Keeping it green

by John Curnow on 12 Jan 2017 In Summer, your lawn needs a heap of water to stay green. Some fertiliser also helps. It absolutely looks better than the dried, somewhat sunburnt, crispy kind, and feels a lot nicer underfoot, as well. But this is not to be about yard maintenance. Nor is this overly concerned as to whether you have a two or four-stroke mower in the shed to give it that all-important trim, which seems to be every couple of days in the right sort of conditions.

Alas, we’ve been a good shade of green ourselves on the site of late. Apart from being a good thing in and of itself, it reminds us to look after both the planet and ourselves as we go around, and also that things are a changing. This is good because it means there will be different things to go and look at. However, we need to be mindful of the fact that we have an impact, so how do we reduce it, and also that there are additional challenges and threats out there. The latter we need to be totally respectful of.

The first one that more than piqued my curiosity was the new data gathering to occur regarding whale strikes. Naively, I thought this kind of thing would already be in place. We have done so much to return many species to healthy populations, so it probably is one of those items where it is no longer top of mind, and ‘she’ll be right’ kind of takes over.

Yet these wonderful mammals still need our assistance, and we are the ones who spend so much time in their waters. This does make us the ideal data gatherers, and in the information age, a pic, some words, even possible a quick check on the Net and a report being fired in is all possible. They are delightful to watch, and I don’t think we had a kite come down quicker than when they appeared next to us during a coastal passage some years ago now. Still stays in your mind…

Elsewhere we have more rain to occur in the Western Pacific and an iceberg the size of Delaware to come adrift from the pack ice in Antarctica. We also have science imitating art or is that art imitating science with new information about the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation and the potential for huge weather shifts.

Then ultimately we end up with the UFO issue. In some parts the sunfish gets a bit of blame, but in reality it is the container that makes you contract your shoulder blades and hiss like a venomous snake. Unidentified Floating Objects are on the march. You have a massive expansion in the volume of shipping being moved around as a result of the globalisation of everything, and therefore more containers go into the drink during storms, just as a matter of mathematics, but how serious is the issue?

There is no doubt that a steel box with nice hard and sharp edges is going to offer most other substances the conundrum, who brings a knife to gunfight? Yet seriously gCaptain reports that from 2008 to 2013, the average was just 546 that were lost at sea for each of those years. OK. You do not want to be one of the ones to see one at sea, let alone collect it, which could well be the case for five of the current Vendée fleet.

At any rate, it does need to be taken into consideration with the fact that 120 Million containers get moved, so at .00000455%, understandably the industry is not exactly hurtling down the 100m track to the tape and adoration of the crowd in order to solve it. Eventually they sink. Eventually. Clearly some do great damage before that happens, and you still have the pollution aspects of it all, even if the doors stay closed and the gear does not spill out.

So just like a PFD, you could have a water trigger that blasts the doors open if it goes over the side, but that has issues akin to your PFD going off from a wave whilst you’re sitting on the rail. Shipping containers in vessels like car carriers will stop them leaving the deck, but then add to the cost of shipping astronomically. Of course, the safety of the vessel and crew is hampered in such a change of type, as well.

Perhaps the containers can have some sort of RFD attached like pallets in a warehouse and then they can appear on your AIS transceiver, but here too you have a cost and does anyone give a major about the whole thing anyway? I hate to say it, but seems like keeping your eyes peeled is the only choice.

On a brighter note and looking for inspiration, I found some here: -



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