Ship traffic connects Antarctica’s fragile coasts to worldwide ecosystems

Antarctica, an isolated and long considered pristine wilderness, is becoming increasingly exposed to the negative effects of ship-borne human activity, and especially the introduction of invasive species. Here, we provide a comprehensive quantitative analysis of ship movements into Antarctic waters and a spatially explicit assessment of introduction risk for nonnative marine species in all Antarctic waters. We show that vessels traverse Antarctica’s isolating natural barriers, connecting it directly via an extensive network of ship activity to all global regions, especially South Atlantic and European ports. Ship visits are more than seven times higher to the Antarctic Peninsula (especially east of Anvers Island) and the South Shetland Islands than elsewhere around Antarctica, together accounting for 88% of visits to Southern Ocean ecoregions. Contrary to expectations, we show that while the five recognized “Antarctic Gateway cities” are important last ports of call, especially for research and tourism vessels, an additional 53 ports had vessels directly departing to Antarctica from 2014 to 2018. We identify ports outside Antarctica where biosecurity interventions could be most effectively implemented and the most vulnerable Antarctic locations where monitoring programs for high-risk invaders should be established.

DETERMINISTIC-BASED SHIP ANTI-COLLISION ROUTE OPTIMIZATION WITH WEB-BASED APPLICATION

Most of the accidents are caused by human error at sea so, decision making process made by navigators should be more computerised and automated. The supported decision making can be a step forward to decrease the risk of collision. This paper, in this respect, aims to present a deterministic approach to support optimum collision avoidance trajectory. This approach involves a collision avoidance course alteration. A web-based application coded with "JavaScript" programming language on the "Processing" software platform which allows the own ship to change her course in a deterministic manner to avoid collision optimally has been introduced. Algorithm structure of the method has been formulated and organized according to the International Regulation for Preventing Collision at Sea (COLREGs). The experimental tests results have revealed that the system is practicable and feasible and considerably outperforms heuristic-based method. It is thought that the developed method can be applied in an intelligent avoidance system on board and provides contribution to ship collision avoidance process, automation of ship motion control and ship traffic engineering.

Quantitative Assessment on Navigation Impact of the Controlled Waterway in the Upper Yangtze River Using Queuing Model

As an important transportation link between eastern and western economic zones of China, the Yangtze River waterway has been globally ranked first in relation to freight volume since 2010, and the density of ship traffic has also increased significantly. However, the inland navigation system has been increasingly threatened by traffic congestion, which is more serious in the controlled waterways of the upper Yangtze River. In this study, the distribution laws of ship traffic flow and service time in the controlled waterway were analyzed, indicating that the traffic flow obeys the Poisson distribution, and the service time obeys a negative exponential distribution. Thereafter, by simplifying the queuing processes and rules, the M/M/1 queuing service model was established to calculate ship queuing indicators in a controlled waterway. It was found that the ship queuing indicators varied greatly among different controlled waterways. Compared with downstream ships, upstream ships usually had longer queuing lengths and times, which were also more affected by the increasing number of ship arrivals and service times. Consequently, a dimensionless loss coefficient was proposed to quantify the influence of the controlled waterway on the navigation capacity. As the service time and number of ships increased, the loss coefficient also increased. The results of this study could provide references for understanding the ship queuing problem, and thereby the assessment of navigation capacity and anchorage constructions in a controlled waterway.

Calculation of northern hemisphere sea ice area using recurrent neural networks

Ice covering water surfaces causes difficulties for ship traffic in the northern regions. Developing a sustainable logistics system that describes and manages ship traffic requires consideration of many factors, one of which is the area of sea ice covering the waterways. Most of the volume of sea ice in the northern hemisphere is concentrated in the Arctic zone. The paper describes the process and results of data preparation and development of a recurrent neural network to determine the value of ice area change in the next 50 days relative to the last day of sea ice area measurement. The prediction is made based on the previous 30 measured values of sea ice area and a user-specified value of the day for which the prediction will be made. The work uses NSIDC open dataset on sea ice area for the northern hemisphere. This model allows us to calculate the change of sea ice area for 1 day ahead with an accuracy of 0.581%. For the 50-day prediction of ice area, the accuracy is 4.017%.

Alien amphipods (Arthopoda; Crustacea) in the Tista Estuary, Halden, southeastern Norway

Two new amphipods for Norway Melita nitida and Corophium multisetosum (Crustacea; Amphipoda) were registered in brackish waters in the Tista Estuary in Halden, southeastern Norway. Both species were found in the samples from Tista’s outlet into the Idde Fjord, C. multisetosum in the beach zone and M. nitida at about 4 m depth. Melita nitida is a North American species first found in Europe in the Netherlands in 1998, and since then dispersed into the Baltic Sea via the Kiel Canal and now also found several places on the German Baltic Sea coast and in the Black Sea. Corophium multisetosum was collected even before the 1920s in Western Europe, and is considered native for Europe, whereas its relationship to North America is more ambiguous. From the British Isles and the Netherlands, it seems to have spread to Germany, Poland, Denmark and Sweden, and at present Norway. Until now the two species were found in small numbers at the Norwegian sites and their influence on the total benthic community is probably negligible in this initial phase. The Tista Estuary in Halden apparently appears to be a hotspot for alien brackish water species in Norway. Generally estuaries, with their combination of brackish water jointly with their unsaturated ecological niches and intensive international ship traffic, seem to possess the highest potential infection rate for aquatic systems with alien acrozoobenthic species.

Performance of the Car Carrier Shipping Sector in the Iberian Peninsula under the COVID-19 Scenario

The Iberian Peninsula represents the second European producer and the eighth world producer of vehicles in 2020. The pandemic of SARS-Cov2 introduced severe challenges for the worldwide population and for the industrial production and supply chains. The car carrier shipping sector has not been studied in depth in the Maritime Transportation and Port Logistics literature. This research pays special attention to the performance of this traffic in the Iberian Peninsula in the pre-pandemic era and under COVID-19 pandemic conditions, in which seven ports with car-carrier ship traffic in the Iberian Peninsula are analyzed. First, a dynamic portfolio analysis about how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the evolution of competitive positions of Iberian Peninsula ports is performed. Second, studies of the seasonality patterns of vehicle movements in ports of the Iberian Peninsula were carried out using time series of the periods from 2012 to 2019 and from 2012 to 2020. The Seasonal Variation Index (SVI) was employed to determine the seasonality of vehicle traffic in the periods considered and analyses were performed independently for both embarking and disembarking traffic. Important conclusions are revealed, e.g., during a year of COVID-19, the seven ports had decreased vehicle movements for disembarking traffic and only one port increased the traffic for embarking traffic. Furthermore, COVID-19 introduced important changes in the seasonality patterns of vehicle movements during the first months of the pandemic.

Method for prediction of ship traffic behaviour and encounter frequency

The design of new rules on seaways, such as traffic restrictions, requires determining the degree of improvement in marine traffic safety beforehand by considering the occurrence of new hazardous factors. This study proposes a method to predict the future traffic behaviour and ship encounter frequency (EF) with the introduction of a new traffic rule. First, a sensitivity analysis is conducted to identify the factors affecting the EF. A method of predicting future traffic behaviour and EF is presented based on the analysis of changes in the traffic flow in an area with a temporal restriction. Results show that the method appropriately predicts the location and degree of the occurrence of encounters in the sea area. The proposed method contributes to the discussion of future traffic safety, when sailing in a specific area is restricted by new regulations, installations of new offshore wind farms and fishing reefs.

Nautical Tourism in Marine Protected Areas (MPAs): Evaluating an Impact of Copper Emission from Antifouling Coating

Copper (Cu) has a narrow range between optimal concentrations as a micronutrient critical for phytoplankton growth and concentrations potentially toxic to living organisms. This sensitivity indicates an ecosystem vulnerability that threatens not only nature but also human health due to bioaccumulation. An important source of elevated Cu concentrations in coastal environments are biocides used as antifouling protection on ships. A pilot study conducted in the Marine Protected Area (MPA) of the Krka Estuary (Croatia) over a period of 16 months investigated the relationship between ship traffic and Cu concentrations. The aim was to contribute to more informed environmental management by assessing the associated risks. In the study presented here, Cu concentrations were monitored, analyzed, and correlated with vessel traffic. Observations revealed that the seasonal increase in maritime traffic caused by nautical tourism was associated with an increase in Cu concentrations of more than five times, posing a toxicity risk to the environment. In order to understand the distribution of copper emissions, a mapping of maritime traffic was carried out by counting transits, radar imagery, and drone photography. This approach has proven sufficient to identify the potential risks to the marine environment and human health, thus providing an effective assessment tool for marine stakeholders.

Artificial intelligence for data collection and application of the probabilistic-logistic method in ship traffic control systems of seaports

An increase in the number of ships, their sizes, speeds and displacement increases the number of accidents, especially in places with intensive shipping. Control over the positions of vessels, their movement, identification of intentions is exercised by the vessel traffic control system (VTCS). A new generation VTCS that can predict optimal and safest traffic patterns in water areas requires artificial intelligence and forecasting elements. Currently, the fifth generation VTCSs are being implemented. They can plan optimal and safe traffic patterns in the water areas, depending on various external factors controlled by artificial intelligence. The VTCS is a traffic control body. Due to the intensive ship traffic, the control over water traffic is becoming more and more urgent. The “probabilistic” model and the target-object can stop moving when the signal is lost, and it is impossible to continue moving along the same route with the same speed. This must be taken into account when using software [4,5]. The knowledge base for developing a logistic-probabilistic method is available, but there is no real application, due to the lack of massive implementation of artificial intelligence in the software.