Vietnam Cargo Ship Sinks, 22 Dead: Shipping Firm

Jakarta Globe, December30, 2011

This picture taken on May 10, 2011 shows the Vinaline Queen cargo ship
 anchored at Saigon port in Ho Chi Minh City. A Vietnamese cargo boat that
 vanished near the Philippines on Christmas Day has sunk, killing 22 of its 23
crew members, Vietnam state shipping firm Vinalines said on Friday. (AFP Photo)   

    

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Hanoi. AVietnamese cargo boat that vanished near the Philippines on Christmas Day hassunk, killing 22 of its 23 crew members, Vietnam state shipping firm Vinalinessaid on Friday.

“Accordingto our initial information, only one sailor has been rescued and the vessel hasnot been found yet,” a Vinalines official based in Hanoi told AFP, asking notto be named.

TheVinalines Queen disappeared after passing Luzon island and apparently did notsend out a distress signal.

Late onFriday online newspaper Dan Tri reported that the surviving sailor, Dau NgocHung, was rescued by a British ship which was heading towards Singapore.

Vinalinessaid its ship was carrying more than 54,000 tonnes of nickel ore and wastravelling from Indonesia to China when it lost contact.

Vietnamappealed to the Philippines, Taiwan and Japanese coastguards for help infinding the vessel, but had heard nothing from the ship until now.

“We are nowfocussing our efforts on searching for the Vinalines Queen,” the companyofficial added.

Rescueexperts quoted in the local press said emergency equipment in the vessel shouldhave automatically sent SOS signals to satellites and coastal rescue stations.It is not yet clear why none was transmitted.

TheJapanese-built 190 meter Vinalines Queen was one of the largest and most moderncargo ships in the Vietnamese fleet, with a capacity of more than 56,000tonnes. It had been in service for Vinalines since 2005.

VietnamNational Shipping Lines, or Vinalines, is one of the communist country’s mainstate-owned enterprises.

Agence France-Presse

Huge Waves Damage Anti-Whaling Boat

Jakarta Globe, December 29, 2011

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society said the Brigitte Bardot's hull
split when it was struck by a "rogue wave." (Agency Photo) 

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Sydney.Anti-whaling activists chasing the Japanese harpoon fleet suffered a majorsetback on Thursday when the hull of one of their ships cracked in massiveseas, forcing a second to divert to its rescue.

The SeaShepherd Conservation Society said the Brigitte Bardot’s hull split when it wasstruck by a “rogue wave” as it tailed the Japanese factory ship Nisshin Maru insix meter swells some 2,400 kilometers southwest of Australia.

“The crackhas been getting wider as the seas continue to pound the vessel,” the activistgroup said.

SeaShepherd spokesman Paul Watson said lead vessel the Steve Irwin was en route tothe troubled Brigitte Bardot, which has also suffered severe damage to one ofits pontoons, but warned it would take 20 hours to get there.

TheBardot’s captain, South African-born Jonathan Miles Renecle, was “confidentthat the ship will stay afloat until the Steve Irwin arrives” he added.

“This isdisappointing but these are hostile seas and we have always been prepared forsituations like this,” Watson said.

“Right nowthe safety of my crew on the Brigitte Bardot is our priority and we intend toreach the crew and then do what we can to save our ship.”

Theincident means just one Sea Shepherd vessel, the Bob Barker, is now tailing theJapanese fleet, which it intercepted on Sunday with the help of amilitary-style drone.

Watson saidall the crew were safe and uninjured and the Bardot, Sea Shepherd’s scoutvessel, was “repairable.”

“We’ll bebringing it back to Fremantle and then the Steve Irwin will return to supportthe Bob Barker,” he told Sky News via satellite phone from the Southern Ocean,estimating that it would be a five-day trip.

“It’s asetback, but you know, when you come down here you’re facing a number ofdangers, not just the Japanese whaling fleet but also the very remote area,it’s a hostile area weather-wise with ice,” he added.

Watson saidit was Sea Shepherd’s eighth season pursuing the whalers and it was “inevitablesomething (like this) is going to happen sometime, we’ll just deal with it andcarry on.

“I’m stillconfident that we’ll be able to intervene against the Japanese whalingoperations,” he said.

Australia’sMaritime Safety Authority said it had been monitoring the situation but therewas no active rescue afoot because Sea Shepherd was managing the situation.

“We wereaware of it, but it was really a monitoring brief for us because it was a SeaShepherd vessel to which another Sea Shepherd vessel was going to the aid,” aspokesman told AFP.

“We were incommunication with them but they’ve got it under control themselves now.”

Japan’sFisheries Agency, which commissions the annual whale hunt, routinely refuses tocomment on the issue and declined to be drawn on the damaged boat Thursday.

“I cannotmake any comment related to the (whaling) mission,” an agency official said.

SeaShepherd purchased the Australian-flagged Brigitte Bardot, a high-speed100-foot monohull racer, to replace the futuristic speedboat Ady Gil, whichsank during a fierce clash with the harpooners in January 2010.

Watson saidthere were 10 crew on board the stricken Bardot — three Britons, threeAmericans, an Australian, a Canadian, a Belgian and its South African captainRenecle.

Commercialwhaling is banned under an international treaty but Japan has since 1987 used aloophole to carry out “lethal research” in the name of science — a practicecondemned by environmentalists and anti-whaling nations.

Confrontationsbetween the whalers and increasingly sophisticated activists have escalated inrecent years and the Japanese cut their hunt short last season due to SeaShepherd harassment.

Japan’scoastguard has deployed an unspecified number of vessels to protect the whalingships, using some tsunami reconstruction funds, and the whalers are also suingthe activists in Washington seeking an injunction against what they say is a“life-threatening” campaign.

Agence France-Presse

Related Article:

Sea Shepherd anti-whaling boat damaged by wave

Dutch Unveil Latest Plan in War Against the Sea: a Massive Sandbar

Jakarta Globe, Nicolas Delaunay, December 26, 2011

The wind, waves and ocean currents, it is hoped, will drive the man-made
 peninsula of sand landward to replenish the coast of the Netherlands. 
(AFP Photo)   

          

Kijkduin,Netherlands. In its age-old war to keep back the sea, low-lying Netherlands hasdumped sand onto a surface larger than 200 football fields just off the coast —and will wait for nature to do the rest.

The wind,waves and ocean currents are the next “engineers” in this innovative projectthat will see the transferred sand — all 20 million cubic meters of it — drivenlandward to form a natural barrier against the North Sea’s relentlessonslaught. The elements have started moving the tip of the bar, which alreadyalmost touches land at low tide.

Over aperiod of 15 to 20 years, the sand will wash toward the coast, reinforcingbeaches and existing sand dunes that help protect the Netherlands, more than aquarter of which lies below sea level.

“Undernatural circumstances, the Dutch coast would erode away slowly,” said LeoLinnartz, an ecology expert who advised the project’s developers on behalf ofthe World Wide Fund for Nature. Without reinforcing fragile shores, floodswould eventually be inevitable, he said.

Over thedecades, the Dutch have developed world-renowned expertise in the field ofhydro-engineering, notably in constructing dams, dikes and bridges.

Around17,500 kilometers of embankment have already been built along its coast and rivers.

The newproject was conceived by a group of experts commissioned by the Dutchgovernment to help solve the country’s ongoing headache. It used dredgers tosuck up ocean-floor sand 10 kilometers off the coast then dump it closer toland. Some of the huge machines were able to carry as much as 10,000 cubicmeters of sand at one time.

If theexperiment works, the sandbar project, situated between the seaside suburbs ofKijkduin and Ter Heijde near The Hague, will be replicated elsewhere in thecountry. And the system could even be exported.

“We used todo it in such a way that we used a lot of stones and concrete and things likethat,” said Linnartz. “But nowadays we prefer to work together with nature, tocooperate with natural forces.”

The idea ofstrengthening the coastline with sand is not new, Linnartz said. But placing itoff the coast and allowing nature to take its course is not only a freshapproach to the problem but less harmful to the environment than simply dumpingmore sand on the dunes, he said.

Whiletraditional shoring up happens around every five years, the new plan based onthe sand’s natural movement will last 15 to 20 years.

AgenceFrance-Presse  

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Afsluitdijk, The Netherlands