By Ander M. de Lecea - Research scientist Drs Ander de Lecea and Marina Costa of SAERI recently completed their first surveys of the Burdwood Bank, kicking off the “Fine Scaling of the Marine Management Areas of the Falkland Islands” (MMA) project.
Big OceanData has been awarded a contract to provide the Government of the Falkland Islands with its vessel monitoring system (VMS) capability for another five years. For the first time the system will include AIS data, which will be integrated with existing Inmarsat tracking data from the fishing vessels.
An energy-efficient squid fishing-vessel sponsored by Taiwan's Council of Agriculture (COA) is heading to the southwestern Atlantic Ocean, north of the Falkland Islands, on its maiden voyage, to begin a six-month testing phase and examine the efficacy of its arrays of light emitting diodes (LED) for catching squid.
At the slow-spreading mid-Atlantic ridge in the South Atlantic Ocean an iron cloud spreads for more than 1,000 kilometers across the Atlantic from west of Namibia, Africa, to northeast of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The iron-rich waters flow 1,500 to 3,500 meters beneath the surface of the ocean. The complete extent and shape of the iron plume remains to be discovered.
When in December 2012, the NOAA National Geophysical Data Center and the NASA Earth Observatory released a new map of the Earth as it appears at night they found something fishy off the coast of Argentina but now the mystery has been solved. About 300 to 500 kilometers offshore, a city of light appeared in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean. There are no human settlements there, nor fires or gas wells. But there are an awful lot of fishing boats.
By a vote of 38 in favour to 21 opposed, the South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary (SAWS) failed to meet the International Whaling Commission’s (IWC) required 3/4 majority to pass and be established.
Greenpeace and a vast coalition of environmental groups are calling on the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to establish a sanctuary in the South Atlantic Ocean that would protect Southern Hemisphere whales from commercial whaling for their entire lives.