WEEKLY OCEAN NEWS

WEEKLY OCEAN NEWS

17-21 May 2010

DataStreme Ocean will return for Fall 2010 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 30 August 2010. All the current online website products will continue to be available throughout the summer break period.

Item of Interest:

National Maritime Day will be observed-- This coming Saturday, 22 May 2010, has been declared National Maritime Day, a day created to recognize the maritime industry. The holiday was created by the United States Congress on 20 May 1933. The date of 22 May was selected because on 22 May 1819, that the American steamship Savannah set sail from Savannah, GA on the first ever transoceanic voyage under steam power.

North American Safe Boating Week -- Commencing this coming Saturday, the week of 22-28 May has been declared 2010 National Safe Boating Week, to help kick off the 2010 North American Safe Boating Campaign. Check the Safe Boating Week site maintained by the Safe Boating Council.

Ocean in the News:

Eye on the tropics -- Although the official 2010 hurricane season began last Saturday (15 May 2010) in the eastern North Pacific basin, no organized tropical cyclones were detected across the ocean basins last week.

Gulf oil spill updates -- The oil spewing into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico off the Louisiana coast from the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill disaster remained one of the top news items last week:

Early last week NOAA’s Fisheries Service announced that it had modified the area closed to fishing in the Gulf of Mexico because of the oil spill. This modified region extended from near Louisiana's Timbalier Island to waters off Florida’s Choctawhatchee Bay. [NOAA News]
The director of NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center was dispatched last week to the Gulf Coast to lead NOAA's response team and its efforts at monitoring and assessing the contamination from the oil spill. [NOAA News]
Scientists from NASA and NOAA have been using a variety of instruments onboard high altitude aircraft and satellites to assist the US Geological Survey and the Department of Homeland Security's monitor the oil spill. [NASA Headquarters] [NASA Langley]
A photograph taken early this month by an astronaut on the International Space Station shows the extent of the oil spill along the Louisiana coast.
[NASA Earth Observatory] [NASA Earth Observatory]

A national fisheries update -- At the start of last week, NOAA’s Fisheries Service submitted its "2009 Status of U.S. Fisheries" report to Congress that reported four fisheries stocks, including Atlantic swordfish, have now been rebuilt to healthy levels and that no fisheries had been added to the overfishing list. [NOAA News]

Another "smart buoy" deployed for the Chesapeake Bay system -- NOAA's Chesapeake Bay Office recently deployed the eighth "smart buoy" in its Chesapeake Bay Interpretive Buoy System (CBIBS) system in the Potomac River south of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. This moored buoy has instruments that collect weather, oceanographic and water-quality observations, which are then transmitted by wireless means to a collection point, whereupon these data can be displayed in near real-time to the public, boaters, scientists and educators. [NOAA News]

New approach suggested for selective fishing -- A team of researchers led by a scientist from Australia's CSIRO Wealth from Oceans Flagship propose a new, less selected approach called "ecosystem-based fisheries management" be used in commercial fishing that would insure the continued productivity of marine ecosystems, while maintaining biodiversity. [CSIRO]

Seaweed chemicals could damage coral -- Marine ecologists from Georgia Institute of Technology have found that chemicals in several seaweed species common to the waters of the Pacific and Caribbean are capable of causing lethal damage to coral upon contact. [EurekAlert!]

Fossils help in visualization of ancient marine life -- Paleontologists from Yale University who have been analyzing the 1500 fossils of soft-bodied marine animal that they collected from northern Morocco are helping complete a picture of the marine life in the early Ordovician Period (between 480 and 472 million years ago), a time of intense bio-diversification. [Yale University]

Phosphorous may have triggered complex evolution and blue skies on ancient Earth -- A researcher at the Carnegie Institution for Science claims that geological processes during the Proterozoic (from approximately 2.5 billion to 540 million years ago) may have washed large quantities of phosphorus in to the Earth's oceans, resulting in vast algal blooms and subsequent major global biogeochemical changes. The algal blooms would have increased quantities of oxygen that would have not only allowed larger, more complex types of organisms to thrive, but also caused skies to change from having an orange tinge to one that was blue. [EurekAlert!]

An All-Hazards Monitor -- This Web portal provides the user information from NOAA on current environmental events that may pose as hazards such as tropical weather, drought, floods, marine weather, tsunamis, rip currents, Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) and coral bleaching. [NOAAWatch]

Global and US Hazards/Climate Extremes -- A review and analysis of the global impacts of various weather-related events, to include drought, floods and storms during the current month. [NCDC]

Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Historical Events:

17-21 May 1887...An early season tropical storm raked Cuba and The Bahamas. (The Weather Doctor)
17 May 1970...The Norwegian ethnologist, Thor Heyerdahl, and a multinational crew set sail on a trans-Atlantic voyage from Morocco on Ra II, a papyrus sailing craft modeled after the ancient Egyptian vessels in an effort to prove his theory that Mediterranean sailors reached the Americas in ancient times. After 57 days, the Ra II reached Barbados. (The History Channel)
19 May 1535...French explorer Jacques Cartier set sail on his second voyage to North America with 3 ships, 110 men, and Chief Donnacona's two sons (whom Cartier kidnapped during his first voyage). (Wikipedia)
19 May 1912...The US Navy established the North Atlantic Ice Patrol following the RMS Titanic disaster. (Naval Historical Center)
20 May 1497...John Cabot set sail from Bristol, England, on his ship The Mathew looking for a route to the west (other documents give a 2 May date). (Wikipedia)
20 May 1498...The Portuguese explorer Vasco de Gama became the first European to reach India via the Atlantic Ocean when he arrived at Kozhikode (previously known as Calicut) on the Malabar Coast, after departing Lisbon, Portugal in July 1497. (The History Channel) (Wikipedia)
20 May 1570...Cartographer Abraham Ortelius issued the first modern atlas. (Wikipedia)
20 May 1845...HMS Erebus and HMS Terror with 134 men under John Franklin sailed from the River Thames in England, beginning a disastrous expedition to find the Northwest Passage. All hands were lost. (Wikipedia)
20 May 1964...The first U.S. atomic-powered lighthouse was put into operation in the Chesapeake Bay, Baltimore Harbor, MD. Designed to supply a continuous flow of electricity for ten years without refueling, the 60-watt nuclear generator generated heat from strontium-90 in the form of strontium titinate, a safe radioisotope. The heat was converted to electricity by 120 pairs of lead telluride thermocouples. Complete with shielding, the unit was only 34.5 inches high and 22 inches in diameter. It was designed and produced by the nuclear division of Martin-Marietta Corp. (Today in Science History)
20 May 1999...A devastating cyclone, packing winds of up to 170 mph and a high storm surge, struck the Sindh Province in southern Pakistan. Some 600 villages were devastated and more than 400 people killed. (The Weather Doctor)
22 May 1819...The steamship SS Savannah left Savannah, GA on a voyage to Liverpool, England and became the first steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean. It reached Liverpool on 20 June. (Wikipedia)
22 May 1849...The future President, Abraham Lincoln, received a patent for the floating dry dock described as for "buoying boats over shoals" (No. 6,469). He was the first American president to receive a patent. His idea utilized inflated cylinders to float grounded vessels through shallow water. (Today in Science History)
22-24 May 1948...A rare early season hurricane struck the island of Hispaniola, killing an estimated 80 people. (The Weather Doctor)
22 May 1960...A 8.6 magnitude earthquake off the coast of south central Chile triggered a tsunami that moved across the Pacific Ocean. Between 490 and 2290 people were estimated to have been killed by the earthquake and tsunami, and damage estimates were over one half billion dollars. Hilo, HI was devastated by the tsunami. (The University of Washington)
23 May 1850...The US Navy sent USS Advance and USS Rescue to attempt rescue of Sir John Franklin's expedition, lost in Arctic. (Naval Historical Center)
23 May 1946...Commodore Edward M. Webster, USCG, headed the U.S. Delegation to the International Meeting on Radio Aids to Marine Navigation, which was held in London, England. As a result of this meeting, the principal maritime nations of the world would make an intensive study of the World War II-developed devices of radar, LORAN, radar beacons, and other navigational aids with a view to adapt them to peacetime use. This meeting was the first time that the wartime technical secrets of radar and LORAN were generally disclosed to the public. (USCG Historian's Office)
23 May 1960...Tsunami waves from Chilean earthquakes began to affect the Alaska's coast along the Gulf of Alaska from Prince of Wales Island to Montague Island for as long as one week. The tsunami waves on the 23rd were up to 14 feet high near Yakutat. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)