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Countries belonging to the United Nations’s shipping agency reached an agreement Friday to reach net zero emissions from shipping by midcentury. In the announcement, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) said the deal will set a target of net zero by 2050 from shipping among its 175 countries, “taking into account different international circumstances.” Maritime shipping comprises about 3 percent of global carbon emissions. The agreement is “not the end goal, [but] it is in many ways a starting point for the work that needs to intensify even more over the years and decades ahead of us,” IMO Secretary-General Kitack Lim...

A Japan Coast Guard vessel is reportedly taking on water and leaking oil after grounding in rough weather while on a routine patrol on January 18. The vessel is stranded and awaiting a salvage crew but in no danger of sinking. The 3,100 gross ton Echigo, built by Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding and commissioned in 1990, was operating in central Japan on Wednesday morning. Strong winds of 25 mph were blowing with heavy surf when the vessel approached a lighthouse near Kashiwazaki along the Sea of Japan. (...)

Prime Minister Yair Lapid spoke a short while ago today (Tuesday, 11 October 2022), with the President of the United States, Joseph R. Biden, Jr. President Biden began by congratulating Prime Minister Lapid on the historic agreement with Lebanon on a maritime boundary, after a decade of attempts. President Biden told Prime Minister Lapid: “You are making history.” .....

A federal judge in Los Angeles on Friday dismissed the criminal indictment against a dive boat captain charged with manslaughter in the deaths of 34 people when the vessel caught fire and sank off the California coast three years ago. The 75-foot (23-meter) Conception caught fire while most of those onboard were sleeping, killing 33 passengers and a crew member. It is considered one of California’s worst maritime disasters. U.S. District Judge George Wu said in a ruling that the indictment, handed down on December 2020 against captain Jerry Nehl Boylan by a federal grand jury, must be thrown out...

Federal investigators on Thursday released a preliminary report on the Conception boat that killed nearly three-dozen people earlier this month off the coast of California, and said the entire crew was asleep when the blaze began. National Transportation Safety Board officials have said the full investigation could take more than a year, and preliminary findings highlight remaining questions as much as they provide answers as to how the tragedy happened. “A crew member sleeping in the wheelhouse berths was awakened by a noise and got up to investigate,” the report said. “As crew members awoke, the captain radioed a distress...

Boats like the Conception, which caught fire around 3 a.m. on Sept. 2 and sank, are required to have a crewmember keep watch at night. The National Transportation Safety Board has been investigating the tragedy and released a two-page preliminary report that said five crew members were sleeping in their quarters behind the wheelhouse on the second deck and another below deck when the fire broke out. The report comes as investigators seek to determine the cause and try to recover the wreckage of the Conception from the bottom of the sea amid an ongoing criminal probe conducted by the...

Surviving crew were driven back by the fire off the coast of Southern CaliforniaThey are said to have told investigators in 'very lengthy, detailed, comprehensive interviews' the harrowing story of the moments after the fire erupted MondayJumping from the ship's bridge to its main deck, they tried to get into the galleyWith the galley's doors on fire, they tried to get through windows but could not'At that point, due to heat, flames and smoke, the crew had to jump', officials sayTwo retrieved a skiff to see if they could rescue any survivors. None were foundThe only crew member to...

LOS ANGELES — One of the crew members aboard the dive boat Conception hadn’t been asleep long when a noise jolted him awake. He swung open the door of the wheelhouse — the top level of the 75-foot boat, located just above the galley — and was greeted by flames. As the fire raged in the predawn hours of Labor Day, the vessel’s captain made a frantic mayday call to the Coast Guard. Then he and four crew members jumped from the wheelhouse and climbed into a dinghy to get help from the Grape Escape, a fishing boat anchored nearby...

The Port of Los Angeles has announced plans to begin charging ocean carriers a dwell fee for empty containers lingering in marine terminals to combat congestion, adding pressure for carriers to pick up empties for transport back to Asia. The fee will be similar to the import container dwell fee announced in late October, which has yet to be implemented. The new empty fee is still subject to approval by the Los Angeles Harbor Commission and would take effect on January 30, 2022, at the discretion of the Executive Director.

The FAA is headed by a pilot, NASA is headed by an astronaut, the US Marine Corps is headed by a Marine but for the fourth time in a row, and during the worst shipping crisis of the century, the US Department of Transportation, has appointed someone to the US Maritime Administration (MARAD) who is not a captain and has no commercial shipping experience. Yesterday afternoon, President Biden announced his intention to nominate Rear Admiral Ann Phillips, US Navy (Retired), as the next US Maritime Administrator, a position that has been vacant since Rear Admiral Mark Buzby stepped down following...

The UK has ordered ships to exercise extreme caution in Persian Gulf waters off UAE’s coast as an unknown incident is unfolding, though few details have initially been given. A non-piracy incident is currently underway east of Fujairah, with “investigations ongoing,” an urgent alert from the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) indicates. “The warning notice, based on a third party source, advised vessels in the area to exercise extreme caution,” Reuters writes of the developing notification. Warning 001/Aug/2021 Category: Incident – Non Piracy Description: An Incident is currently underway in position 2459.5N 05728.6E (Approx. 61 NM East of Fujairah)...

The National Maritime Museum is supporting seafarers who have been impacted by the pandemic through partnerships with two leading maritime welfare organisations, the ITF Seafarers’ Trust and The Mission to Seafarers, to record oral histories of seafarers who have been unable to dock in ports across the globe because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and with Ince as a founding partner of a charity single, to be released in June. The plight of seafarers has recently been addressed in the Neptune Declaration. Over 700 organisations have signed the declaration, calling for an international commitment to resolving the crew change crisis as...

Some new drone footage shot as the ONE Apus was arriving in Japan last week gives us the first aerial view of the extent of damage on the deck of the ship after its historic cargo loss in the Pacific Ocean. The video was commissioned by W K Webster & Co., a leading global marine and transit claims consultancy. The owners and managers of the containership estimate that 1,816 containers were lost overboard when the ONE Apus encountered severe weather as it sailed towards Long Beach, California on November 30. The number of containers damaged but remaining on deck is...

By Captain George Livingstone – As we witness the COVID-19 crisis spread around the world it seems this big problem could morph and spread into a myriad of problems with the end result being collectively bigger than the original. The crux of the matter being there no clear horizon looking forward. According to livescience.com, In the United States on 4/13/20 there were about 550,000 cases nationally of COVID-19. On 4/20/20 there were about 750,000, a national increase of nearly 30% in one week. At present 15 states are seeing a decline in cases while 35 states are still reporting increases....

By Gavin van Marle (The Loadstar) – Freight forwarders sending goods out of Europe to Asia face one of the tightest capacity crunches in living memory over the next few weeks. CMA CGM is set to blank 23 North Europe-Asia sailings from now until 2 June, after last week announcing three further deepsea sailings in the middle of this month had been cancelled, “due to recent demand slowdown in the context of the coronavirus situation”. This month alone, 15 eastbound sailings will not take place as scheduled, and the line said the cancellations were affecting its north-south services that relay...

Thousands Trapped In Italian Cruise Ship Over Feared Coronavirus Cases The outbreak of coronavirus has caused global alarm. Civitavecchia, Italy: Over 6,000 tourists were blocked on a cruise ship in Italy on Thursday after the vast liner was placed on lockdown over two suspected cases of the deadly coronavirus. Samples from a Chinese couple were sent for testing after three doctors and a nurse boarded the Costa Crociere ship in the port of Civitavecchia to tend to a woman running a fever, the local health authorities said. Costa Crociere confirmed the ship, carrying some 7,000 people including the crew, was...

Preface On October 11, 2019, an explosion rocked passenger ferry Ytterøyningen while dockside at Sydnes, Norway. The vessel, recently refit with a lithium-ion battery hybrid drive, is part of the new fleet of low and zero emission vessels being deployed across Norway and other parts of the world. The vessel was at dock having been pulled from service the night before due to a fire in the lithium propulsion batteries; a condition known as thermal runaway. The root cause of the fire is still to be announced, but the secondary explosion caused significant structural damage to the vessel; likely a...

Multiple barges have hit the I-10 bridge over the San Jacinto River, shutting down the freeway in both directions. Around 11:50 p.m., officials received a report that nine barges had broken away from their moorings at the Southwest Shipyard because the water was so rough. At least two of those hit the bridge. TxDOT has been unable to inspect the bridge because the water was too high after remnants of Tropical Storm Imelda left large swaths of southeast Texas, including Houston, flooded. The barges are stacked up, and there is possible structural damage. The freeway is shut down eastbound at...

The Israeli Broadcasting Corporation is reporting another ship has been seized in the gulf. Correspondent Amochai Stein said on Twitter: “Iran has seized another oil vessel in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran's Revolutionary Guard arrests a vessel and 11 crew on 'diesel smuggling charges'."

WASHINGTON — U.S. warships and aircraft sank or heavily damaged six Iranian navy ships Monday as a major confrontation erupted in the Persian Gulf in the wake of the United States’ early morning strike against two Iranian oil platforms, the Reagan Administration said. U.S. and Iranian forces fired on each other in the broadest and most direct conflict yet, suddenly escalating what for months had been a war of nerves in the volatile waterway.