Wilderness? Only 10% of the land area is remote – more than 48 hours from a large city
The world is shrinking. Cheap flights, large scale commercial shipping and expanding road networks all Wilderness? Only 10% of the land area is remote – more than 48 hours from a large citymean that we are better connected to everywhere else than ever before. But global travel and international trade and just two of the forces that have reshaped our world. A new map of Travel Time to Major Cities – developed by the European Commission and the World Bank – captures this connectivity and the concentration of economic activity and also highlights that there is little wilderness left. The map shows how accessible some parts of the world have become whilst other regions have remained isolated.
Still plenty of places not to get hit by a freighter. Thanks to S/A for the find. LINK
Above, Dee (L) and Sam(R). Below, Dee (purple #13) and Sam (pink #15), as of 1400 PST 13 Nov 08. Loïck Peyron in lead.
Now that the Vendee Globe solo round-the-world race has begun, I’m finally getting into it. And a brutal start it has been, with four of 30 starters already retired and two seemingly also down, while the leaders are reeling off 300+ nm days. And only 4.5 days in!
I’m glad to see that the two ladies in the race, Dee Caffari and Samantha Davies are doing so well. There is almost a race-within-a-race going on with exchanges of their rankings since the start. Read their sites, pick your favorite, subscribe to the RSS feeds, and have a great couple of months!
In 1893, Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen and his ship Fram were victims of a strange phenomenon as he sailed past the Nordenskiöld Archipelago, north of Siberia.
Nansen wrote afterwards: “Fram appeared to be held back, as if by some mysterious force, and she did not always answer the helm … We made loops in our course, turned sometimes right around, tried all sorts of antics to get clear of it, but to very little purpose.”
Nansen called the effect “dead water”, reporting that it slowed Fram to a quarter of her normal speed.
Research has already shown that dead water occurs when an area of water consists of two or more layers of water with different salinity, and hence density – for example, when fresh water from a melting glacier forms a relatively thin layer on top of denser seawater. Waves that form in the hidden layer can slow the boat with no visible trace.
30 noeuds de Mistral, gerbes d’écumes, ambiance sous-marin. C’est dans ces conditions que la banque images hélico et embarquée de Groupe Bel avant le Vendée Globe a été réalisée. Du rarement vu, dixit les photographes et caméramans de l’équipe.
Rodeo aboard Bel Group!
30 knots of Mistral, jets of skimmings atmosphere submarine. In those circumstances the bank board images of helicopters and Bel Group before the Vendee Globe has been achieved. From rarely seen dixit photographers and cameramen of the team.
Rockin’ preview clip of Vendee Globe from the Groupe Bel. More here.
There are a lot of sources of tide information on the Web. One of the most popular and useful is the WWW Tide and Current Predictor at http://tbone.biol.sc.edu/tide/ . Like the name says, it has current information, unlike most other sources. However, the location of the sites can be hard to visualize at times. To help with this problem, I have created a little Google Earth mashup. Download either of the files below and open in Google Earth, and you will find placemarks with links to the tbone server to see the predicted current at that site for the next couple of days in the Google Earth browser pane. Presently these are only for the West Coast sites (California and Washington), but it would be easy to do the East and Gulf Coasts.
(Note: Right-click and Save As… Some browsers may try to change the file extensions of .kml and .kmz to .xml and .zip. What a pain.)
California Coastal Cleanup Day is the premier volunteer event focused on the marine environment in the country. In 2007, more than 60,000 volunteers worked together to collect more than 900,000 pounds of trash and recyclables from our beaches, lakes, and waterways. California Coastal Cleanup Day has been hailed by the Guinness Book of World Records as “the largest garbage collection” (1993). Since the program started in 1985, over 800,000 Californians have removed more than 12 million pounds of debris from our state’s shorelines and coast. When combined with the International Coastal Cleanup, organized by The Ocean Conservancy and taking place on the same day, California Coastal Cleanup Day becomes part of one of the largest volunteer events of the year.
Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup is the world’s largest volunteer event of its kind. Last year, 378,000 volunteers from 76 countries and 45 states cleared six million pounds of trash from oceans and waterways and recorded every piece of trash collected.
This year we’re doing it and you should, too. Sign up:
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — A maroon-striped marauder with venomous spikes is rapidly multiplying in the Caribbean’s warm waters, swallowing native species, stinging divers and generally wreaking havoc on an ecologically delicate region.
The red lionfish, a tropical native of the Indian and Pacific oceans that probably escaped from a Florida fish tank, is showing up everywhere – from the coasts of Cuba and Hispaniola to Little Cayman’s pristine Bloody Bay Wall, one of the region’s prime destinations for divers.
Wherever it appears, the adaptable predator corners fish and crustaceans up to half its size with its billowy fins and sucks them down in one violent gulp.
Research teams observed one lionfish eating 20 small fish in less than 30 minutes.
“This may very well become the most devastating marine invasion in history,” said Mark Hixon, an Oregon State University marine ecology expert who compared lionfish to a plague of locusts. “There is probably no way to stop the invasion completely.”
A raft made of 15,000 plastic bottles and a Cessna 310, to raise awareness about plastic debris fouling our oceans.
For over 10 years, the Algalita Marine Research Foundation has studied plastic marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean. What we have found – exponential increases in the quantity of plastic debris – may have far reaching effects we are only beginning to understand.
To put a cap on it, we’re sounding the alarm, by sailing across the Pacific on 15,000 plastic bottles. Along the way, we’ll report our findings, collect ocean surface samples, and answer your questions through our blog.
Out of sight, out of mind no longer, We need for people to begin paying attention, before our oceans turn to plastic soup.
BAMA’s 29th Doublehanded Farallones Race is this Saturday, March 29. Sailing instructions are online and can be faxed for entry until Friday, March 28, at 8 p.m. After that, deliver the signed entry to the race deck at Golden Gate YC before 7:45 am on race day.
The surf kitty pics have been all over the Interweb, you can see the original story here. Our own cats, Avery and Capt. Blood, are not to be found doing watersports.
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