Prominent environmental campaigner Jonathon Porritt, from the Sustainable Shipping initiative, told last week’s International Chamber of Shipping conference that the various targets for CO2 reduction that shipping was currently struggling towards would eventually prove “irrelevant”. He said that the industry would have to be 95% de-carbonised by 2050 as part of global efforts to prevent global warming reaching dangerous levels.
Today (27 September 2012) marks the 35th celebration of World Maritime Day. This year’s theme is: “IMO: One hundred years after the Titanic”, a theme chosen by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to reflect on the safety of passenger shipping today, and into the future, on the centenary anniversary of the Titanic disaster.
Mobile network operator Three is to provide seafarers visiting ports across the UK with free mobile internet as part of a national scheme being run in collaboration with the UK Merchant Navy Welfare Board, which aims to connect international seafarers with their families using internet communications tools. Three UK has provided 32 mobile Wi-Fi hotspots to the national charity, with each device to be loaded with 15 GB of data per month.
A new low budget Danish film confronts the global scourge of piracy on the high seas, creating a psychological drama around negotiations in order to free a vessel and her crew by Somali pirates. Written and directed by Tobias Lindholm, the film nowadays maritime piracy.
I.M. Skaugen announced earlier today that a vessel operated by owned subsidiary Norgas Carriers Private Limited of Singapore was involved in an incident off the coast of Indonesia. An emergency response has been immediately activated after the Norgas Cathinka, was involved in a collision with a Ro-Ro passenger ferry near the port of Merak, Indonesia. According to officials eight people have died after the ferry collided with a gas tanker and sank in the Sunda Strait, west of the main island of Java.
Clay Maitland, Founding Chairman of the North American Marine Environment Protection Association (NAMEPA), announced the recipients of NAMEPA’s 2012 Marine Environment Protection Awards.
A Bahamian flagged tanker ran aground on a shoal to the east of Aegna island at 6:55 on Monday morning. According to officials there is no threat of pollution or danger to the 24-member crew of the Kyeema Spirit, which was not carrying cargo. The tanker had been leaking bilge water, but the leakage has now been stopped.
The Japanese Coast Guard is searching for 13 crew members which went missing from a fishing boat after it collided with a larger cargo ship in Japan’s Pacific Ocean. The 13 missing members of the fishing boat were part of a 22-man crew on board the 119-ton Horiei Maru. The fishing boat collided with the 25,000-ton Nikkei Tiger about 900 kilometres east of Sendai at 2.30am last Sunday morning.
INTERTANKO’s Executive Committee (ExCom) recently held its third meeting for 2012 in Rome, Italy, focusing on the major issues currently facing independent tanker owners such as tanker market sustainability, piracy, ballast water management and air emissions. Participants expressed concern over the state of the tanker industry and the rising costs of shipping, which are considered the most crucial issue facing INTERTANKO’s Members. They noted that, while independent owners acknowledged to have contributed to the problems by over-ordering, current market levels could actually endanger the supply chain element of safe, sustainable transportation of oil, products and chemicals.
A cargo ship has run aground on its maiden voyage from Southampton to the Channel Islands. The Huelin Dispatch was loaded with containers from Southampton to the Channel Islands. The vessel hit a rock off the coast of Alderney on last Friday. The vessel issued a distress call after running aground on an isolated rock one and a half miles south-west of Alderney. All crew and cargo are safe.
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Officer of the Watch 