Monterey News

The Maritime Risk Symposium is an annual three-day conference in which government and maritime industry leaders, port representatives, researchers, and solution providers convene to examine current and emerging threats to maritime security. MRS2024 is scheduled to take place June 11-13 2024 at Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey, CA.A look @ Panel 5: Facilitator: Eric “Coop” Cooper, CAPT, USCG (retired)This panel will inform participants and generate discussion to improve understanding of the risk of gray zone activities pose to the economy…

For 15 years the Maritime Risk Symposium (MRS), an annual three-day event, has brought together government and maritime industry leaders, port representatives, international and domestic researchers and solution providers to examine current and emerging threats to maritime security. World events highlight that maritime security is increasingly at risk during the current period of great-power competition and ongoing conflicts. The active competition between nations who are not…

The Unified Command concluded its response to an oil sheen observed offshore of Huntington Beach, California on Monday, but the source of the oil remains unclear.Over the weekend, cleanup crews recovered approximately 85 gallons of product from offshore recovery efforts and removed roughly 1,050 pounds of oily waste/sand and tar balls from the shoreline.The U.S. Coast Guard and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, Office of Spill Prevention and Response (CDFW-OSPR) collected samples from the offshore sheen and tar balls along the shoreline to help determine the source of the oil.

On a windswept island 50 miles north of Seattle sits a U.S. Navy monitoring station. For years, it was kept busy tracking whale movements and measuring rising sea temperatures. Last October, the Navy gave the unit a new name that better reflects its current mission: Theater Undersea Surveillance Command.The renaming of the spy station at the Whidbey Island naval base is a nod to a much larger U.S. military project, according to three people with direct knowledge of the plans:…

U.S.-based Pacific shipping company Matson announced it has adjusted its sailing routes to help reduce the risk of whale strikes off the coast of California.Shipping channels into and out of San Francisco Bay and the Los Angeles/Long Beach port complex transit federally protected national marine sanctuaries. These sanctuaries –Monterey Bay, Greater Farallones, and Cordell Bank national marine sanctuaries–are destination feeding areas for threatened and endangered humpback and blue whales from late spring through the fall.In 2015…

An emerging technology to fish for lobsters virtually ropeless to prevent whale entanglements is exciting conservationists, but getting a frigid reception from harvesters worried it will drive them out of business and upend their way of life.Injuries to endangered North Atlantic Right Whales ensnared in fishing gear have fueled a prominent campaign by environmental groups to pressure the industry to adopt on-demand equipment that only suspends ropes in the water briefly before traps are pulled from the water.The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch…

The Shipbuilders Council of America (SCA), the national association representing the U.S. shipbuilding, maintenance and repair industry, announced Frank Collins as Senior Defense Advisor, overseeing the organization’s national ship repair and security, as well as the industry workforce development and education initiatives.Frank Collins is an accomplished strategic business consultant with over 36 years of public and private sector experience in the ship repair industry. Collins served as Chief Executive Officer of United States Marine Preservation…

Greek tanker owner Performance Shipping announced on Monday it has taken delivery of a secondhand Aframax tanker it agreed to purchase in September 2022.The P. Monterey, formerly Phoenix Beacon, is a 105,525 dwt tanker built in 2011. It is equipped with a ballast water treatment system (BWTS), and its next scheduled special survey is not due until 2026.The vessel was acquired for a total purchase price of $35 million and partially financed through the recently announced term loan facility with Piraeus Bank S.A.Following the delivery, P. Monterey will commence a time charter contract with ST Shipping & Transport Pte Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Glencore, at a daily rate of $32,000 per day for a period of 24 months +/- 45 days at the option of the charterer.P.

The hull of MBARI’s new flagship research vessel has been floated out at Freire Shipyard in Spain.The new oceanographic vessel, David Packard, which entered the waters of the Vigo estuary for the first time last month, is scheduled for delivery in 2023 to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), a private, non-profit oceanographic research center in Moss Landing, Calif.“The RV David Packard will be the first state-of-the-art research vessel built not only in Spain…

MBARI revealed plans to grant its 25-year-old research vessel Western Flyer to the University of South Florida where the vessel will begin a new life as a sailing classroom for the university's Florida Institute of Oceanography (FIO).“We’re thrilled the Western Flyer will be sailing on to an exciting new chapter at the Florida Institute of Oceanography,” said MBARI President and CEO Chris Scholin. “The ocean plays a vital role in sustaining life on Earth. With the Western Flyer…

Tanker owner Performance Shipping announced on Friday that it has signed a deal to acquire a 105,525 dwt secondhand Aframax tanker from an undisclosed seller for $35 million.The vessel is the Phoenix Beacon, built in 2011 by Hyundai Heavy Industries in South Korea. The ship is fitted with a ballast water treatment system (BWTS), and its next scheduled special survey is in 2026.Performance Shipping said it expects to take delivery of the vessel by early December 2022. It will be renamed P. Monterey.Andreas Michalopoulos, Performance Shipping CEO, said, “The acquisition of our latest Aframax tanker, M/T P. Monterey, marks yet another important milestone for our company, as we have managed to grow our fleet from five to eight vessels in a short span of six months.

Naval and maritime experts will be convening in Helsinki, Finland, for the Littoral OpTech Baltic Sea workshop. The event will take place August 30 and 31 at the Finnish Naval Academy.The conference will examine the integration of multi-domain operations – to include air, land, surface, undersea, space and cyber—in the crowded and cluttered coastal waters and adjacent land, and will investigate the technology and operational concepts to successfully deal with conventional, irregular…

The Board of Pilot Commissioners for the Bays of San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun (BOPC) announced that its next Pilot Trainee Training Program Selection Examination will be held in June 2022 at the California State University Maritime Academy in Vallejo, Calif. Applications are due no later than April 15, 2022.The BOPC typically conducts maritime pilot trainee training program selection examinations every two to three years, or when there is a need for licensed pilots. The last examination was held in 2019.

To find the mine warfare challenge with the highest degree of difficulty, start at the bottom.Lurking unseen below the surface, naval mines pose a serious problem. They’re cheap, relatively easy to deploy and can inflict heavy damage against even the most sophisticated warships. They can be hard to detect and difficult to counter. What you can’t see can hurt you. And the most difficult mines to find and eliminate are bottom and buried mines. Navies have developed ships to hunt for mines in the water column so they can be avoided or destroyed…

U.S. 5th Fleet ships seized approximately 1,400 AK-47 assault rifles and 226,600 rounds of ammunition from a stateless fishing vessel during a flag verification boarding in accordance with customary international law in the North Arabian Sea, Dec. 20.U.S. Navy patrol coastal ships USS Tempest (PC 2) and USS Typhoon (PC 5) found the weapons during a search conducted by embarked U.S. Coast Guard personnel. The illicit weapons and ammunition were later transported to guided-missile…

MacGregor, part of Cargotec, said it has been taped to deliver a suite of overboard handling systems for the new oceanographic research vessel David Packard owned by Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), a private, nonprofit oceanographic research center based in California. Founded in 1987 by David Packard, MBARI’s mission is to advance marine science and technology to understand a changing ocean. The David Packard is designed by naval architecture firm Glosten, and is currently under construction at Freire Shipyard in Vigo…

A bulk carrier came to the rescue of seven people after their 85-foot commercial fishing boat caught fire Wednesday morning, approximately 350 miles west of Monterey, Calif.The U.S. Coast Guard said it coordinated the rescue after its Eleventh District command center received multiple emergency position-indicating radio beacon and personal location beacon alerts belonging to the fishing boat Blue Dragon around 12:20 a.m.The Coast Guard coordinated the launch of a Coast Guard Air Station Sacramento C-27 Spartan aircrew at 1:30 a.m.Using the Automated Mutual-Assistance Vessel Rescue System (AMVER), the Coast Guard issued a request for assistance…

Highlighted in Marine Technology Reporter's MTR100 is the work and technology ongoing in the halls of academia. The most recent report released by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change emphasized our warming planet, an expected announcement for many in the scientific community. Faced with the confirmation that human activities have caused an increase in global temperatures, research has turned to seeking answers in the planet’s natural systems. How does each part of the global carbon cycle work and how may it be impacted by the changing climate?

ABB said it will supply power integration technology to support operations on a new research vessel being built for the MBARI (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute) at Freire Shipyard in Vigo, Spain.Earlier this year, MBARI, located in Moss Landing, Calif., announced construction of a new state-of-the-art research vessel designed by Seattle-based Glosten and named in honor of its founder, David Packard. The 50-meter vessel is scheduled to be delivered in 2023.R/V David Packard will feature a wide scope of ABB’s electric…

The U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet said its guided-missile cruiser USS Monterey (CG 61) seized an illicit shipment of weapons from a stateless dhow in international waters of the North Arabian Sea on May 6-7.USS Monterey and its embarked U.S. Coast Guard Advanced Interdiction Team (AIT) discovered the illicit cargo during a routine flag verification boarding. The vessel was apparently sailing from Iran bound for Yemen to support the country’s Houthi rebels."The cache of weapons included dozens of advanced Russian-made anti-tank guided missiles…

A U.S. Coast Guard ship fired about 30 warning shots after 13 vessels from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) came close to it and other American Navy vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, the Pentagon said on Monday.This is the second time within the last month that U.S. military vessels have had to fire warning shots because of what they said was unsafe behavior by Iranian vessels in the region, after a relative lull in such interactions over the past year.Pentagon…

The Unified Command, consisting of the U.S. Coast Guard, the State of California, Resolve Marine and Witt O'Briens said Sunday it was coordinating the safe transit of a containership 80 miles southwest of Big Sur to the Port of Oakland, Calif. after the ship had reported an engine fire on Friday."The NYK Delphinus crew reported a continuous decrease in the temperature of the engine room’s surrounding bulkheads Sunday morning. No signs of smoke have been observed and all decks above the engine room are now accessible and have been fully ventilated…

The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) is embarking on a new chapter in its ocean research with the construction of a state-of-the-art ship, a vessel named in honor of MBARI’s founder, David Packard. The R/V David Packard will be capable of accommodating diverse expeditions in Monterey Bay and beyond to further the institute’s mission to explore and understand our changing ocean.It will measure 50 x 12.8 m with a 3.7 m draft, designed to  support a crew of 12, plus a science crew of 18.