Satellite Data News

The 25 crew members of the MSC Aries, which was seized by Iran on April 13, are safe, shipping firm MSC said on Wednesday, adding that discussions with Iranian authorities are in progress to secure their earliest release."We are also working with the Iranian authorities to have the cargo discharged," the Swiss headquartered company said in a statement.Iran's Revolutionary Guards seized the container vessel in the Strait of Hormuz days after Tehran vowed to retaliate for a suspected Israeli strike on its consulate in Damascus on April 1.

Saab and GMV are collaborating in ASGARD, an EU-funded project that aims to improve maritime security when using GNSS and OSNMA. The project addresses the growing threat of GNSS spoofing and other cyberattacks on navigation systems used in the maritime industry.The ASGARD project, run by Saab and GMV, is an ambitious European Union (EU) initiative that aims to develop advanced technologies to improve Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and Open Service Navigation Message Authentication (OSNMA) security in maritime environments.

The International Maritime Organization's Council (IMO) has elected Arsenio Antonio Dominguez Velasco from Panama as its secretary-general, the UN shipping agency said on Tuesday.Dominguez beat six other contenders from China, Turkey, Kenya, Finland, Dominica and Bangladesh in a vote and will take office on January 1, 2024, for a four-year term, subject to the approval of the IMO Assembly.Dominguez will take the helm at a crucial time as the shipping industry grapples with challenges including pressures to speed up decarbonization.A trained naval architect…

The Arctic Ocean could be ice-free in summer by the 2030s, even if we do a good job of reducing emissions between now and then. That’s the worrying conclusion of a new study in Nature Communications.Predictions of an ice-free Arctic Ocean have a long and complicated history, and the 2030s is sooner than most scientists had thought possible (though it is later than some had wrongly forecast). What we know for sure is the disappearance of sea ice at the top of the world would not only be an emblematic sign of climate breakdown…

Sofar Ocean is on a quest to extract and put to use data from the world’s waterways. Co-Founder and CEO Tim Janssen discusses how his team’s hyper-focus on data is helping to improve weather routing via Wayfinder.Tim Janssen and his Sofar Ocean team continue their ‘Epic Ocean Data Quest,’ remaining laser focused on doing its part to help extract and put to use increasing quantities of information from the world’s oceans. For its part, Sofar continues to build scalable networks to gather information premised on its Sofar Spotter buoy.

An oil tanker runs aground off eastern China, leaking fuel into the water. Another is caught in a collision near Cuba. A third is seized in Spain for drifting out of control.These vessels were part of a "shadow" fleet of tankers carrying oil last year from countries hit by Western sanctions, according to a Reuters analysis of ship tracking and accident data and interviews with more than a dozen industry specialists.Hundreds of extra ships have joined this opaque parallel trade…

Iranian oil exports hit new highs in the last two months of 2022 and are making a strong start to 2023 despite U.S. sanctions, according to companies that track the flows, on higher shipments to China and Venezuela.Tehran's oil exports have been limited since former U.S. President Donald Trump in 2018 exited a 2015 nuclear accord and reimposed sanctions aimed at curbing oil exports and the associated revenue to Iran's government.Exports have risen during the term of his successor President Joe Biden, who had sought to revive the nuclear deal, and hit the highest since 2019 on some estimates.

The first ship to depart Ukraine under a deal to resume grain exports from the country two weeks ago docked in the Syrian port city of Tartous on Tuesday, according to a shipping source and satellite data.The Sierra Leone-flagged Razoni set sail from Ukraine's Odesa port on Aug. 1 under a hard-won grain deal but did not unload in Lebanon as planned. Its location had not been clear in recent days as it has kept its transponder off.Satellite imagery from Planet Labs PBC showed it at the Tartous port on Tuesday morning.

A U.S.-sanctioned Venezuela-owned supertanker that had mechanical problems since January is transferring its 2-million-barrel cargo of heavy crude to other vessels in Asia, according to three people familiar with the matter.The very large crude carrier (VLCC) Maximo Gorki left Venezuela in November amid an export push designed to generate funds for cash-strapped state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), which has been under U.S. trading sanctions since 2019.Aging infrastructure problems, including a lack of oil storage and vessels, frequent refinery outages and export port congestion, are undermining PDVSA's increased oil production, impeding efforts to boost revenue, according to company documents and sources.

Weathernews Inc. Global Ice Center announced its review of Arctic Ocean sea ice conditions during 2021. Due to the cool summer temperatures in July 2021, sea ice did not see much melt and the minimum sea ice area for the year was the largest in the past seven years at 4.61 million km2.Weathernews Inc. Global Ice Center said Monday that both the Northeast (Russian side) and the Northwest (Canadian side) Passages of the Northern Sea Route remained closed. This is the first time in 12 years since 2009 that the Northeast Passage did not open.

The research vessel Sikuliaq navigated among and around the chunks and slabs of Arctic sea ice above Alaska for several weeks on two voyages this fall, breaking through frozen slabs when it had to, just as its sturdy hull is designed to do. It's now on a third trip.The Sikuliaq, a 261-ft. ice-capable research vessel operated by UAF, pauses in the Arctic Ocean in June 2021 during its fifth year of operation. A few months later, it traveled farther north than ever before — almost 500 miles beyond Point Barrow.Satellite imagery produced at the Geographic Information Network of Alaska…

Ships in Chinese waters are disappearing from tracking systems following the introduction of a new data law in China, frustrating efforts to ease bottlenecks that are snarling the global economy, according to three shipping sources directly impacted.China's Personal Information Protection Law, which came into effect on Nov. 1, has added to a raft of new rules designed to increase government control over how domestic and foreign organizations collect and export China's data.Although…

Fifteen companies from 11 countries were selected by a panel of industry experts, investors and entrepreneurs for the 6th PortXL acceleration program in Rotterdam. Starting in September, they will spend three months in Rotterdam. The PortXL team and its large network of expert mentors and partners will support them in validating their technologies and scaling their businesses. The program will end on December 2, when the signed contracts between innovators and corporate partners, such as Port of Rotterdam and Van Oord, will be announced at the Shakedown event.

Satellite data company Spire Global Inc said on Monday it has agreed to go public through a merger with blank-check acquisition firm NavSight Holdings Inc at a $1.6 billion valuation.It is the latest example of a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merging with a company in the space industry, following deals for the likes of space tourism company Virgin Galactic and rocket startup Astra.Spire said it expects the deal will provide it with up to $475 million in proceeds.

The U.S. Navy uses unmanned and robotic underwater vehicles for a multitude of functions, including environmental sensing, mine hunting, and salvage. The Navy plans to evolve an unmanned systems operating concept that is platform agnostic and capable of operating in highly complex contested environments with minimal operator interaction.The most recent edition of the Navy’s Unmanned Systems (UxS) Roadmap was issued in 2018, and a new version is expected in the near future. The 2018 document states that UxS will operate in every domain…

Fishing vessels with crews of forced laborers behave in systematically different ways to the rest of the global fleet, according to a study purporting to be the first to remotely identify vessels potentially engaged in modern slavery.Using satellite data, machine learning and on-the-ground expertise from human rights practitioners, U.S. researchers found up to 26% of about 16,000 industrial fishing vessels analyzed were at high risk of using forced labor.As many as 100,000 people are estimated to work on these high-risk vessels, many of whom are potential victims of forced labor.

End-users trialing the VoyOpt voyage optimization service say it beats the competition in terms of the number of data sources it aggregates, ease of use and bottom-line benefits.Fuel consumption is the leading cost driver in shipping and remains the top fiscal concern of shipowners amid uncertainty surrounding bunker costs and availability. “Managing fuel consumption effectively means owners need increasingly to adopt new performance tools that leverage cutting-edge technology, including artificial intelligence.

The Bering Sea ice cover during the winters of 2018 and 2019 hit new lows not seen in thousands of years, scientists reported on Wednesday, adding to concerns about the accelerating impact of climate change in the Arctic.Satellite data provides a clear picture of how sea ice has changed over the last four decades in the region between the Arctic and northern Pacific oceans. Beyond that, the only ice records available were those recorded in ship logs and other observations.So scientists turned to peat land, which holds organic compounds from plants dating back millennia, on the remote St.

The ongoing oil pollution incident from the grounded 203,000 DWT bulk carrier MV Wakashio is threatening an ecological catastrophe around the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, endangering corals, fish and other marine life already under threat from climate change (IPCC 2018).In addition, it risks bringing devastating consequences for the economy, food security, health and tourism industry. Tourism in Mauritius - a popular destination for its pristine beaches - reportedly contributed about $1.6 billion to its economy during the last year…

New research led by the National Oceanography Center (NOC) has discovered how fast-moving waterfalls under the sea control the shape and behavior of submarine channels. These underwater channels are the offshore equivalents of rivers, but can be much larger. Submarine channels can extend for tens to thousands of kilometers offshore, providing an important conduit for the transfer of sediment, nutrients and pollutants, such as microplastics, to the deep-sea. Avalanches of sediment…

MarineTraffic is partnering with exactEarth to deliver additional real-time information to its users.The additional satellite data compliments the MarineTraffic coastal receiver network: the world's largest and most extensive system consisting of 3,500 points of presence allowing for real-time vessel tracking data of most of the global shipping fleet.  The addition of exactEarth data to the existing satellite dataset on MarineTraffic will particularly enhance the visibility of vessels in both the Gulf of Mexico and the South China Sea.

Finnish startup ICEYE launched its global Dark Vessel Detection solution to help governmental maritime security customers monitor their waters for illegal vessel activity.The high-tech solution, which combines synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) satellite data from ICEYE and automatic identification system (AIS) data from vessels, is used as a source of actionable information for governments monitoring their Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ), day and night, and even through cloud cover.“Dark…

The Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation has released their findings from the largest coral reef survey and mapping expedition ever conducted in French Polynesia.The Global Reef Expedition: French Polynesia Final Report provides a comprehensive summary of the research findings from the expedition, an assessment of the health and resiliency of French Polynesia’s coral reefs, and recommendations for preserving French Polynesia’s coral reefs into the future.The Foundation embarked on the Global Reef Expedition to understand the coral reef crisis on a global scale. As part of the Expedition, an international team of 73 scientists worked side by side with local experts to gain a thorough census of reef health throughout French Polynesia.Over the course of seven months…