rump Canada consisting mostly of the Maritimes and Japanese control of the entirety of the Western Pacific. Tokyo, rather than London or Washington, would have stood as the biggest winner, hegemonic in its own sphere of influence and fully capable of managing international access to China.

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to theNational Interest, is author ofThe Battleship Book. He serves as a Senior Lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. His work includes military doctrine, national security, and maritime affairs. He blogs atLawyers, Guns and MoneyandInformation Disseminationand theDiplomat.

This article first appeared in 2017.

Image: Reuters.

Here is the original post:

How the United States Planned to Invade Canada - The National Interest

From its beginning in 1945, the Sydney to Hobart yacht race remains one of the pinnacles for sailing competitors.

Dismissed by some as "rich people and their toy boats", the race is actually a gruelling test of skill, teamwork andboat design with the weather thrown into the mix.

If you know what to look for, the S2H can be an enjoyable experience, so here are some tips as to getting the best out of it.

Around 90 boats ranging from 100ft Super Maxis to smaller 30 footers will be ready to go at 1pm AEDT on Sydney Harbour, Boxing Day.

Even though the race fleet will be fewer in numbers due to COVID (more on that later), there will still be a gazillion sails competitors, officials, media and spectators running around the water ahead of the firing of the starting cannon.

Once the race is on, it's a bolt to The Headsand into the open water of the South Pacific.

The fleet then begins to make its way down the east coast of Australia to Hobart.

The Seven Network, through 7Mate, willbroadcast the start of the race live around Australia. Their coverage starts at 12:30pm (AEDT).

ABC TV will also be following the fleet down the eastern seaboard and provide all the in-race news footage that is used by the various Australian and International news networks.

For those who can't get to watch the live broadcast of the start of the race on the Seven Network across Australia, Seven West Media will webcast the program.

You can also watch a webcast of the live broadcast on the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race website.

If you are in Sydney and on the water, sponsor Rolex advises "ifyou only plan on watching the start, and don't wish to follow the fleet, then stick to the western side of the harbour".

Good vantage points for spectator boats include "Taylors Bay, Chowder Bay, Obelisk Bay and North Head on the west and Rose Bay, Watsons Bay, Camp Cove and South Head to the east".

Rolex says the harbour will be "very crowded and traffic can be chaotic, so stay alert, follow the advice of race officials and remember to keep well clear of the exclusion zone between 12pm and 2pm".

Rolex also notes the "Clearview glass boat is the only public spectator vessel permitted within the Sydney Harbour exclusion zone".

The race sponsor Rolex has a tracker on their website, which plots the course of yachts as they move south.

The position of yachts is transmitted by a GPSdevice on each vessel. You can follow your favourite boats easily by clicking on the heart symbol.

As the race goes on, you can see the course charted by crews and marvel at how each team plots and schemes their way to the finish.

Unless of course the boat's GPS device gets switched off, rendering it invisible to spectators and other competitors an accusation which was levelled at Wild Oats XI in 2018 by the owner of Black Jack.

Skulduggery on the high seas! Wetold you it could be fun.

Apart from GPS shenanigans, the wild card is always the weather.

All jokes aside, the Sydney to Hobart yacht race is taken seriously for good reason people have died when the seas get rough.

The 1998 race has gone down in history as a maritime disaster that cost lives and changed marine forecasting practice.

Six sailors died, five yachts sank, more than 60 yachts retired and 55 participants had to be rescued by helicopter.

In 2015, a squall hit the fleet off the News South Wales coast, ending the race for 29 competitors.

Even in calm conditions, boats under stress break stuff andcrews retire for a host of reasons.

In 2016, a slew of boats had to call it quits due to shredded sails and steering problems.

Then there are the underdog v supermaxi battles which pit the hopefuls against the cashed-up crews.

As race sponsor Rolex says, the race is made up from"weekend club sailors to professionals from the America's Cup and Volvo Ocean Race circuits".

Lots to watch out for!

With the very fast boats (Wild Oats XI, Comanche) not in this year's race, the lines honours winner is likely to come in around 48 hours after the start noonish or thereabouts on Tuesday, December 28, but who knows what part the weather might play.

It is also important to note there are two prizes at stake in the Sydney to Hobart yacht race.

The finish line proper is 12 nautical miles (22.2 kilometres) upthe Derwent River off Battery Point, where a cannon signals the first across the line.

The Iron Pot has been greeting sailors to the River Derwent for almost 190 years, and this small, craggy island was once home to 15 people.

The reigning line honours victor is Comanche. It won in a time of 1 day, 18 hours and 30 minutes in 2019.

The first yacht across the line wins the JH Illingworth Trophy, but the overall winner on handicap wins the Tattersalls Cup.

The overall victory is considered the major prize for sailors and a testament to skill and tactics.

Most of the time, handicap honours are won by a smaller, slower boat,whichoutdoes its larger opposition when time is adjusted for size and other factors.

The reigning overall winner is Ichi Ban. It finished in 3 days, 4 hours and 11 minutes in 2019.

As a result of the pandemic, the 2021 fleet will be smaller than previous years due to a lack of international entrants, and other flow-on effects.

Good luck to all racers!

Set the ABC News website or the app to 'TasmaniaTop Stories' from either the homepage or the settings menu in the appto continue getting the same national news but with a sprinkle of more relevant state stories.

Here's a taste of the latest stories from Tasmania:

See original here:

Sydney to Hobart yacht race how to watch and what to look for - ABC News

You may have noticed a more focused editorial direction from Surfline in 2021. Less human interest fluff, less puffy profile pieces, less redundant sports reporting and a lot more emphasis on the waves themselves. And the swells that make those waves. And the storms that make those swells that make those waves. Its a no-brainer, really. Between our ace forecasting team, cutting-edge tools and 40-years-deep database built by Sean Collins himself waves are kind of our wheelhouse.

And us surfers? Sure, we matter, too. Our rides anthropomorphize the waves, give them personality and a voice. We cherish them like family. We name them and attribute anatomic parts to them like face and lip. But thats about as far as it goes. Waves were breaking long before we got here and they will continue to break long after we go. Life is finite, surf is forever.

Surfers are just producers the swells themselves are the rock stars.

Great Circles: How Swells Connect Us All

***

Peter Mel. Photo: Fred Pompermayer

Date/Location: Sunday, January 10th / Mavericks, California

Recorded History: A raucous ending to a six-week swell bender, Mavericks went XXL and, according to Mavs pioneer Jeff Clark, the last time we saw anything close to that was that week in December of 1994, and January 10th will go down as the best day weve seen since 2000. I texted Twiggy on Christmas, 1994 Models!, but the 2020-21 stretch was better, agreed Mavs legend, Grant Washburn. The surf was bigger, cleaner, more consistent, and there were more days. I doubt I will see that again in my lifetime. But Ill be ready with my 2042 calendar!

Best Session: The North Pacific was in an unbelievable pattern for swell-making those two weeks, and the darling of the run was undoubtedly Mavericks, explained Surflines Schaler Perry. Over the span, it ran the gamut from entry-level to large and barreling to mutant XXL tow-in, and didnt spend a day dormant. There were a couple of days with bad winds, but most days saw windows of pristine conditions. Arguably the best two-week run in the history of Mavericks, and it was stamped by the largest Mavericks in 20 years.

Watch Live: Mavericks

MVP: If were talking about the whole stretch in general, Peter Mel ruled the run. But when speaking of the 1/10/21 XXL tow session in particular, another top dog emerged. Wilem Banks killed it, said Mel himself. My vote goes to Wilem for performer of the day, agreed Colin Dwyer. Im giving Wilem MVP of the day, agreed Travis Payne. So, there ya go: three agrees makes a decree.

Storm Track: Light winds, clear skies and downright dreamy conditions are typically all Mavericks needs to be good when a significant swell arrives, explained Mavs veteran Ryan Seelbach, whos been surfing and tracking swells for the place since the 1990s. That 2010 contest had a very similar storm track (17-20 feet at 17 seconds from 290-295 degrees). That swell combination comes from deep lows that build far south of the Aleutians and due north of Hawaii, tracking towards the West Coast before turning sharply northeast (about 1,000 miles out), keeping the S winds north of the Bay Area and the NW winds south of the Bay Area. The top-five storms had a similar track during our magical six weeks of surf.

Peak Readings: 20 feet at 21 seconds from 280 degrees on January 10th; 956 millibar storm 1,450 nautical miles away

Origin: Surprisingly, all of this swell was from a quintessential La Nina (albeit supercharged) pattern, Perry explained. Under La Nina, if storms take a more northerly track into the Bering Sea, the West Coast gets smaller, steeper-angled and less-consistent swell. Storms that track closer send stronger swell, but run the risk of bringing bad winds and weather into the coast. La Nina took conditions to the next level by anchoring high pressure over the Northeast Pacific. Strong storms passed north of Hawaii on a track towards the West Coast. High pressure steered them, and their winds and weather, into the Pacific Northwest instead of Northern California. Storms were able to track close and send stronger swell, but best of all, the high pressure kept California dry and mostly under good winds. Without La Nina, its highly unlikely wed have seen those great conditions.

More: Jan 10th Massive Mavs | Swell Event Coverage: North Pacific Overdrive | Watch: Two Massive Minutes at Mavs

***

Jamie OBrien. Photo: Keoki

Date/Location: Saturday, January 16th / Jaws, Maui; Waimea Bay and Outer Reefs, Oahu

Recorded History: Between the female pros, the kites, the sails and preteen charger Steve Roberson, Super Swell Saturday at Jaws revealed perhaps the most diverse, inclusive, age/gender/equipment-neutral field of any XXL session anywhere, ever. And outside of the Peahi elite, the lines between tow surfer and windsurfer, man and woman, child and adult, pro and loc seemed to get blurrier as the day went on. One of the interesting facets of that day was to have the tow surfing kind of mix in with the windsurfing, said Ian Walsh. And as the day unfolded it was really fun to see the way some of the other guys and girls were approaching their lines on the waves.

Best Session: By all accounts this was the biggest Jaws in 10 years. And the last time Oahus Outer Reefs were this big, January 1998, nobody was paddling and packing the sets like this crew was. John John Florences XXL pig-dog, in particular, was an instant Wave of the Winter contender from the moment he kicked out.

Watch Live: Waimea | Sunset | Backdoor | Pipeline

MVP: Many, including Makua Rothman and Justine Dupont on Maui and John John Florence on Oahu. Although, You shouldve seen Kohls wave, Kelly Slater claimed from the channel, referring to Kohl Christensens massive, unrecorded Outer Reef barrel. It was one of the raddest things Ive ever seen.

Storm Track: ESE track across the western half of the North Pacific January 12th-14th.

Peak Readings: Buoy 01: 19-20 feet at 17-18 seconds on January 16th; 963 millibar low flanked by 1,021 millibar high and well-aimed fetch of 40-60-knot winds and 40-50-foot seas January 13th-14th

Origin: At the turn of the year we witnessed the strongest storm on record (921 millibars), a rather large system, develop out in the Northwest Pacific, Surflines Jon Warren explained. But due to its distance and northeastward track, the swell that propagated into Hawaii was solid but certainly not record-setting. Meanwhile, this latest storm was weaker (963 millibars), but given its favorable track toward Hawaii, close distance, and it running over a pre-excited sea state created from a previous storm, we witnessed the largest swell in years.

More: Swell Alert Coverage: Super Swell Saturday | XL Hawaiian Photo Gallery

***

Griffin Colapinto. Photo: Jeremiah Klein

Date/Location: Friday, February 12th-Monday, February 15th / North Shore, Oahu

Recorded History: Favorable trade winds greeted the the largest NW swell to hit the Islands in nearly a month, explained Surflines Kevin Wallis. All the big-name breaks from Pipe to Waimea and some of the semi-off-the-beaten-path spots shined for Valentines Day and Presidents Day weekend. The first, and the largest, of two overlapping NW swells revealed a brave new world for big-wave women. The inaugural Red Bull Magnitude, an all-digital, all-female big-wave competition based in Hawaii, was running through February 28th, and this was the last chance for competitors to get their entries in for a piece of the $40K prize purse. With the Outer Reefs and Waimea beckoning, the ladies went mad. The future of womens big-wave surfing is looking really bright, said Keala Kennelly, who ultimately won the Overall Performer and Biggest Wave awards. I think this contest was a big success.

Best Session: That Sunday was crazy, said Griffin Colapinto. After 30 minutes of us being out there, the wind came onshore and Mikey Redd almost died getting knocked out and a two-wave hold-down. When that went down, everyone came in to check on him and seemed pretty thrown off for the rest of the day. We didnt think we were going to surf again until the wind started going offshore again, and there was only five guys out. About 30 minutes into the session, this wave came straight to me and nobody was around, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me. That was the biggest backside barrel of my life.

MVP: Our headline said it all: Pipeline Valentine Swell MVP, John John Florence. After all, over three days, Florence snagged more ONeill Wave of the Winter entries than most do in an entire season, wrote Surfline editor Marcus Sanders. And while he has won many events at Pipe over the years including this years Pipe Masters and Vans Triple Crown the ONeill Wave of the Winter has eluded him. And it continued to elude him, with Mark Healey ultimately getting the check. But wave after wave, session after session, day after day, JJF ruled this swell. Clearly. No judges necessary.

Pipeline Forecast | Live Multi-cam

Storm Track: Upstream buoys peaked on Friday with 13 feet plus of NW swell at 17 seconds, explained Surflines Jon Warren. After that, the energy started to ease before a reinforcing pulse of fresh WNW swell moved in Sunday into Monday. Wind and local conditions were good to excellent Friday through Sunday, as moderate E to ESE trades set up straight offshore wind for the majority of breaks on the North Shore.

Peak Readings: Buoys 51001/51101: 13 feet at 17 seconds on February 12th

Origin: An impressive looking, hurricane-strength storm roughly 1,800 miles from the Hawaiian Islands on Wednesday afternoon effectively remained stationary for 24 hours, Warren explained. This non-movement aided in the eventual size and consistency of the surf in the Islands. By late Sunday and into Monday morning, a new, smaller and slightly more west NW swell built, and that came from a second low that pinched off from the current storm, then tracked toward Hawaii during the second half of the week. Although not as large or intense as its predecessor, this new storm packed 40 to 50-knot winds over a small area of already-excited seas while on a favorable track toward Hawaii all positives for sending more swell.

More: Swell Alert: Coverage: Pipeline Valentine | Pipeline Valentine Photo Gallery

***

Photo: Swilly

Date/Location: Tuesday, May 25th / Gold Coast, Australia

Recorded History: This first of several swell bursts it blew up the whole coast, wrote Nick Carroll, even reaching Sydney 1000 ks south with long, thumping water walls.

Best Session: Everyone on the Gold Coast knew it was coming, NC wrote. Nobody expected it at 7:50am. The expert consensus among Goldie aficionados was to wait for the afternoons low tide, but the east swell called in by Surflines forecast team showed up a few hours early. The key to its early arrival? Stronger winds in the swells original fetch off northern New Zealand, where gales peaked at over 40 knots between 48 and 72 hours earlier. In any case, it meant that longtime Gold Coast photographer Andrew Shield, who ventured up on the hill overlooking Kirra in the early-morning light, saw something almost nobody does this days maybe the finest sand point in the world, doing what it does best, with just a solo onlooker paddling towards it. Nevertheless, by 10am the whole gang was out: Parko, Stephanie Gilmore, Griffin (Colapinto), and eventually, everybody.

MVP: With too many to consider at Kirra, its a toss-up between the Cousins Parko based on the merit of a single, mental mid-morning window at Snapper Rocks, sandy cathedrals imploding way out behind the rock. There was just three of them, said Shieldsy. Joel and Mitch Parkinson and Sheldon (Simkus). They werent doing step-offs, they were just paddling. Mitch got an amazing one; if he couldve gotten to the end section it mightve looked like that one Parko got a couple of years ago. Yeah, that one on the billboard.

Storm Track: The still-intense sub-tropical low northeast of New Zealand re-intensified on Tuesday, invigorating a compact 40-50-knot SE/ESE fetch around the storms southwestern quadrant, explained Surflines Ben Macartney. Corresponding satellite passes confirmed both the wind strength and an associated spike in the seas to 35-40 feet over the remote Southwest Pacific Ocean, just over 1,500 nautical miles ESE of the Gold Coast. A resulting long-period pulse of ESE groundswell quickly covered the distance to the East Coast.

Peak Readings: ???

Origin: The 40-plus-knot winds that formed near New Zealand over the weekend of the 22nd-23rd delivered an extra punch to the swell as it formed, NC wrote, pushing the interval up to 16 seconds when it struck Australias coastal buoys on Tuesday. Long intervals like that are rare along the east coast, especially from that E angle. The strength of those winds changed things, Ben affirmed. And the longer period had such an effect. The bulk of the size came with the forerunners. Longer-period swells conserve energy so much better. They come in faster and straighter than our typical E swells.

More: Great Autumn Part One Part Two | The Greatest Week | Autumn Turns Cold | NSW Sledgehammer | Easier Waters

***

Nate Behl. Photo: Margarita Salyak

Date/Location:Sunday, July 25th-Wednesday, August 4th / Indonesia

Recorded History: Ive been traveling to the Mentawai Islands for the past 10 years, said Nic Von Rupp.And this was some of the biggest, heaviest, shallowest and most dangerous waves Ive surfed around here.

Best Session: Oh, that must have been July 31st on the Bukit. No, wait, it was August 3rd at Macaronis. No no, it was Deserts. Wait, was it Padang? Nias maybe? Turns out it was none of those places. It was Greenbush, arguably the most challenging and bloodthirsty wave in the Mentawais. It might look perfect, said NVR, but trust me, this wave stands up like a train. Its steep, like looking down a cliff, and once youve made that drop and pulled in, you never know what that last section is going to do. Its a roll of the dice, whether it stays open and lets you out or just closes out because the reefs too shallow to handle such a mass of water. The boys paid: scratches, broken boards, split-up noses, and Nasty Nate [Behl] knocked himself out on his last wave.

MVP: Nic Von Rupp. Heres all the proof you need, from port of entry to Lombok to Sumatra:

https://www.surfline.com/surf-news/get-indo-right-now-nic-von-rupp/125625

https://www.surfline.com/surf-news/sting-stoke-desert-point/126325

https://www.surfline.com/surf-news/bow-before-kandui/127009

https://www.surfline.com/surf-news/practically-alone-pumping-indo/127537

https://www.surfline.com/surf-news/watch-sickest-left-ive-ever-seen/127886

https://www.surfline.com/surf-news/watch-nearly-empty-firing-macaronis/129604

https://www.surfline.com/surf-news/watch-heaviest-greenbush-session-ever/130604

Storm Track: Fairly large and strong low on an E-NE track through the Central Indian Ocean July 26th-28th. Moderate-size area of 35-40-knot wind, with a pocket exceeding 45 knots.

Peak Readings: 12 feet at 16-17 seconds from the SW/SSW 200-220 degrees; satellite confirmed 35-40-foot seas within 2,700 nautical miles of Bali.

Origin: Indonesia was already on a dream run throughout the month of July when the largest of the swells unloaded at the start of August, explained Surflines Keaton Browning. That purple blob was born from a deep area of low pressure in the central Indian Ocean, along with strong high-pressure support on its western flank. The storm touted satellite-confirmed seas up to 40 feet, with a favorable east-northeast track toward the Indonesian archipelago. Meanwhile, the lengthy fetch and duration of moderate-to-strong wind speeds enhanced the size and consistency of the swell.

Click here for more:

https://www.surfline.com/surf-news/gallery-indonesia-super-swell/127458

https://www.surfline.com/surf-news/splendid-sunday-padang-padang-uluwatu-lagundri-light/127149

***

Matahi Drollet. Photo: Tim McKenna

Date/ Location: Friday, August 13th / Teahupoo, Tahiti

Recorded History: I was there for the Code Red swell of 2011, and for me this swell was almost the same, said Tikanui Smith. I was there for the Koa [Rothman] swell in 2013, and when Keala Kennelly got Tube of the Year in 2015, but neither of those compare to what happened on Friday. The only day we could compare it to would be Code Red. People will talk about this swell for many years to come.

Best Session: There was swell building on Thursday for Tahitian sensations like Vahine Fierro to rack up some tube time. And there there was still plenty of swell left on Saturday for some heavy paddle waves. But Fridays XXL tow session was something else entirely. Friday the 13th went down in history, that day will forever be remembered, said Lorenzo Avvenenti. A lot of historic rides went down that whole day, but there were two that were out of this world: Kauli Vaasts and Matahi Drollets.

MVP: Matahi Drollet is no stranger to giant Teahupoo, wrote Marcus Sanders. His older brother Manoa was among the first crew to really charge here and also the one towing Matahi. Kauli Vaast caught (but didnt make) one of the biggest waves ever in the morning, but Drollet played the patience game. This paid off around 5pm, right before sunset, as the swell peaked and he was whipped into the perfect spot by his brother and took the perfect line through an impossibly heavy, crazy-loud, building-sized tube and straight into surf history.

Storm Track: Merging lows in the Southwest Pacific on August 8th-12th slowly tracking eastward. The merging lows, a more northward-oriented fetch and a generally slow east-southeastward track, which is typically not the best for maximizing swell potential (not pushing toward Tahiti), resulted in light local wind and glassy conditions to greet each swell, explained Surflines Jon Warren. The merging lows were both similar in size and strength as they were coming together. Both storms were already producing swell for Tahiti in their own right, then as they joined forces, and with a huge assist from a very strong area of high pressure centered over the Tasman Sea, the fetch for Tahiti rapidly intensified and greatly expanded in size pushing the limits of what the reef can handle from that size, angle and period.

Peak Readings: 12-13 feet at 17-19 seconds from the SSW (210-190 degrees) on August 13th; low of 960 millibars, flanked by a strong 1,032-millibar high August 9th-11th; well-aimed fetch of 40-50-knot winds and 40-45-foot seas

Origin: The Southwest Pacific shifted into a more unusual pattern, but also a very productive one, explained Warren. Developing lows either crossed over New Zealand or dropped down from the north, then merged with another developing low sweeping through the lower latitudes. They ultimately combined forces into one stronger storm in the Southwest Pacific, and right in the wheelhouse for Tahiti.

Click here for more:

https://www.surfline.com/surf-news/raw-realtime-xl-teahupoo/128126

https://www.surfline.com/surf-news/gallery-day-days-teahupoo/128689

https://www.surfline.com/surf-news/xl-teahupoo-august-13/128433

***

New England. Photo: Scott Sullivan

Date/Location: Sunday, September 5th-Wednesday, September 15th / Caribbean Islands, U.S. East Coast, Western Europe this storm ultimately traveled 2,000+ nautical miles across the Atlantic Ocean basin.

Recorded History: It was the best surf Ive ever seen on the East Coast after ten hurricane missions over 20 years, said longtime Surfline editor, Marcus Sanders, who actually flew east to New England to take part in this very special swell event. And as an editor, it was far and away the most and best submissions Ive ever seen from an East Coast swell more than 60 different contributions and hundreds and hundreds of photos and videos.

Best Session: Florida got really good Wednesday through Friday, but Thursday was the day, thanks to assistance from the quickly formed but short-lived Tropical Storm Mindy, which tracked from the Gulf of Mexico across North Florida and out into the Atlantic, putting the state squarely under offshore winds, explained Surflines Mike Watson. It was the best three-day run of surf Floridians have seen in a long, long time. The star-studded cast of Reckless Isolation just happened to be in town premiering their movie at the Florida Surf Film Festival and stumbled upon the best surf New Smyrna Beach had seen in years. They were met by Surflines own Eastbound & All Around crew and all the local NSB aces, resulting in a masterclass of cutting-edge shredding in the glassy, wedging, occasionally barreling, head-high-plus peaks. That was the best three-day run of waves at our inlet that I can remember, said longtime New Smyrna Beach ace, Nils Schweizer. Everything just came together perfectly: the sandbars finally got good, the tides were right, the wind was light all day, and the long-period swell and direction were ideal. Id say it was about as good as it gets. And there was some serious ripping going down!

MVP: NSB local Jeremy Johnston pig-dogged the wave of the day, the swell, and probably the year right in his backyard. And between the Californian stars (Griffin and Crosby Colapinto, Kolohe Andino, Ian Crane and Luke Davis) and the East Coast pros (Cam Richards, Noah Schweizer, Evan Geiselman and Robbie McCormick) going blow for blow, the performance barometer was incredibly high. Just watch Eastbound & All Around, Episode 1 and judge for yourself.

Storm Track: Classic Cape Verde storm taking a westward track before recurving N/NNE into the North Atlantic; skirted east of Bermuda and brushed Newfoundland overnight September 10th-11th then became a large extra-tropical storm in the North Atlantic on the 12th.

Peak Readings: Texas Tower Buoy: 11 feet at 16 seconds on September 10th; South and West Bermuda Buoys: 15 feet at 15 seconds on September 10th; satellite observed 38-foot seas on September 8th

Origin: Our forecast team tracked Larry ever since it was a cluster of storms over the African continent and long before it ever generated its first swell, explained Watson. Being peak time for storms here, with the atmosphere and ocean as primed as they could be, the long-range models showed lots of potential in those clouds. At the end of August, those clouds took the form of a tropical wave that moved off Africa to become Larry on September 1st. Larry became a major hurricane on the 3rd and maintained hurricane status until going extratropical off Canada on the 11th And if you wanna get technical, a whiff of swell was even able to make its way back over to Africa a full two weeks after Larry was nothing more than a cluster of clouds moving out over the Atlantic.

Click here for more:

https://www.surfline.com/surf-news/swell-alert/chasing-hurricane-larry/130670

https://www.surfline.com/surf-news/larry-almost-perfect-storm-part-1-southeast/131540

https://www.surfline.com/surf-news/larry-almost-perfect-storm-part-2-northeast/131666

https://www.surfline.com/surf-news/larry-almost-perfect-storm-part-3-europe/131804

***

Carlos Burle. Photo: Lucca. Biot

Date/Location: Saturday, September 25th-Sunday, September 26th / Avalanche, Brazil

Recorded History: Like all of Rios slabs, Avalanche is such a fickle beast, pretty much every session that goes down here is, to exhaust a cliche, one for the books. The swell was a typical storm that comes from the southwest and throws all the energy on the south and southeast coast of Brazil, explained big-wave legend Carlos Burle. This one in particular had more of a SE direction. Thats good for Avalanche. We followed all the forecast info before we could make the final call. It was a very interesting swell.

Best Session: The next day ended up being a good surprise for us, said Burle. The swell connected better to the reef shelf, and we saw and surfed bigger waves. After towing Lucas Fink and friends into a bunch, I gave the rope a try. Thats when that mutant came. I felt the adrenaline running high, and I made the first part of it, but I was going too fast. So, I tried to slow down a bit by putting my hands on the wave. What a mistake! Having to slow down under the peak and then having to deal with the gigantic spit Everything was so intense.

MVP: Day One, Lucas Chumbo Chianca; Day Two, Carlos Burle. Chumbo was obligated to surf a contest the second day (which he won), but he certainly made his intentions clear on the first day. Avalanche is a solid slab pretty close to our home, so its easy for us to do a strike mission out there, said Chumbo. It breaks way out to sea, like five kilometers from the shore. Its a pretty heavy wave. Youre out in the middle of nowhere, then boom, it just shows up. You take off behind the peak and then straight into the barrel.

Storm Track: Large low pressure tracked through the western and central South Atlantic while flanked by strong high pressure that moved off Argentina September 20th-23rd.

Read more:

The Best Swells of 2021 - Surfline.com Surf News