The company that operates oil and gas tanker “UBT Ocean” has not yet heard signs of life from his crew or hijackers.
continue reading "Ominous Silence"

A crewman injured on an Italian trawler 95 nautical miles south west of Malta was ferried to Malta by helicopter this morning after a tricky operation which at one time had to be cancelled because of poor weather conditions.
continue reading "Rescue Delay"

A British woman who has been kidnapped with her husband by Somali pirates is believed to be suffering from scabies.
continue reading "Bad To Worse"

The U.S. envoy to Tanzania urged African nations to prosecute Somali pirates apprehended in the Indian Ocean as a way of tackling the continent’s growing piracy problem.
continue reading "Prosecution Plea"

Cinemagoers will be familiar with the thrill of giant waves. But what most people do not know is that the film “The Poseidon Adventure” was based on an incident involving the Queen Mary in World War II.
continue reading "Walls Of Water"

A Russian captain of the Liberian-flagged Matterhorn ship prosecuted for deliberate pollution of the waters, was sentenced to a 1-m-euro fine by the correctional court of Brest.
continue reading "Dirty Money"

A foreign tanker has been impounded at the Dar es Salaam port after unloading 14.1million litres of contaminated oil valued at $3,200,302 (Sh4.16billion). The Citizen has established that Mt Priya was about to depart when officials from the Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS), the Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA), the police and the High Court stormed the vessel, ordering the crew not to sail.
continue reading "Ship Of Fuels"

Raising concerns over the safety of vessels operating in Indian waters, a Maltese merchant vessel – MV Melina I – reportedly came under pirate attack about 200 nautical miles west off Lakshadweep Islands on Saturday.
continue reading "Indian Pirates"

Another delay has hit the stranded Swansea-Cork ferry. Sailings scheduled for Friday, Saturday and Sunday have been cancelled, and the ship, MV Julia, remains berthed in Swansea.
continue reading "Ferry Delays"

Indonesian authorities have not found a link between several suspected militants arrested recently in Aceh and a threat to tankers in the nearby Malacca Strait, a government minister and police said Friday.
continue reading "Terror Arrests"

Somali pirates who hijacked the Saudi ship Al-Nisr Al-Saudi on Monday have said they will not harm the vessel’s crew, a Sri Lankan diplomat told Arab News on Friday.
continue reading "Crew Safe"

An eventful summer in the Southern Ocean has drawn to a close for anti-whaling protesters from the Sea Shepherd Society.
continue reading "Season Ends"

Pirates have hijacked a Norwegian oil tanker off the coast of Madagascar and are currently taking the ship towards the Somali coast, said maritime officials and the ship’s owners on Friday.
continue reading "Tanker Taken"

More than 275,000 people and leading scientific and conservation organisations from the UK and around the world have called on the UK government to establish a protected area in the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), which is comprised of the Chagos Islands and its surrounding waters.

If established, the Chagos Protected Area would be the largest marine reserve in the world and play a vital role in fulfilling the UK’s global international conservation commitments.

Rich marine biodiversity The support for a marine reserve comes as the UK government closes its three-month public consultation period today [Friday 5 March 2010] on future management of the Chagos Islands. The government will now consider the creation of a Chagos Protected Area, a designation that would safeguard the rich marine biodiversity of the islands and their surrounding waters by prohibiting extractive activities, such as fishing.

A final decision is expected sometime this spring. “The world’s oceans are under increasing stress from overfishing, climate change, and pollution.” “Britain has an historic opportunity to protect this very special and rare place, which is comparable in importance to the Galapagos Islands or the Great Barrier Reef,” said William Marsden, chairman of the Chagos Conservation Trust and a member of the Chagos Environment Network (CEN).

“The public and the scientific community have spoken, and now it is up to the government to secure the UK’s ocean legacy.”

The CEN is a collaboration of leading conservation and scientific organisations seeking to protect the rich biodiversity of the Chagos Islands and its surrounding waters, including The Chagos Conservation Trust, The Linnean Society of London, The Marine Conservation Society, the Pew Environment Group, The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, The Zoological Society of London, and Professor Charles Sheppard of the University of Warwick.

The Chagos form an archipelago comprising 55 islands spread over 210,000 square miles – an area twice the size of the UK’s land surface.

Due to their remoteness, the islands have some of the cleanest seas in the world and contain as much as half of the Indian Ocean’s remaining healthy coral reefs, making it one of the most ecologically sound reef systems on the planet.

“The world’s oceans are under increasing stress from overfishing, climate change, and pollution. Few areas around the world still exist that are largely unspoiled, and the waters around the Chagos Islands are one of them,” said Alistair Gammell with the Pew Environment Group, a member of the CEN. “A decision to designate this area as a highly protected marine reserve would make the UK a global leader in ocean protection.”

Swarms of Somali pirates are moving into the waters off East Africa, triggering four shootouts Friday including a skirmish with French military personnel that sunk a pirate skiff, officials said.
continue reading "Pirate Swarms"