A South Korean businessman and Christian sect leader, wanted on charges tied to a ferry disaster in which more than 300 passengers drowned, sought asylum at a Seoul embassy but was rejected, prosecutors said on Tuesday.Yoo Byung-un, 73, is wanted on charges of embezzlement, negligence and tax evasion stemming from his control of a web of business interests centred on an investment firm owned by his sons that owned the operator of the doomed Sewol that sank on April 16.“By international law, Yoo Byung-un is not a refugee but is a fugitive with an arrest warrant outstanding, so anyone who helps him flee will be deemed to be aiding his escape and will be firmly punished,” a prosecutor said. A person acting for Yoo contacted an embassy and asked about the possibility of Yoo seeking political asylum, he said. He was turned down. Prosecutors declined to disclose which embassy was contacted by Yoo’s representative, or if there were others.The Sewol, overloaded and travelling too fast on a turn, capsized and sank on a routine journey from Incheon on the mainland to the vacation island of Jeju.

Most of the 476 passengers were children and teachers from the same school on the outskirts of Seoul. Divers are searching for 16 missing bodies.

The captain and surviving crew members were caught on video escaping the sinking ship while the children, wearing life jackets, stayed put in their cabins, as they had been told, awaiting further orders.

Authorities have offered a reward of half a million dollars for information leading to Yoo’s arrest but he and his first son have eluded a massive manhunt that included a search of a religious commune south of Seoul where Yoo once had a photography studio. The second son is in the United States.

Prosecutors believe the Yoos are responsible for business decisions related to the renovation of the ferry and its operation that led to the country’s worst maritime disaster in 20 years. All 15 surviving crew members of the Sewol have been charged. The captain and three senior crew members face homicide charges. Nine crew were indicted for negligence and two on the lesser charge of abandoning the vessel. Copyright June 03, 2014

The rise in the number of stranded whales in Western Australia has led a group of veterinary researchers, working in collaboration with the Department of Parks and Wildlife, to investigate why this is occurring.

Speaking at the Australian Veterinary Association’s annual conference, Murdoch University researcher Dr Carly Holyoake said that an unprecedented number of humpback whales, predominantly calves and juveniles, have stranded on the west coast of Australia since 2008.

“Between 1989 and 2007 the mean number of humpback whales ashore was between two and three. In 2008 there were 13 strandings, followed by 46 in 2009 and 16 in 2010. In 2011 there were 17 strandings consisting of 14 calves and three juveniles, representing a rise in the number of young whales perishing than in previous years.

 The aim of the project was to find out why this was happening through post-mortem examination. All the strandings occurred between Exmouth and Stokes Inlet, east of Esperance, so all individuals were born at least 1000km south of the regular breeding grounds in the Kimberley region.

 “Post mortem examination and analysis of the fat content of blubber samples revealed most calves were in an extremely malnourished state. Most had very low blubber fat, which is required for energy, thermoregulation and for buoyancy. One individual also had pneumonia which would have made it difficult to breathe and may have contributed to its death.”

 There were several theories proposed for the high rate of calf strandings in 2011:

 Increased population size and inherent high mortality rate in humpback calves.
Mothers giving birth in unsuitable areas due to environmental conditions.
Mothers in a poor nutritional state giving birth to malnourished calves.

 The researchers concluded that the most likely cause of the humpback calf strandings was due to  poor nutrition It is also significant that the calves were born several thousands of kilometres south of the known breeding grounds.

 Humpback whales feed almost exclusively on krill in the Antarctic and it is unknown what effect an expanding krill fishery in conjunction with climate warming might be aving on the abundance of krill. 

“It‘s likely that a reduction in the abundance and distribution of feed in the Antarctic may have resulted in longer foraging time which led to a delay in migration times and reduced fat reserves in some pregnant cows,” Dr Holyoake concluded.

The Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) has concluded that human error and poor judgment were the main cause of the three incidents that resulted in oil spills in Singapore workers this year.  MPA has conducted investigations into the incidents and also formed a Safety Review Committee (SRC) to review the overall system of navigational safety in Singapore’s port waters and Singapore Strait. Members comprised experts from MPA, Ministry of Transport, the local academia and shipping industry. The findings of the investigations showed there was lack of situational awareness of the bridge teams, including the pilots, although MPA’s Port Operations Control Centre (POCC) had provided advisories and warnings of the traffic situation to the bridge teams. The bridge teams also did not make use of all available means at their disposal, such as the Automatic Identification System (AIS), Automatic Radar Plotting Aid (ARPA), Radar, and Electronic Chart Display and Information System (ECDIS) to avoid the collisions. Appropriate disciplinary actions will be taken against the members of the bridge teams, including the pilots, for contravening the relevant regulations. The SRC also reviewed the overall regime of navigational safety in Singapore’s port limits. The SRC found no significant increase in the number of incidents between 2007 and 2013, nor was there apparent correlation in the occurrence of incidents and growth in vessel movements in the Singapore Strait or port waters. The number of incidents over the last few years remained low and averaged about 0.012 and 0.016 per 1,000 vessel movements in the port waters and Singapore Strait respectively. The existing systems and procedures put in place by MPA have helped to keep the incident rates low. Notwithstanding, the SRC recommended adopting the following key measures to further enhance the safety of navigation in the port and in the Singapore Strait:

1. Instilling a strong safety culture
2. MPA should work with the industry to develop an integrated safety management framework to drive the overall efforts to promote a strong culture of safety awareness, including the conduct of regular safety briefings to the shipping community.
3. Enhancing communication and information sharing

PSA Marine should enhance the information sharing between pilots and ship masters, including the timely dissemination of passage plan to the ships. There should also be procedures for its pilots to follow when communications failure occurs between the pilots on converging ships, or between the Vessel Traffic Information System (VTIS) and their ships.

iii. Improving safe passage in high risk areas

MPA’s VTIS should consider providing more active advisories to vessels navigating at high traffic density areas in the port of Singapore and in the Singapore Strait. MPA should also work with the shipping community to ensure ship masters are present on the bridge when their ships are transiting critical areas in the Singapore Strait.

To implement the above measures and ensure efforts are sustained, MPA will form two working groups:

i.The MPA-PSA Marine Safety of Navigation Working Group.
ii.The MPA-SSA (Singapore Shipping Association) Safety of Navigation Working Group.

MPA will also be shortly launching a Safety Campaign with the shipping community to raise the level of awareness on navigational safety. It will also review and improve navigational safety in critical areas such as key fairways and pilot boarding grounds.

MPA Chief Executive, Andrew Tan said, “MPA places a strong emphasis on the safety of navigation and takes a serious view of any incidents in Singapore waters. Moving forward, we will work more closely with all our industry partners to review our safety management procedures and implement additional measures to enhance navigational safety. We will also not hesitate to take appropriate actions against those who infringe our safety regulations.”

Patrick Phoon, chairman of the Safe Navigation and Environment Committee of the Asian Shipowners’ Forum and president of the Singapore Shipping Association (SSA) said, “We welcome the efforts taken by MPA and the Safety Review Committee to look at the causes to these incidents holistically. The SSA will work closely with MPA to implement the recommendations from the Safety Review Committee to enhance navigational safety within our port waters and the Singapore Strait.”

An Ecuadorian cargo ship ran aground in the Galapagos Islands on Friday, but it does not, for the moment, pose an environmental threat to the environment, reports the Galapagos National Park.

The vessel, which ran aground off the island of San Cristobal, is carrying over 60,000 litres of fuel oil. However, hull damage is reported to be away from the fuel tanks. The cargo is being removed from the vessel in the hope that it can be refloated on a high tide, and oil spill contingency plans are being prepared in case the situation changes.

The islands are located 1,000km from the South American mainland and are famous for their unique flora and fauna studied by Charles Darwin during the voyage of the Beagle as he developed the theory of evolution by natural selection.

A deep-ocean exploration company in Florida says it has recovered nearly 1,000 ounces of gold, worth $1.3 million at current gold prices, on a reconnaissance dive to an historic Atlantic Ocean shipwreck.

The dive confirmed that the ship had not been disturbed since 1991 when another company stopped recovery work, Tampa-based Odyssey Marine Exploration, announced on Monday. The ship’s sinking in 1857 with 21 tons of gold aboard in a hurricane off the coast of South Carolina sparked a U.S. banking panic.

Recovered gold included five gold ingots and two $20 Double Eagle coins, an 1857 coin minted in San Francisco and an 1850 coin minted in Philadelphia. The gold ingots were stamped with the manufacturer’s “assay-mark” and weigh from 96.5 to 313.5 troy ounces.

U.S. $20 Double Eagle coins fetch an average of $5,000 from collectors, Odyssey’s chief operating officer Mark Gordon told Reuters last week.

In March, Odyssey won the rights to return to the shipwreck from a receiver who had been appointed by an Ohio court to represent the ship’s first exploration company after a decades-long court battle over rights to the treasure and return for investors

More than $40 million in gold was recovered by the original team led by Tommy Thompson, an Ohio engineer who discovered the shipwreck in 1988 using sonar and robotic technology he developed. The recovery efforts were derailed by lawsuits and investors accused him of failing to pay them. He has been considered a fugitive since 2012 when he failed to appear in court for a hearing.

Only about 5 percent of the shipwreck site was explored in the late 1980s, Gordon said.

The two-hour reconnaissance dive in mid-April took place as the company’s research vessel, Odyssey Explorer, was traveling from the U.K. to Charleston, the company revealed on Monday.

Odyssey Explorer left Charleston recently to begin the bulk of recovery work at the shipwreck 160 miles off the South Carolina coast and 7,500 feet (2.2 kilometers) deep.

The 280-foot (85 meters) sidewheel steamship carried as much as 21 tons of gold ingots, freshly minted gold coins and raw gold from the California mines, as well as the personal wealth and belongings of its 477 passengers, most of whom were lost when the ship sank.

Historians say the loss of the gold caused a banking panic that contributed to a larger U.S. economic crisis, called the Panic of 1857, that lasted several years.

1998 Santa Maria replica in Madeira

A shipwreck found off the north coast of Haiti could be the 500-year-old remains of the Santa Maria, which led Christopher Columbus’s famed voyage to the New World, according to a team of marine explorers.

“All the geographical, underwater topography and archaeological evidence strongly suggests that this wreck is Columbus’ famous flagship, the Santa Maria,” Massachusetts marine investigator Barry Clifford said in a press release on Tuesday.

“I am confident that a full excavation of the wreck will yield the first-ever detailed marine archaeological evidence of Columbus’ discovery of America,” he added.

Clifford, who led a reconnaissance expedition to the site, will hold a press conference Wednesday morning at the Explorer’s Club in New York City to announce the discovery.

The Santa Maria was one of a fleet of three vessels that departed Spain in 1492 looking for a shorter route to Asia. The ship, after arriving near the Bahamas, drifted into a reef and had to be abandoned. Columbus ordered sailors to build a fort nearby before taking the remaining two ships back to Spain to report his findings.

Clifford and his team first discovered the wreck in 2003, but were unable to identify the ship. Yet the discovery of Columbus’ encampment on nearby Haiti and data from the explorer’s diary appear to prove the heavily decayed vessel on the sea floor was the Santa Maria. By Zachary Fagenson (C) Reuters 2014.

Former slave piloted Planter to freedom

NOAA has determined the probable location of the remains of the Civil War-era sidewheel steamer Planter, which gained national fame in 1862 when a group of enslaved African Americans commandeered the Confederate Navy transport ship in a daring escape to freedom. The announcement was made in Charleston, South Carolina, where NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries released a report on its search for the Planter and plans for an interpretative sign and future exhibit dedicated to the Planter’s legacy. The effort to find the Planter supports NOAA’s Voyage to Discovery initiative, which seeks to highlight African-American maritime history through education, archaeology, science and underwater exploration.Under the leadership of Robert Smalls, the ship’s steersman, crew members navigated the steamer out of Charleston Harbor on May 12, 1862, and delivered the vessel to the United States Navy. The New York Herald called the escape “one of the most daring and heroic adventures since the war was commenced.”

The notoriety generated by the escape and capture of the Planter led to Smalls eventually becoming the first African-American master in the U.S. Navy and a member of Congress representing South Carolina – the state where he was born a slave. NOAA’s report helps fill gaps in the largely untold story of Robert Smalls and the Planter, which wrecked on a beach in March 1876 while trying to tow a grounded schooner.
In an attempt to answer lingering questions about the Planter’s fate, NOAA researchers reviewed historical documents and analyzed oceanographic and meteorological conditions that may have existed at the time of the Planter’s loss. The likely site where the vessel came to rest, off Cape Romain between Charleston and Georgetown, South Carolina, was confirmed with magnetometer and hydro-probing surveys that detected the presence of large concentrations of iron consistent with the remains of a sunken ship. The vessel’s remains are buried under 10-15 feet of sand and water in an environmentally sensitive area.

“Our interest in finding the Planter is about more than just unlocking the past and secrets of the deep,” said Daniel J. Basta, NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries director. “This expedition is an opportunity to highlight African-American contributions to the country’s maritime heritage and inspire young people to consider careers in marine science to help expand the boundaries of ocean exploration.”

Following Smalls’ commandeering of the Planter on May 12, 1862, the ship continued to be used by the U.S. Navy as a dispatch and supply vessel with Smalls as pilot. However, by September of that year, the Navy transferred the craft to the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps, where it supported Army operations around Charleston, Port Royal and Beaufort.

News accounts suggest that after the war, Smalls and the Planter were well known among local African Americans. As the Planter’s captain, he transported many freed slaves to newly created farmsteads and communities at Hilton Head and Port Royal. With Smalls at the helm, the Planter was reported as the ship that carried black dignitaries and passengers to the ceremony of the symbolic raising of the Fort Sumter flag which had been lowered after the fort’s capture by the Confederates.

On March 25, 1876, while trying to tow a grounded schooner, Planter sprang a plank in the bow and began to take on water in the hold. The captain elected to beach the steamer and repair the plank, hoping to get off the beach with the next high tide. However, stormy seas battered the Planter as the tide rose and the ship was too badly damaged and had to be abandoned. Upon hearing of its loss, Robert Smalls was reported to have said that he felt as if he had lost a member of his family. 

A copy of the report and media images will be available for download at:http://www.voyagetodiscovery.org/planter.htm.

On Saturday, May 10, 2014, at 2 p.m. local time (10 p.m. Friday EDT), the hybrid remotely operated vehicle Nereus was confirmed lost at 9,990 meters (6.2 miles) depth in the Kermadec Trench northeast of New Zealand. The unmanned vehicle was working as part of a mission to explore the ocean’s hadal region from 6,000 to nearly 11,000 meters deep. Scientists say a portion of it likely imploded under pressure as great as 16,000 pounds per square inch.

Nereus was built in 2008 by the Deep Submergence Lab at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) with primary funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to descend to the deepest parts of the ocean and to operate either autonomously or to be controlled remotely from the surface. WHOI engineers incorporated a number of novel technologies into its design for use in remote operations, including an optical fiber tether for use in remote operations, ceramic flotation, and lithium-ion batteries. Its mission was to undertake high-risk, high-reward research in the deepest, high-pressure parts of Earth’s ocean. At the time it was lost, it was 30 days into a 40-day expedition on board the research vesselThomas G. Thompson to carry out the first-ever, systematic study of a deep-ocean trench as part of the NSF-sponsored Hadal Ecosystems Study (HADES) project under chief scientist Timothy Shank, a WHOI biologist who also helped conceive the vehicle.

“Nereus helped us explore places we’ve never seen before and ask questions we never thought to ask,” said Shank. “It was a one-of-a-kind vehicle that even during its brief life, brought us amazing insights into the unexplored deep ocean, addressing some of the most fundamental scientific problems of our time about life on Earth.”

Researchers on the Thompson lost contact with the vehicle seven hours into a planned nine-hour dive at the deepest extent of the trench. When standard emergency recovery protocols were unsuccessful, the team initiated a search near the dive site. The team onboard spotted pieces of debris floating on the sea surface that were later identified as coming fromNereus, indicating a catastrophic implosion of the vehicle. The ship’s crew is recovering the debris to confirm its identity and in the hope that it may reveal more information about the nature of the failure.

In addition to the Kermadec Trench, Nereus had successfully traveled to Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench—the deepest point in the ocean—and explored the world’s deepest known hydrothermal vents along the Cayman Rise in the Caribbean Sea. It had been scheduled to return to the Mariana Trench in November as part of the second HADES expedition. Already on the first HADES cruise, Nereus had brought back to the surface specimens of animals previously unknown to science and seafloor sediment destined to help reveal the physical, chemical, and biological processes that shape the deep-ocean ecosystems in ocean trenches, which are unlike almost any others on the planet.

WHOI is a leader in the development of autonomous robotic vehicles for the exploration of the ocean, including the hybrid vehicle Nereus, which functioned as a remotely operated vehicle via an optical fiber tether and also as a free-swimming autonomous vehicle. It was one of only four submersibles in history to reach the deepest part of the ocean in the Marianas Trench.

“Extreme exploration of this kind is never without risk, and the unfortunate loss of Nereus only underscores the difficulty of working at such immense depths and pressures,” said WHOI Director of Research Larry Madin. “Fortunately there was no human injury as a consequence of this loss. WHOI scientists and engineers will continue to design, construct and operate even more advanced vehicles to explore and understand the most remote and extreme depths of our global ocean.”

In addition to NSF support, funding for Nereus also came from the Office of Naval Research, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Russell Family Foundation, and WHOI.

“We are grateful to our partners for helping build such a breakthrough technological innovation in deep-ocean exploration and to the many engineers, technicians, and scientists at WHOI and around the world who helped realize our vision of a full-ocean-depth research vehicle,” said WHOI President and Director Susan Avery. “Nereus may be gone, but the discoveries it enabled and the things it helped us learn will be an indelible part of its legacy.”

Maritime Maisie Safely
Offloads Cargo and Fuel Completing A Successful Salvage in the Port of Ulsan.

The managers of the Maritime Maisie (the “Vessel”), MSI Ship Management (“MSI”) are pleased to report the successful ship to ship transfer of all the chemical cargoes and fuel oils from the Maritime Maisie.  This completes the safe salvage of the vessel.  The managers are most appreciative of the support from the Government of Korea and the Port of Ulsan whose agreement to provide a Place of Refuge for the final safe salvage of the vessel, enabled the final safe resolution.That decision, made possible a safe conclusion to a tense and complicated 106 days and was welcomed by owners and managers who deeply appreciate the hard work, careful analysis and important safety considerations that went into the decision by the Korea Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries (KMOF), Ulsan Regional Maritime Affairs & Port Administration and Ulsan Port Authority with the ongoing assistance of Hong Kong Marine Department. 

The owners and managers would also like to extend their heartfelt gratitude to the many professionals at sea and ashore who for more than three months have worked tirelessly to see the vessel safely to this point, with a special note of thanks to the Korean Coast Guard, who evacuated all the crew to safety on the first day of the incident.

Mr Li Kwok Hung, MD of MSI stated, “I would like to thank our people for working night and day on this for the past three months. list of domains . We had the great good fortune of working with and being assisted by salvage experts, the best Classification societies in LR, LR SERS and KR, firefighters, chemists, tug boat crews, insurance experts, Hong Kong Marine Department, structure experts, supportive clients – the list is extraordinary, global and indicative of what a campaign like this requires of a twenty first century ship manager and owner when faced with such a challenge.  Our thanks to them all.”

Tai Sook Yee, Group MD of IMC reflected, “it has been a true team effort battling through enormous physical, operational, international regulatory and technical hurdles to reach this momentous moment. More than three months of committed hard work by hundreds of talented men and women literally around the world has made this happen.  We would like to thank the ship managers, MSI and especially the people and professionals, industry trade associations and government officials in Korea, Hong Kong and elsewhere.”

Fred Tsao, Chairman of IMC stated, “this has been a harrowing and taxing challenge that our team, and the hundreds of professionals and government officials and industry trade associations who have assisted us, have turned in to a success. It is now to us to take this ordeal and turn the lessons learned, the efforts made into meaningful progress on the complexities of the Places of Refuge issue. We appreciate the deep care and thought brought to this resolution by Korea and promise to put all we have collectively learned to work for a safer future.”

The refloating of the Costa Concordia has been delayed from June until July 18-20, Costa Crociere representatives said Monday.

International salvage consortium, Titan Micoperi, is attaching sponsons (floats) to the recently righted carcass of the huge cruise liner that hit a rock on Tuscany’s Giglio Island in January 2012, sank and killed 32 people in Italy’s worst postwar maritime disaster.The sponsons must be filled with air to make the Concordia buoyant before it can be towed away for scrap in Italy, the Middle East or the Far East.

The salvage effort recently ran into trouble when one of the sponsons buckled after the giant ship was pulled upright, resulting in minor damage to an adjacent sponson – likely causing the month-long setback.

As of May 9^th, the ‘faulty’ sponson was transported to Genoa for repairs.

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