hijacked off Seychelles in 2010 and is being used as a pirate mothership.
The Gulf of Guinea, off Africa's west coast, is the latest piracy hot spot. Hijacking product tankers off Nigeria must be profitable because three hijackings took place. First was the Energy Centurion, and about 3,000 tons of gas oil worth about US$ 3 million. The ship's equipment and crew valuables were stolen before the ship was released. Next was an unidentified Greek- operated oil tanker seized off Togo. Last was the Abu Dhabi Star, whose crew took to a citadel while radioing for help. The pirates fled when either the Nigerian or Togolese Navy intervened. All three hijackings may be the work of one sophisticated crime cartel, and hijacked cargoes are often unloaded to another tanker and sold on the region's illegal fuel market.
ODD BITS
On the Solent in England, the gravel carrying powered barge Goole Star spotted a man swimming without a lifejacket. He had fallen off his 26ft sailboat Rascal and it was sailing off on autopilot. Amazingly, the yachtsman felt well enough to get aboard his recovered yacht and four hours later sailed up alongside the barge and handed back the loaned clothes – plus a bottle of whisky! To dock the ever-larger container ships coming into service, some harbor tugs being built in the US will have massive bollard pulls of over 90 tons. In 1979, Falmouth Towage Company, a firm in the southwest of England, had five respectably competent tugs with a combined bollard pull of just 70 tonnes but ships were far smaller then. A new anti-fouling treatment being tested on the Dutch salvage
tug Willem-B Sr is a self-adhesive textured film, not a chemical that has to be re-applied periodically. The short fibers of the film provide a physical barrier to mussels, barnacles, and algae.
NATURE
Scientists have been exploring the use of species-specific robotic fish to lead fish away from oil spills and other aquatic dangers (or to fish traps?). To date, there has been some success traffic directing zebrafish and golden shiners. A Royal New Zealand Air Force plane spotted a massive floating raft of pumice about 250 by 30 miles in extent. Using satellite photos, scientists decided that the pumice probably came from the Havre Seamount and associated the eruption with a recent cluster of earthquakes in the Kermadec Islands about 1000 km north of New Zealand.
The Lower Mississippi River is feeling the results of a dry winter and record flooding. This year the river dropped more than 50 feet, to the point where the grounding of the Bootsie B and its tow of 28 barges closed the River for some time. About 60 percent of the nation's grain, 22 percent of its oil and gas, and 20 percent of the nation's coal goes down the river. However, the Upper Mississippi River is a series of pools behind dams and is less-affected. 100 miles of the Platte River in Nebraska dried up because of a massive, nearly nationwide drought. The Platte is not used by barges. Larger numbers of humpback whales stayed later in Western Antarctic waters than usual. Less ice? More krill? Nobody knows for sure.
The Manly ferry Collary struck an unknown object in spite of extra lookouts (it is the whale season in Sydney Harbour), and a propeller blade was bent. Soon after, a humpback and its calf left the harbour and were spotted heading north, both with nasty gashes in their topside blubber. No-one knows whether the two incidents are connected, the propeller showed no signs of blubber, and can cutting into the blubber of a whale or two bend a blade?
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