Filed under: life, maritime | Tags: Neptune Memorial Reef, Neptune Society
[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5AIZldXCf4]
YouTube – NEW NEPTUNE UNDERWATER REEF ON FOX NEWS
Reserve your space today! Neptune Memorial Reef
| Share this post : |  |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Time magazine has a sobering article about the dangers of travelling by ferry in the Far East.(Asia’s Scary Ferries – January 15, 2009)
Airline disasters may grab the front-page headlines, but in Asia, ferry accidents are more common — and deadlier. Last year, nearly 1,500 people perished in nine major ferry accidents in the region. The death toll for airline crashes in Asia was 93 in four incidents. Last year’s biggest ferry disaster occurred on June 21 in the Philippines, when the M/V Princess of the Stars foundered and capsized, taking almost 800 lives. More people died in that accident than in the largest air-travel disaster in history, the 1977 runway collision between two 747s in Tenerife, Spain, that killed 583 people. (Read "How to Survive A Disaster.")
The Tenerife crash resulted in a bout of airline industry soul-searching. Significant changes subsequently were made to international flight regulations and practices, including the implementation of new cockpit procedures and the standardization of English as the industry’s universal language of operation. (Read "Indonesia’s Year of Living Dangerously.")
But in the aftermath of ferry disasters, while blame is usually assigned, little is done to prevent reoccurrences. Asian government officials say there is widespread awareness that maritime safety ought to be improved. But budget constraints and bureaucratic roadblocks impede progress, they say.
Scary indeed. So much of this is so easy to solve because the root cause of many of these casualties is poor judgment. The lack of leadership by government and maritime leaders is frightening and the international community’s tolerance is incomprehensible. The numbers don’t lie. Don’t become a statistic, stay away from Asian ferries!
Share this post :
Filed under: maritime | Tags: containers, global financial crisis, maritime trade, shipping, Telegraph.co.uk
What a difference a year makes!
Here’s a screenshot from today’s (January 14, 2009) Telegraph.
Here’s a screenshot from the Telegraph from a little over a year ago (November 3, 2007)
Those were the #1 and #2 results for a Google search I did on shipping rates after reading Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s sobering article in on the Telegraph website: Shipping rates hit zero as trade sinks.
Hard to believe how fast and hard the global economy has fallen. Here’s a few sobering quotes
Shipping journal Lloyd’s List said brokers in Singapore are now waiving fees for containers travelling from South China, charging only for the minimal “bunker” costs. Container fees from North Asia have dropped $200, taking them below operating cost.
Idle ships are now stretched in rows outside Singapore’s harbour, creating an eerie silhouette like a vast naval fleet at anchor. Shipping experts note the number of vessels moving around seem unusually high in the water, indicating low cargoes.
It became difficult for the shippers to obtain routine letters of credit at the height of financial crisis over the autumn, causing goods to pile up at ports even though there was a willing buyer at the other end. Analysts say this problem has been resolved, but the shipping industry has since been swamped by the global trade contraction.
The World Bank caused shockwaves with a warning last month that global trade may decline this year for the first time since the Second World War.
Offering slots for free is akin to an airline giving away spare seats for nothing in the hope of making something from meals and fees.
File this in the not good news category.
| Share this post : | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Filed under: life
Our family frog has the winter blues.
Like all of us, he probably could use a winter break. He found this on the InterWebs reading Kottke.org.
It’s the winning entry for the 2008 International Aquatic Plant Layout Contest by Cheng Siu Wai from Hong Kong. (Click image to view larger version) Not too surprisingly, nearly all of the winners were from the Far East with George Lo coming in at 20th as the top American. Here’s a couple of splashing galleries of images and past winners.
I’m feeling guilty so I better at least go change froggie’s water.
| Share this post : | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Filed under: life
One of the most widely anticipated White House appointments will be announced any day now. Will it be my personal favorite, the Portuguese Water Dog or the crossover Labradoodle.
What’s your choice for this most important political appointment.
Thanks for voting!
| Share this post : | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Filed under: maritime | Tags: NY Times, Pirates, ransome, Sirius Star, Somalia
Ever wonder how you’re going to pay those pirates that hijack your $250,000,000 supertanker? Drop them $3,000,000 in a parachute from a small plane. Hard to believe but true but they all got away. Here’s the story in the January 10, 2009 New York Times.
Some things never change, IF you believe this:
The pirate named Jama said he was waiting for his share of the ransom. “When the pirates receive the money, they will divide in shares on the spot, so that they will disembark tonight from the ship with everyone’s share in pocket,” he said.
Filed under: FotoFriday, life, maritime | Tags: Foto Friday, JPG Magazine, photography, Ramon Terrado
Ramon Terrado is a oceanography student that I came across on the soon to close photo community / magazine website JPG where I was also a member. His work is amazing and his story is cool. (pardon the pun) Below the jump is an interview he did with JPG.
"Do not mess with an icebreaker!" by Ramon Terrado
"Alone in the dark" by Ramon Terrado
"Waiting for the sun" by Ramon Terrado
Filed under: life, maritime art, maritime heritage, Messing About In Ships, podcast, sailing, tall ships | Tags: Captain Kim Carver, Great Big Sea, Jacktar magazine, maritime heritage, Messing About In Ships, Pirates, podcast, The Dandy Warhols, Vendee Globe, Women of Maritime calendar
(49 minutes)
Download MP3: Messing About In Ships podcast episode 31
Subscribe Via iTunes HERE
Shownotes @ Messing About In Ships blog
| Share this post : | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Filed under: FotoFriday, maritime art, maritime heritage | Tags: Catherine Opie, Foto Friday, Guggenheim Museum, photography
This is the last weekend to experience the Catherine Opie: American Photographer exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum in NYC. The show closes on January 7th. Here are a few of works from her Icehouses and Surfers series. To get a better understanding of this artists work, make sure you watch the great video on the Guggenheim website (hope they keep these links live after the exhibit closes.)
From Christopher Knight’s December 8, 2008 review in the LA Times regarding the NYC exhibition:
The most beautiful room pairs 14 landscape views of ice fishermen and their shacks on snowy frozen lakes in Minnesota with 14 seascape views of early-morning surfers bobbing in the Pacific Ocean along the misty Malibu shore. “Icehouses” (2001) and “Surfers” (2003) are monumental — more than 4 1/2 feet tall — and verge on abstraction.
Vast, grayish white expanses are striped across the middle with a horizon line and dotted with figures dwarfed by nature’s void. Both chart the shifting organization of temporary communities of sportsmen who have taken to the water, liquid and frozen. For land creatures this environment Opie possesses a distinct otherness. Play mingles with survival.
Artist profile in NY Times: Home Views, Bound by Ice or Leather by Hilarie M. Sheets
Exhibit review in NY Times: A Retrospective of Many Artists, All of Them One Woman by Holland Cotter
In case you can’t make it to the Guggenheim, you can still see Opie’s work in the exhibition catalogue.
Share this post :
Filed under: FotoFriday, maritime heritage, storytelling | Tags: Barbara Mensch, Foto Friday, Fulton Fish Market, photography, South Street Seaport
"Vinny, an Unloader" (1982). South Street Seaport Museum 2008.005.0018. Copyright Barbara G. Mensch.
Barbara G. Mensch is a contemporary photographer who through the 1970′s and early 1980′s captured the rapidly disappearing world of Lower Manhattan’s Fulton Fish Market. Thomas Mellins, special projects curator for the Museum of The City of New York, put together an exhibition titled The Photographs of Barbara Mensch at the South Street Seaport Museum. The artist’s work can also be viewed in her book, South Street.
From the South Street Seaport Museum website:
For more than a century, a tightly knit community of workingmen, many of them immigrants or children of immigrants, thrived in their nocturnal jobs as fishmongers under the base of the Brooklyn Bridge. Resistant to government regulations and corporate encroachment these men worked in a closed, internally-policed world that was deeply hostile to outsiders.
Many of the images were taken in 1979-1983, a time of profound change in the political and economic landscape of Lower Manhattan. The waterfront below the Brooklyn Bridge was targeted for economic revival, spurred by the demolition of important locales in the fish market, existing piers, working storefronts, saloons and hotels to make room for new commercial spaces, including a shopping mall.
Since there is nothing like experiencing art in person, make sure you get to the South Street Seaport Museum if you can.
Please don’t miss the great interview with the photographer by Columbia University Press.
| Share this post : | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
