Online Features
Arctic Eider Society Wins Google Award
The Arctic Eider Society won $750,000 in the Google.org Impact Challenge for their work with the Canadian Inuit and Cree communities as part of their environmental citizen scientist program.
The data collected helps to better understand large-scale cumulative impacts of environmental change on the region’s ecosystem.
The SIKU platform being used incorporates data from SonTek’s CastAway-CTD
and Google technology to provide access to live data for monitoring of communities around the Hudson Bay, Canada.
2018 Rolex Awards
Rolex is seeking five young leaders with proposals that will change the world in the 2018 Rolex Awards competition.
The age range is 18-30. The categories are: environment, applied science and technology, and exploration.
Deadline for applications is June 30, 2017.
Winners will receive 100,000 Swiss francs, a Rolex chronometer and worldwide publicity.
Premiere of ‘An Ocean Mystery: The Missing Catch’
The ocean conservation film “An Ocean Mystery: The Missing Catch” will premiere on Earth Day, April 22, at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History at 6 p.m. and on the Smithsonian Channel at 8 p.m. or 11 p.m. ET/PT.
The film follows fisheries scientist Dr. Daniel Pauly as he investigates the amount of fish taken from the oceans and the speed at which this resource is declining.
The film calls on governments to take a better accounting of their fish stocks to avoid a global food catastrophe.
US House Climate Hearing Today
Climate change skeptics are in full force in Congress today as U.S. House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith has called a full committee hearing on climate science.
Democrats have responded by releasing: “Much Ado About Nothing”–A Minority Review of the Majority’s Climate Science Investigation. It says the hearing is likely to bring up–and dispute–the Karl study conducted by NOAA scientists, which concludes that global warming has been advancing in the last 15 years.
Read the full report here.
Pioneer Wind Farm Retiring
Twenty-five years ago, the world’s first offshore wind farm was constructed close to shore in the low waters off Vindeby near Lolland in the southeast of Denmark. Vindeby Offshore Wind Farm, comprising 11 offshore wind turbines, was connected to the grid in 1991.
DONG Energy, owner and operator of the wind farm, has decided to decommission it, and dismantling has begun.
The turbines are small compared to the latest tech, but the wind farm remains an industry pioneer.
Sea Technology’s Latest Issue is Out!
The March 2017 issue of Sea Technology magazine is now available. Read it by subscribing for free here.
MTS Awards
The Marine Technology Society (MTS) has opened nominations for its annual awards, three of which are sponsored by Compass Publications Inc., the publisher of Sea Technology magazine. The awards will be presented at the OCEANS conference in Anchorage, Alaska September 18 to 21.
Learn more about the awards here.
Measuring Polar Ice
The Arctic will be a tad busier over the coming weeks as numerous researchers join forces to measure ice on land and sea in order to understand and respond to dwindling polar ice, which is being given increasing importance at global climate discussions, including strategies to mitigate and adapt to change.
Unequivocal evidence of changing polar ice comes largely from satellites, such as ESA’s CryoSat.
Caption: Twin Otter airplane taking off in snowstorm heading for Greenland to start an ice measurement campaign in the Arctic. (Photo Credit: ESA)
Sunlight Holds Information on Ocean Waves
Scientists are using Sun glitter in images from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission to map the motion of the sea surface. Created by wind blowing across the surface, wave patterns are complex and highly varied. Being able to predict their movement can greatly benefit mariners, port and rig builders, coastal farmers and more.
The glitter of sunlight can indicate the direction, height and movement of waves. A team of scientists used this information to build a series of detailed images of wave patterns off the coast of Dorre Island in Western Australia.
Building on this technique, and through ESA’s Scientific Assessment of Ocean Glitter project, they were able to map how waves develop in regions where there are strong ocean currents.
Photo Credit: ESA/ATG medialab
Ballast Water Exchange Is Problematic
A new invasive species study by the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) discovered one of the main tactics ships use for stopping invasive species—ballast water exchange—isn’t working nearly as well as managers hoped.
Marine scientists looked at ballast water from ships entering Chesapeake Bay before and after ballast water exchange became mandatory in 2004 and found that, contrary to expectations, concentrations of potentially invasive species have gone up, not down.
One of the big reasons they suspect is shifts in global trade, including coal exports, which could be sabotaging the effectiveness of the strategy.
Caption: SERC marine biologist Jenny Carney descends the gangway of a giant bulker ship in Virginia. When ships export coal and other goods, they return loaded with ballast water from foreign ports—and often inadvertently bring invasive species with them. (Photo Credit: Kim Holzer/Smithsonian Environmental Research Center)