Coastguards News

China and the Philippines have agreed to set up a direct communications channel between their foreign ministries on the South China Sea to handle disputes peacefully, they said on Thursday.Their agreement, which contained 14 elements aimed at cooling security tensions and boosting economic cooperation, comes as they strive to mend a relationship hurt after the Philippines won a 2016 arbitral ruling that invalidated China's expansive claims in the South China Sea.The Philippines…

New Zealand on Friday launched a review of its livestock exports by sea, after a ship that left its shores with nearly 6,000 cows and 43 crew members capsized off Japan last week.Gulf Livestock 1, which left Napier Port last month bound for China sank after Typhoon Maysak lashed the area with strong winds and heavy seas.Japan's coastguards have suspended search operations, after two crewmen were rescued while another died after being found unconscious.

Iran seized a United Arab Emirates-registered ship violating its territorial waters this week, Iran's Foreign Ministry said on Thursday, adding that UAE coastguards killed two Iranian fishermen on the same day.Tensions have risen between the two countries, which face each other across the Gulf, since last week's agreement between the Gulf state and Tehran's arch-foe Israel to normalize ties.Iranian state television quoted a ministry statement as saying that the Emirati ship was…

The U.K.'s Maritime and Coastguard Agency is investing over £170 million ($221.5 million) in a new radio network for Her Majesty’s Coastguard. The new network will be built and maintained by telent Technology Services Ltd. and is a significant investment in telecommunications infrastructure in rural areas.The existing network will be replaced with a modern and resilient fiber-based hybrid network, that will provide increased reliability, bandwidth and security.The new network will ensure HM Coastguard can continue to communicate with ships in U.K.

Turkey's coastguard said on Monday it had rescued 35 migrants and was searching for four more missing from a boat found half sunken in the Aegean Sea.The Turkish coastguard quoted the rescued migrants as saying that Greek coastguards had slashed their rubber dinghy, taken away their fuel containers and pushed them back towards Turkish waters. A Greek coastguard spokesman denied the allegations."The migrant boat never entered Greek territorial waters," the Greek spokesman told Reuters.

British coastguards rescued more than 120 migrants trying to cross the English Channel on seven small boats, French maritime authorities said on Friday.The rescue took place in the night from Thursday to Friday, a spokesman for the Maritime Prefecture for the Channel and North Sea said.Border and coastguards in Britain and France have intercepted numerous attempted crossings in recent months as migrants have repeatedly tried to travel from destinations in Asia and Africa to Britain.“It’s little wonder people living in France’s refugee camps are desperate to make this dangerous crossing, given the awful conditions they face there,” Clare Moseley…

Italian coastguards have seized two charity rescue boats at the port of Palermo citing "technical and operational" irregularities, which the owners called an excuse to hinder missions to save the lives of migrants at sea.The seizure of the German-flagged Alan Kurdi and Spanish-flagged Aita Mari this week followed a sharp rise in the number of migrants reaching Italy, which has angered and embarrassed the government as it battles the coronavirus epidemic.For years Italy was the primary route into Europe for hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers and other irregular migrants.

Russia on Friday accused Norway’s coastguards of detaining a Russian fishing trawler near a remote chain of islands in the Arctic earlier this month and said it had filed a protest to Oslo over the incident.The Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, about 850 km (500 miles) north of mainland Norway, is seen as a potential flashpoint between Moscow and the West as climate change has opened up the resource-rich region.Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday Russia was seriously concerned after a Russian fishing vessel named the Borey was detained on April 2, within Norway’s fish protection zone that Russia considers illegal.“We…

Boat-handling systems supplier Vestdavit announced the acquisition of Tritec Production. The acquisition covers a complete steel fabrication, engineering and construction facility in Redzikowo, Poland, from where Tritec has been supporting Vestdavit as its principal davit assembly partner for more than a decade.“With 65 dedicated employees specializing in steel-structure manufacturing, hydraulic and mechanical assembly, and the factory-acceptance testing required for davits from 1 to 16 tons, Tritec is a worthy addition to our enterprise,” says Vestdavit Managing Director Rolf Andreas Wigand.

French coastguards rescued 31 migrants trying to cross the English Channel overnight after the engine of one small boat cut out and the other dinghy began to take in water, local authorities in France said on Sunday.Border and coast guards in Britain and France have recently intercepted several attempted crossings, including on Dec. 26 when 49 suspected migrants were escorted to British shores after a rescue and search operation.In the early hours of Sunday, French coast guards picked up 11 migrants, including two young children, in one boat off the coast near the port city of Calais.Another 20, including a pregnant woman, were later rescued by the same patrol boat further along the French coast near Dunkirk, the local authorities said in a statement.

Southampton, UK-based hovercraft builder Griffon Hoverwork has won two new orders for its latest model the 995ED.The 995ED was launched at the Exponaval maritime exhibition in Chile in December 2018 following delivery of the first production craft to the Malaysian Government’s Marine Department which is being used for the maintenance of navigation marks and light houses. And now Griffon’s production line is busy building another 995ED for a private client for use in icy conditions.

The Governments of Peru and the United States signed an agreement to strengthen cooperation in maritime search and rescue (SAR) operations.Peruvian Foreign Minister Néstor Popolizio Bardales and U.S. Ambassador to Peru Krishna R. Urs signed the Agreement to strengthen cooperation in the field of maritime and aeronautical SAR and to enhance effectiveness in assisting persons in distress.The Agreement allows enhanced, formal cooperation between the U.S. Coast Guard and the Peruvian General Directorate of Captaincies and Coastguards and Peruvian Air Force during maritime distress cases in the eastern Pacific Ocean.This is the first binding SAR Agreement between the United States and a South American country.

Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said on Tuesday he would not let an Italian-flagged charity ship disembark 49 Africans rescued in the Mediterranean, setting up a fresh confrontation with humanitarian groups over migration.The Mare Jonio picked up the migrants, including 12 minors, on Monday after their rubber boat started to sink in the central Mediterranean, some 42 miles (68 km) off the coast of Libya.The vessel headed straight for the nearby Italian island of Lampedusa but was not granted permission to dock and is currently sailing close to land, awaiting further instructions.Salvini, who heads the anti-immigrant League party, has told non-governmental organisations that Italy's ports are closed to them…

Griffon Hoverwork will launch  its new 995ED model at  Exponaval in Valparaiso, Chile.“Griffon is hugely excited to unveil the highly innovative 995ED which is specially designed for search and rescue, coastguard and surveying work complementing Griffon’s range of marine grade aluminium hovercraft,” said sales and marketing director Nick MacLeod-Ash. “The 995ED, at eight meters (m) length and 30 knots speed at full ‘all up weight’, is the first hovercraft to achieve certification…

Wärtsilä has been selected to provide a full scope of marine simulators for a new training facility at Solent University’s Warsash School of Maritime Science and Engineering, located in Southampton, England.Scheduled to complete in spring 2019, it will be the largest marine simulation training center in the U.K. The contract with Wärtsilä, which was booked in September 2018, is linked to a five-year continuous service agreement.“The simulation center will be a central pillar of our maritime education…

Rescue ship Aquarius, which has picked up almost 3,000 migrants from the Mediterranean this year, will carry out rescue missions without waiting for orders from coastguards and will not return people to Libya, its search and rescue head said."When we see there is a vessel in distress, with a high likelihood of people dying, we will go and rescue them immediately as per international maritime law," Nick Romaniuk told Reuters on board the Aquarius.Over the last year coordination centres asking rescue vessels to go on standby or wait for clarification on certain things had added to the danger of people needing to be rescued, which is why they would no longer wait…

A Libyan coastguard commander sanctioned by the United Nations for alleged human trafficking and migrant smuggling said he hits migrants but does so for their own safety to prevent them from capsizing.Abdalrahman al-Milad, who heads a coastguard unit in Zawiya, just west of Tripoli, was one of six people sanctioned for involvement in people trafficking or smuggling in Libya on June 7, in the first move of its kind.The sanctions freeze bank accounts of those listed and ban them from travelling internationally…

The Danish Acquisition and Logistics Organization (DALO) announced the purchase of a major upgrade of BMT’s SARIS, the search and rescue planning tool that helps save lives, plan searches and minimize danger at sea. The upgrade will consist of a deployment of 20 licenses primarily to Denmark but also including Greenland and the Faroe Islands. A large part of the upgrade will include capacity for ongoing in-house training, with initial training being delivered by BMT. The SARIS technology is designed to help locate targets, whether it be people or objects, lost at sea.

Nigerian migrants who survived a deadly sea crossing last year filed a lawsuit against Italy for violating their rights by supporting Libya’s efforts to return them to North Africa, their lawyers said on Tuesday.Seventeen plaintiffs petitioned the European Court of Human Rights last week, Violeta Moreno-Lax, a legal advisor for the Global Legal Action Network, told reporters. She was among four lawyers and several humanitarian groups involved in the case.The migrants say Italy violated multiple articles of the European Convention on Human Rights…

After having been informed by the NGO Shipbreaking Platform and its member organisation Bellona that the Tide Carrier (now named HARRIER, aka EIDE CARRIER) had been sold for illegal, dirty and dangerous scrapping to a South Asian beaching facility, the Norwegian environmental authorities arrested the ship on Tuesday 5 April. The vessel is not allowed to leave Norway unless it is to sail to a ship recycling destination in line with international and European hazardous waste laws. According to the Norwegian Environment Agency, it is the first arrest of a vessel in Norway for the illegal export of hazardous waste. The Platform had been informed already during the summer of 2015 that the ship was sold for scrap.

Italian coastguards seized a migrant rescue boat operated by a German aid group in the Mediterranean due to suspicions it had aided illegal immigration, the police said on Wednesday. Video showed the "Iuventa", which is run by Jugend Rettet, arriving at the island of Lampedusa surrounded by several coastguard vessels after it was stopped at sea before dawn. The Jugend Rettet group said on Twitter its crew was being interviewed by officials, but had received no information about an investigation into its activities. "Our crew was guaranteed this is a standard process," said the group, which is one of around eight humanitarian organisations whose operations Italy is trying to regulate. It did not give any immediate comment on the police probe.

BMT Group Ltd. (BMT) is set to launch a number of innovative warship designs at DSEI event in London. BMT reports that its platform designs have enjoyed a number of successes this year, most notably seeing the HMS Queen Elizabeth carrier (QEC) head out of the Firth of Forth and undergo her maiden sea trials, as well as welcoming RFA Tidespring, the first MARS tanker to the U.K. BMT’s VENATOR-110 which combines lean, manned and adaptable capability with the affordable procurement cost and dimensions of a Light Frigate will also feature on the stand.

Having compiled a summary of its worldwide shipbuilding activities regarding Offshore Patrol Vessels (OPVs), Damen Shipyards Group, with five vessels delivered in the last year and 15 currently under construction, claims unrivalled experience in serving the naval industry with its OPV portfolio. In addition to its own builds, the company says it is just as capable of completing complex naval projects in cooperation with local shipyards as it is in constructing vessels at its own yards. “OPVs are playing an increasingly significant role in modern naval operations.