Travel Routes News

Danelec Marine A/S signed an agreement to acquire KYMA A.S., the Norway-based specialist in digital ship performance monitoring. The combined company will be a sizeable data collection solutions provider to the maritime industry with more than 10,000 ships using its solutions globally to optimize travel routes and vessel performance, as well as reducing CO2 emissions. The company’s SaaS platform allows for automatic and digitalized data collection.

Iran and Qatar have launched a new direct shipping route, connecting the southern Iranian port city of Bushehr to Qatar's Doha.The cargo and passenger shipping line is using a roro/passenger ship called Grand Ferry.Bushehr Maritime Director General Siavash Arjmandzadeh stated: "The first Iran-Qatar permanent shipping line was inaugurated this week and the ship is scheduled to depart Bushehr once a week for Doha, Qatar. The ship could carry the cargo and passengers at the same time."He continued that the first voyage was supposed to happen on August 2nd, but there were problems with fueling the ship, and moreover, we wanted to have cargo…

IMO’s 2050 deadline to reduce GHG emissions 50% from 2008 levels has set off a gold rush to develop Zero Emissions SolutionsClimate change is the biggest issue facing [all aspects of] the maritime industry, said Kitak Lim, IMO secretary general, in an interview earlier this year with Maritime Reporter & Engineering News. He predicted that shipping could experience as much change in the next 10 to 20 years as it has in the last 100 years, as the industry races to meet a number of challenges…

A new WWF-Canada guide designed to help mariners in the eastern Arctic identify and avoid marine mammals is being unveiled at a Canadian Marine Advisory Council meeting in Montreal today. With summer sea ice on the decline and industrial pressures increasing, shipping traffic in the Canadian Arctic has steadily risen. This is especially true in the eastern Arctic and around the community of Pond Inlet and the Mary River iron ore mine. Ships servicing the Baffinland mining operation are increasing at a staggering pace…

German police arrested three men on Wednesday suspected of belonging to an organised criminal group that smuggles people from Africa to the European Union. Around 7,000 migrants, most from Africa, were rescued from boats in the Mediterranean last weekend and around 900 drowned last month on a boat heading to Italy - all victims of people-smuggling operations. Other migrants endure dangers of another kind, smuggled over land routes via the Balkans. Cologne police said they searched properties in the states of North-Rhine Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein in the early hours of Wednesday morning and detained one 22-year-old man and two other males aged 26.

Scientists have long known that leatherback sea turtles travel thousands of miles each year through open ocean to get from foraging habitats to nesting beaches and tropical wintering grounds, but how the wanderers find their way has been “an enduring mystery of animal behavior,” says marine biologist Kara Dodge. “Adult turtles can pinpoint specific nesting beaches even after being away many years,” she notes. Sea turtles’ ability to identify and maintain appropriate headings affect migration distance, duration and, for reproductively-active adults, breeding schedules, so understanding migratory orientation and potential cues is an important step toward understanding how sea turtles optimize travel routes and minimize energy costs of migration, Dodge adds.

Effective June 1, 2013, West Coast shipping lanes are being adjusted to protect endangered whales, & OceanGrafix's new charts incorporate those changes. OceanGrafix, the first and only company to offer NOAA print-on-demand nautical charts, today announced the availability of updated nautical charts that reflect imminent changes to shipping lanes. Effective June 1, 2013, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) is amending vessel traffic separation schemes in an effort to enhance navigational safety and to protect endangered whales. The IMO adjustments to shipping lanes, which are backed by National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) research…

Design Alaska, a Fairbanks-based architecture, engineering and surveying firm; and Art Anderson Associates, its naval architecture subconsultant, were recently awarded a contract for the Alaska Marine Highway System (AMHS) to investigate potential energy efficiency improvements. The contract, driven by new International Maritime Organization (IMO) regulations, requires development of Ship Energy Efficiency Management Plans (SEEMPs) for three AMHS vessels. The new IMO standards require vessels traveling internationally to obtain International Energy Efficiency Certificates (IEECs) demonstrating that vessel owners and operators have developed energy efficiency plans for their travel routes and vessel operating systems.

The Coast Guard is urging Virginia and Maryland users of White's Ferry in Montgomery County to seek alternate travel routes after the Ferry's Certificate of Inspection was revoked due to vessel safety concerns. The vessel will be closed to all passenger service pending a Coast Guard investigation.

Delays at locks along the Mississippi River were easing on June 1 as a glut of northbound barges that congested locks after the river reopened last week made their way upriver, river officials said. Locks 24 and 25 in Winfield and Clarksville, Mo., the last two and most southerly locks to be reopened last Wednesday after a month-long river closure, were initially hit with back-ups of as many as 30 barge tows and delays of close to 40 hours, officials said. On June 1, however, lock 25 had no tows backed up and lock 24 had only eight tows waiting to lock through. Lock 22 near Hannibal, Missouri, had 10 tows backed up on Friday afternoon, with a wait time of about 10 to 15 hours, but river officials were hopeful that the back-up would thin out to 2 to 5 tows by early next week.