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A small but sturdy ocean-going vessel – the New Zealand National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research’s Kaharoa – will sail from Wellington on 3 October, carrying 64 ocean-profiling floats that are headed for remote locations in the Antarctic Ocean.
The floats will become part of Argo, an internationally funded global array of instruments that are placed in the world’s oceans at strategic points about every 300 kilometres to measure temperature, salinity and circulation in the upper 2,000 meters of the sea. This voyage, as were Kaharoa’s previous seven voyages, is a collaborative effort of the US and New Zealand Argo programs.
Steve Piotrowicz, an oceanographer in the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), told USINFO that Argo ‘is the most significant in situ ocean observing system to date, and probably the most significant one in the history of oceanographic research.’
Twenty-three countries and the European Union provide floats to the array, and many more countries contribute by helping deploy floats or devising new ways to use the Argo data, which is freely available to anyone from Argo’s Global Data Assembly centres in Brest, France, and Monterey, California.
Five institutions make up the US Argo program – the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California-San Diego, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the University of Washington, the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory and the NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory.
The US contribution is about half of the global array, funded mainly by NOAA. With the October 3 Kaharoa deployment, Argo will reach its intended size of 3,000 floats. The battery-powered Argo floats – about 130 centimetres long, plus a 70-centimetre antenna – do not just drift around the ocean: they drift under the ocean, gathering data that represent the oceans’ vital signs.
When a float first is placed in the sea, Dean Roemmich, professor of oceanography at Scripps in San Diego, told USINFO, it dives to 1,000 metres, then begins rising to the surface by pumping fluid into an external bladder, taking about 70 readings of temperature and salinity as it ascends over several hours.
When it reaches the surface, it transmits its first ‘profile’ to a satellite, along with engineering data that tells the researchers the instrument is working properly. It then descends to 2,000 metres, drifts for about nine days, and rises again to collect and transmit another profile.
A battery lasts four years or five years, and then the float blinks off, gone from the array. To sustain the array, 600 to 800 floats must be deployed around the world every year.
‘We first conceived of Argo almost exactly 10 years ago,’ said Roemmich, who helped design the program. ‘The first floats were deployed in 2000 after several years of planning and organization,’ and it has been a global array since 2004, when it had 1,500 floats.
Argo was conceived to monitor temperature, salinity and ocean circulation. Temperature is especially important, Roemmich said, ‘because the oceans are very critical in the heat balance of the planet. They’re the place where most of the heat gets stored, and they take up most of the planet. So there’s enormous interest in knowing how the heat content of the ocean is changing and what the patterns are globally of that change.’
Researchers use Argo for a range of applications, including measuring climate change, observing rain and snowfall patterns over the oceans and measuring the height of the ocean surface. But currently Argo is useful only to scientists. Thirteen operational weather and climate centres now use Argo data to understand better climate variations like El Niño and longer-term changes in the world’s oceans associated with global warming.
In the future, Argo data will be combined with satellite altimetry (measurements of sea surface height) to improve predictions of hurricane intensity. Technical improvements could give the floats a longer life span, and new sensors could be added to the floats to measure things like dissolved oxygen and biological activity.
‘There is huge interest in the climate problem and there will continue to be a strong need to monitor the oceans for their temperature and salinity, so the requirement for something like Argo goes on indefinitely,’ Roemmich said, ‘but I can’t tell you how the technology might change. Perhaps we’ll devise a better instrument to measure temperature and salinity – or maybe an instrument that comes back after we’re done with it.’
USINFO (USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, US Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov).
Printed from: http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display. html?p=washfile-english&y=2007&m=September&x= 20070928174048lcnirellep0.4933283
On Thursday, 20 September 2007, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) Tribunal released its ruling on the long-disputed maritime border between Guyana and Suriname. The Guyana-Suriname Basin, over which the two countries are fighting, is estimated to hold as much as 15 billion barrels of oil and gas reserves. The members of the Arbitral Tribunal included H.E. Judge L. Dolliver M. Nelson, President, Professor Thomas M. Franck, Dr Kamal Hossain, Professor Ivan Shearer, and Professor Hans Smit. The Tribunal’s decision came after many years of dispute between the two South American countries that escalated to Guyana bringing a formal complaint to the Tribunal on 24 February 2004.
Suriname claimed a maritime boundary that began on the Corentyne River’s west bank, which extends at N10°E, while Guyana claimed a maritime boundary that extended from N33°E.
(See the map of the disputed boundary here: http:// www.newsletterscience.com/marex/pdf/00000164.pdf.)
This dispute intensified in 2000 when Suriname sent gunboats to force a CGX Energy Inc, a Canadian company that had been granted a licence to build a drilling platform by Guyana, out of the area. After this incident, the two countries attempted to reach an agreement on their own regarding the maritime border, but when those attempts failed, Guyana lodged a formal complaint with the Tribunal in 2004. The Tribunal’s decision two weeks ago shows that CGX Energy had been in Guyana’s area.
The Tribunal chose to follow an ‘equidistant’ method in deciding the maritime border:
Where the coasts of two States are opposite or adjacent to each other, neither of the two States is entitled, failing agreement between them to the contrary, to extend its territorial sea beyond the median line every point of which is equidistant from the nearest points on the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial seas of each of the two States is measured. The above provision does not apply, however, where it is necessary by reason of historic title or other special circumstances to delimit the territorial seas of the two States in a way which is at variance therewith.
Suriname argued that
the equidistance method does not produce an equitable result when employed in these geographic circumstances
and its
preferred method was the bisection of the angle formed by the adjacent coastal fronts of Suriname and Guyana which extends from the coast at N17°E.
However, the Tribunal concluded that there were not
any relevant circumstances in the continental shelf or exclusive economic zone which would require an adjustment to the provisional equidistance line.
As stated by Foley Hoag, the law firm that represented Guyana in the dispute,
According to the terms of the tribunal’s ruling, Guyana gains sovereignty of some 12,837-square miles of the coastal waters; Suriname receives its own portion, of approximately 6,900 square miles.
(The new boundary can be seen on the map here: http://www.newsletterscience.com/marex/pdf/00000165.pdf.)
Both countries are pleased with the ruling. In a speech on September 20, the President of Guyana, Bharrat Jadgeo, stated,
The Award has taken Guyana’s major arguments fully into account, and now allows our licensees to resume their petroleum exploration activities in the part of the sea that Guyana has claimed, in accordance with international law. The great achievement of the Award is to open up before Guyana and Suriname the prospect of practical harmonious cooperation in their economic development and in their relations as good neighbors.
The entire text of the Tribunal’s ruling can be found here: http://www.pca-cpa.org/upload/files/Guyana-Suriname% 20Award.pdf
Maritime Executive
Thursday 27 September 2007 marked the 30th celebration of World Maritime Day, the annual occasion when the International Maritime Organization (IMO) leads the world in honouring shipping. This year the theme for World Maritime Day is IMO’s response to current environmental challenges.
Addressing the international maritime community in his World Maritime Day message, IMO Secretary-General Efthimios E. Mitropoulos said that ‘there is today, quite rightly, a growing concern for our environment and a genuine fear that, if we do not change our ways right now, the damage we will inflict on our planet will render it incapable of sustaining – for future generations – the economy we have grown accustomed to over the better part of the past two centuries.
‘The environmental credentials of every country and industry are now under sharper scrutiny than ever before. The pressure is mounting for every potential polluter, every user of energy and every conspicuous contributor to climate change and global warming to clean up their act and adopt greener practices.’
Mr Mitropoulos referred to shipping’s green credentials as a mode of transport, pointing out that ‘the vast quantity of grain required to make the world’s daily bread, for example, could not be transported any other way than by ship. Both the economic and environmental costs of using, say, airfreight, would be exorbitantly high. Moreover, set against land-based industry, shipping is a comparatively minor contributor, overall, to marine pollution from human activities.’
While there is no doubt that the shipping industry, and IMO, still have more to do in this respect, there is, nevertheless, an impressive track record of continued environmental awareness, concern, action, response and overall success scored by the Organization and the maritime community and industry, Mr Mitropoulos said, referring to IMO’s work in developing and adopting the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, now known universally as MARPOL. Other conventions adopted by IMO address issues such as the dumping of wastes at sea, the use of harmful anti-fouling paint on ships’ hulls; preparedness, response and cooperation in tackling pollution from oil and from hazardous and noxious substances; the management of ships’ ballast water to avoid the transfer of alien species, and the right of States to intervene on the high seas to prevent, mitigate or eliminate danger to their coastlines or related interests from pollution following a maritime casualty.
IMO is currently developing a new mandatory instrument providing legally binding and globally applicable ship-recycling regulations for international shipping and recycling facilities, which is due for adoption in the 2008 2009 biennium. And, in May of this year, IMO adopted a new Convention on the removal of wrecks that may present either a hazard to navigation or a threat to the marine and coastal environments, or both.
‘But perhaps the most significant threat to our environment today concerns atmospheric pollution,’ Mr Mitropoulos said. ‘IMO continues to work towards further reductions as the evidence mounts and the world becomes more aware and more concerned about the further damage that might be caused if, from our various perspectives as Governments, industry and individuals, we do not address the challenges posed by air pollution, global warming and climate change.’
The IMO Secretary-General noted that a good deal has already been done by the shipping sector to address emissions, with Annex VI of MARPOL, for example, setting limits on sulphur oxide (SOx) and nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions from ship exhausts; prohibiting deliberate emissions of ozone-depleting substances; and putting a global cap on the sulphur content of fuel oil. The annex is currently undergoing a comprehensive review.
IMO has a work plan to address emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), Mr Mitropoulos said, pointing out that, ‘whether we like it or not, there is no avoiding the fact that the modern world is utterly dependent on motorised transport systems that run largely on fossil fuels. Moreover, it is also a fact of life that the use of fossil fuels carries an environmental and climate change.’
Mr Mitropoulos said that the wide range of measures to prevent and control pollution caused by ships and to mitigate the effects of any damage that may occur, adopted and in development by IMO, were ‘all positive proof of the firm determination of Governments and the industry to reduce, to the barest minimum, the impact that shipping may have on our fragile environment.’
He expressed concern, however, about the slow pace of ratification of IMO’s environment-related conventions. It took almost eight years, for example, for MARPOL’s Annex VI to reach its entry into force criteria – by which time, it needed to undergo a substantial review. The 2004 Ballast Water Management Convention is not yet in force and the 2001 International Convention on the Control of Harmful Anti-fouling Systems on Ships will only enter into force in September 2008.
‘My concerns in this area are threefold: first, that by not bringing IMO instruments into force at a reasonable time after their adoption, their implementation is delayed, thereby depriving the environment of their beneficial effects; second, that any further delay in tackling the issues regulated by such instruments may spur unilateral or regional measures by individual countries or groups of countries, with all the attendant negative repercussions such actions entail; and, third, that any prolongation of the situation may lead to ambiguities, which, in the final analysis, may count against seafarers, the maritime industry and the environment,’ Mr Mitropoulos said.
‘The urgent need to ratify, as soon as possible, not only IMO’s environmental but, indeed, all outstanding Conventions adopted under its auspices, should be promptly recognised by all the parties concerned. After all, it was thanks to the strenuous and concerted efforts of the same Governments, working together under the aegis of the Organization, over long periods of time, that these Conventions were developed and adopted in the first place,’ he added.
In conclusion, Mr Mitropoulos said that the decision of the IMO Council to select environmental issues to take centre stage this year, as the theme for World Maritime Day, was timely and appropriate.
‘It is only very recently that mankind has begun to understand that the planet that sustains us and gives us life is a fragile entity and that our actions can, and do, have massive repercussions. That the earth and its resources do not belong to us and are not ours to squander without thought for the future is not proving an easy lesson for us to learn, but we are gradually succeeding – or, at least, waking up to the enormity of the task that confronts us,’ Mr Mitropoulos said.
IMO Newsroom
A new framework, in which the littoral States of the Straits of Malacca and Singapore (the Straits) can work together with the international maritime community to enhance navigational safety, security and environmental protection in the Straits, has been formally agreed. Dubbed the ‘Cooperative Mechanism’, this far-reaching initiative was cemented at an international meeting hosted by Singapore, convened by IMO and organised in close cooperation with the Straits’ two other littoral States, Indonesia and Malaysia.
The Singapore Meeting was a direct outcome of the initiative of the IMO Council to consider the protection of vital shipping lanes such as the Straits of Malacca and Singapore. It was designed to follow up and build on the outcome of previous meetings on enhancing safety, security and environmental protection in the Straits that were held in Jakarta, Indonesia, in September 2005 and in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in September 2006.
The Cooperative Mechanism will provide a regular platform for dialogue between the littoral States, user States and users of the Straits, as well as a structured framework for cooperation with the international community. It represents the successful establishment, for the first time ever, of the type of cooperative mechanism for the management of international straits envisaged in Article 43 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. It will enable the three littoral States, user States and users of the Straits to exchange views, jointly undertake projects and make voluntary monetary contributions through the following three components:
• a forum for regular dialogue;
• a committee to coordinate and manage specific projects; and
• a fund to receive and manage financial contributions.
Participation in the Cooperative Mechanism is intended to be inclusive of all stakeholders and undertaken voluntarily.
The Meeting saw a widespread show of support for the projects aimed at enhancing the safety of navigation and environmental protection in the Straits that were first proposed by the littoral States at the Kuala Lumpur Meeting.
The projects (on response to incidents involving hazardous and noxious substances (HNS); Class B transponders on small ships; establishing a tide, current and wind measurement system; and replacement and maintenance of aids to navigation and aids to navigation damaged in the tsunami disaster of December 2004) were widely endorsed and the Governments of Australia, China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the United Arab Emirates and the United States of America pledged financial and in-kind support. In some cases, work is already underway. China, for example, has been actively pursuing the implementation of the project concerning the replacement of aids to navigation damaged by the 2004 tsunami and, along with the United States of America, has conducted a needs’ assessment survey on the response to HNS incidents.
The Meeting also noted the progress made in the implementation of the Marine Electronic Highway Demonstration Project for the Straits of Malacca and Singapore (the MEH Demonstration project), developed by IMO in cooperation with the littoral States and funded by the Global Environment Facility through the World Bank, with additional financial support provided by the Republic of Korea. The Meeting also noted, with appreciation, developments in the Malacca Straits Security Initiatives of the littoral States and that the Information Sharing Centre of the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia (ReCAAP) had become operational.
At the end of its deliberations, the Meeting adopted the Singapore Statement, which confirmed the consensus among the participants that collective efforts were needed to enhance navigational safety and environmental protection in the Straits and expressed support and encouragement for the Cooperative Mechanism. Speaking at the end of the Meeting, the IMO Secretary-General, Mr Efthimios E. Mitropoulos said,
I am delighted with the progress made so far and with the fact that we have reached the stage where we are today. I am particularly pleased with the launching of the Cooperative Mechanism developed by Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore and with the spirit of goodwill demonstrated by all stakeholders, especially the three littoral States of the Straits of Malacca and Singapore. I view the Cooperative Mechanism as a milestone breakthrough in the efforts of all parties in enhancing safety and environmental protection through the Straits. However, we should not consider the launching of the Mechanism as the end of the road. Rather, we should view it as an opportunity to maintain, even strengthen, the already established channel of communication among all parties concerned, thus facilitating a meaningful dialogue for the accomplishment of all objectives set.
Mr Mitropoulos also looked forward to being advised of further voluntary contributions, in particular from user States, to implement the projects identified by the littoral States.
Some 250 delegates representing 38 countries, one United Nations Specialized Agency, one intergovernmental and 14 maritime-related non-governmental organisations attended the Meeting. Statements of support for the Cooperative Mechanism came from Australia, Bahamas, Belgium, China, Cyprus, Germany, India, Japan, Kenya, Liberia, Norway, Panama, Republic of Korea, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States of America, as well as from industry representatives ICS, INTERTANKO, BIMCO, OCIMF and the Asian Shipowners Forum. Furthermore, the Nippon Foundation stated that it is prepared to contribute to the Aids to Navigation Fund (which is established under the Cooperative Mechanism) up to a third of the costs associated with the funding of the maintenance and repair of the aids to navigation in the Straits during the initial five-year period, until the necessary funds have been collected from voluntary contributions from around the world.
The three littoral States are now working toward convening the inaugural meetings of the three components of the Cooperative Mechanism in 2008. These meetings are expected to be held annually.
IMO Briefing 29/2007
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URL: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/MarStudies/2007/24.html