Laura Dekker arrives in St. Maarten as the youngest person to solo circumnavigate the globe

A Dutch teen sailed into the record books today as she ended her yearlong journey, supposedly becoming the youngest person to ever circumnavigate the globe.

Laura Dekker, who was born on a boat  in a New Zealand port and says she spent the first four years of her life at sea, celebrated her 16th birthday on her 38-foot yacht “Guppy” during her voyage. She sailed into port on the island of St. Maarten after travelling 27,000 nautical miles around the world.

Dekker claims to be the youngest person to have completed the trip, but the Guinness Book of World Records and the World Sailing Speed Council refuse to certify her claim because they say they don’t want to encourage any future, dangerous attempts by younger and younger sailors.

“Since (I left) a lifetime of experiences have gone by. It feels like it was just yesterday, but at the same time, it seems like it was an eternity ago,” Dekker wrote on her blog on Friday.

Dekker was greeted today by her mother, father, and grandparents, as well as dozens of others who cheered her on as she stepped foot on the dock. She started her journey from the same port in St. Maarten on Jan. 20, 2011.

Dutch officials tried to prevent the trip when a court blocked her original departure at age 14 in 2009. Child welfare authorities asked that Dekker be removed from the care of her father, Dick Dekker, and be placed under state supervision to prevent risks to her safety, but on July 29, 2010, Dekker wrote, according to a translation from the Dutch, “After a one year ‘battle,’ I am allowed to go!! This is so great!”

The round-the-world trip was highlighted with multiple stops in ports around the world. As her trip came to an end, Dekker reflected on her experience.

“I am looking forward to my arrival and to officially end my journey even though I feel like I already accomplished what I set out to do a long time ago,” Dekker wrote. “I have already learned very much about myself along the way and I also have learned very much from all the different places and the many different people that I came in contact with in so many different countries.”

Other teens to have completed the trip include Jessica Watson of Australia at age 16, Michael Perham of England at age 17, and Zac Sunderland of America at age 17.

Abby Sunderland, Zac’s sister, attempted to complete the trip in 2010 at the age of 16, when her boat capsized and was dismasted in the Indian ocean, and she had to be rescued.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Howard Hall’s Blue Ocean

This holiday season, I’d like to share a video by Howard Hall that epitomizes why we love the ocean so… and why we dive.  The blue whale swim by is one of the most amazing pieces of film I’ve ever seen. Here’s raising a glass to working hard to save our ocean planet and the amazing creatures who share it with us.

Happy Holidays to all!

Diving in The Gardens of the Queen

Anderson Cooper takes viewers on an underwater adventure to one of the world’s most vibrant coral reefs, an anomaly at a time when many of the world’s reefs are in danger – or already dead. He talks to Cuban marine conservationists who show how protecting The Gardens of the Queen reef from fishing and pollution has resulted in an almost perfectly healthy reef.  Seeing these abundant reefs gives this diver hope that a network of Marine Protected Areas worldwide can eventually bring back what we’ve lost.

Click HERE to view the entire video feature!

Derelict Tugboat spills oil into Richmond Channel

Point Portrero Reach

Richmond, CA

At last month’s US Coast Guard Area Committee Meeting for our region, a concerned participant questioned the stability of a decommissioned Naval tug boat moored in Point Portero Reach, also known as the Richmond Channel.  The Coast Guard said that it had tried to contact the Greek owner of the derelict 205′ World War II Tug to no avail. So the Coast Guard continued to monitor the situation.

But on Sunday, the tug sprung an oil leak and according to officials, it is still leaking. The boat is surrounded with three layers of a 22-inch hard boom, and the nearby sensitive habitat area of Brooks Island remains boomed off. No dispersants have been used and the spill appears to be contained at this time according to a US Fish & Wildlife Official.

No wildlife has yet been affected, says the Coast Guard. Anyone seeing instances of contaminated wildlife is asked to call 1-877-UCD-OWCN.

The elderly gent in the photos below served on the derelict tug during WWII. There are two identical gray tugs, the sinking vessel lists considerably to starboard.

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Richard Branson: Time to Rethink Business as usual

Courtesy of NPR

Photo Credit: Clare Brown

Richard Branson has built a global business empire around the philosophy “have fun and the money will come.”

As the founder of Virgin Group, he grew a mail-order record company into a major record label and a chain of record stores; he started an airline; he created a space tourism company; and he has been actively involved in humanitarian efforts.

Now, Branson argues that it’s time to rethink the way businesses function. You can make money, he says, by doing good. In a new book, Screw Business As Usual, he posits that businesses can make a profit and actively care about people, communities and the planet at the same time.

Branson joins NPR’s Neal Conan to talk about his new philosophy.

Listen to Sir Richard’s inspiring philosophy here!

National Comic Strip Follows Tagged Sea Turtle

In a perfect blend of art, science and fun, ocean conservationist and comic strip artist Jim Toomey is featuring the real life journey of Fillmore, a Green Sea tagged by a group from SeaTurtles.org and PRETOMA this past September off Costa Rica’s Cocos Island.

Toomey hopes to connect hundreds of thousands of readers, young and old to conservation efforts led by SeaTurtles.org at the remote Cocos Island National Park offshore of Costa Rica. Fillmore the green sea turtle in the comic strip shares anecdotes on illegal fishing, coral reef ecology, and actual scuba-diving spots that the real sea turtle encounters during its meanderings at Cocos Island.

“Cocos Island is one of the most amazing underwater habitats in the world, but even this protected area is under siege from illegal fishing that kills endangered sea turtles,” said Todd Steiner, director at SeaTurtle.org and one of the researchers who attached the satellite-tracking device to the real sea turtle they named Fillmore. “Fillmore in the comic strip can reach millions of kids who can be the next generation of sea turtle activists working to save these imperiled creatures from extinction.”

Toomey has used Sherman’s Lagoon to promote awareness of ocean and shark conservation efforts and last partnered with SeaTurtle.org to raise awareness of sea turtles trapped in the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Sign up today at www.seaturtles.org/fillmore to get daily updates about Fillmore’s wanderings, facts about the remote Cocos Island, and alerts about what you can do to help protect sea turtles and their habitat.

And how about this for a Christmas Gift? You can even adopt a real sea turtle nest on a beach in Costa Rica under the protection of SeaTurtles.org’s partner project PRETOMA (www.pretoma.org). They also protect sharks and promote a pledge to eat seafood that is caught in ways that are safe to sea turtles.

Fillmore will be featured at Cocos Island for the entire Thanksgiving week and for a few days afterward before he returns to his digs at Sherman’s Lagoon.

Shell sets deepwater Gulf oil record at 9,627 feet

Simone Sebastian
Houston Chronicle

A well in the Gulf of Mexico has set a global record for oil production in deep water, Shell Oil Co. says.

Shell said Thursday that it is producing oil from a well 9,627 feet below the surface of the Gulf, a depth more than six times greater than the Empire State Building’s height. It exceeds by 271 feet the depth of the previous record-holder, also a Shell project in the Gulf.

Both wells operate through the Perdido drilling and production platform, 200 miles southwest of Houston. The new record-holder is in the Tobago Field, which Shell jointly owns with Chevron and Nexen, according to the company. The previous record-holding well was in the Silvertip field.

The Perdido platform is moored in 8,000 feet of water, which the company says makes it the world’s deepest-water drilling and production platform.

The company did not say how much the new well is producing, but said the daily capacity of the platform is 100,000 barrels of oil and 200 million cubic feet of natural gas.

The Tobago Field well is several miles away from the platform, and the oil flow must follow an incline along the sea floor before being pumped vertically to the platform, Shell spokesman Jaryl Strong said.

Low pressure

Besides the water’s depth, the project posed a challenge because of the reservoir’s low pressure, which necessitated special technology to push the oil nearly two miles up to the platform on the water’s surface.

Shell noted that it did not have the technological ability to produce oil at such depths in 1996 when it purchased the lease where Perdido operates.

Engineers developed a system of electrical pumps embedded in the seabed that help ship the oil to the surface platform, Strong said.

”The industry is moving into these depths,” he said. ”As the industry expands the frontier, it is going to have to come up with solutions like this.”

Equipment in the pro-ject included FMC Technologies’ enhanced vertical deep-water tree system and the five electrical pumps that help push the oil to surface, that Houston-based company said.

Shell is majority owner of the Perdido platform. BP and Chevron also have investment shares.

Perdido serves wells up to seven miles away, Shell said. The company began development drilling in 2007 and oil and gas was first produced in 2010.

Don Van Nieuwenhuise, director of petroleum geoscience programs at the University of Houston, said the achievement has global implications.

”They’ve brought that water depth into the realm of being technologically and economically viable,” Van Nieuwenhuise said.

He noted, however, that the industry is pushing into depths that challenge existing emergency well control systems. Well control equipment developed in the wake of last year’s disastrous Gulf oil spill are designed for use in up to 10,000 feet of water.

Limits to safety?

”They are getting real close to the limit of what we can do safely,” Van Nieuwenhuise said.

Strong said Shell has addressed the risks of producing oil in deep-water conditions.

”There are a number of safety innovations built into the Perdido platform to accommodate the environment it is in, in terms of the great depths and long distance from shore,” he said. ”Safety was the No. 1 priority.”