2018 Census of California Water Transit Services

The U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics conducts a nationwide census of ferry boat operators for the U.S. Department of Transportation and the collected information is used for statistical purposes. The Caltrans Division of Local Assistance has been asked by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to gather data regarding ferry operations under the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21). MAP-21 includes a new formula program for ferry boats and ferry terminal facilities eligible under 23 USC 129(c) which authorizes federal participation in toll roads, bridges, tunnels, and ferries. FHWA has asked that Caltrans assure the ferry boat data is current for MAP-21.The Mineta Transportation Institute was initially contacted by Caltrans to conduct this census in 2012 and a report was delivered later that year. Now the census has been completed with updates through November 2018. The research team collected information from 25 water transportation operators throughout California and produced 42 accompanying maps that depict routes and terminals where the operators provide service. Tabular information for each operator catalogs their number of vessels, passenger counts, fares, seating capacity, route lengths and other data points. Note that a number of operators, despite repeated contact via phone and email, chose not to reply.This report organizes water transportation operations into three sections based on California geography: northern California, the Sacramento Delta region; and southern California. A fourth section documents four operators who did not fall within those three geographic regions.The report concludes with a listing of recreational voyage operators (e.g. cruises, fishing trips) that the authors felt did not constitute “water transportation” for the purposes of the detailed census yet may be of interest to those applying a broader definition of water transport

Multi-dimensional, multi-national, multi-faceted hydrographic training: the Nippon Foundation GEBCO training program at the University of New Hampshire

Hydrographic training entered a new era when students arrived at the University of New Hampshire in August of 2004 to form the first class of the Nippon Foundation GEBCO (General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans) training program. Born out of the need to replenish GEBCO’s aging human material, and of the desire to spread deep ocean mapping capabilities more widely throughout the world, the program attracted applications from 57 students in over thirty countries. The seven selected each had post graduate training and several years experience, but differed in that three were hydrographers, two geologists and two oceanographers. Classes planned for the next two years will bring in a further fourteen students. The UNH program had been selected as the closest match to the general course requirements GEBCO considered that ocean bathymetrists should have. Subjects include all types of depth measurements, oceanography, acoustics, tides, plate tectonics, sea floor morphology, ocean basins, sedimentary processes, hydrothermal-thermal processes, gravity-magnetic relationships to seafloor fabrics, positioning and geodesy, maps and charts, IHO standards, GIS, data bases, gridding, contouring, spatial statistics, and the history of GEBCO and ocean mapping. These are taught at the graduate level as part of the graduate degree program at UNH. In this paper, the experiences that participants from the different backgrounds underwent are recounted with the overall goal of improving the general education required to map the floors of the deep ocean. Recommendations are made regarding the prior preparation of students entering the program, the content and intensity of courses comprising the program, and follow-up actions to solidify the learning experience. Intangibles such as the networking of professional contacts are also evaluated. Extrapolations to training in other areas of hydrography are made

More Significance than Value: Explaining Developments in the Sino-Japanese Contest Over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands (August 2019)

The Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands are presently the focus of a dangerous contest between the People’s Republic of China and Japan, one that even now has the potential to spark a military conflict that could draw in the United States. How has this come about? Whether seen from a strategic, economic, or historical perspective, the value of the islands does not appear to merit the risks of such a contest. Consequently, what has driven the escalation is not anything particular to the islands themselves, but rather the increasing symbolic stakes attached to them, their role within the domestic politics of both sides, and the measures each side has taken to shore up its respective claims.LBJ School of Public Affair

Philippine Maritime and Nursing Education: Benchmarking With APEC Best Practices

This issue identifies the best practices in maritime and nursing institutions in the APEC region to know where we stand. It also helps determine the comparative advantage and weaknesses of our local institution.education

Multi-species and multi-interest management: An ecosystem approach to market squid (Loligo opalescens) harvest in California

Market squid (Loligo opalescens) plays a vital role in the California ecosystem and serves as a major link in the food chain as both a predator and prey species. For over a century, market squid has also been harvested off the California coast from Monterey to San Pedro. Expanding global markets, coupled with a decline in squid product from other parts of the world, in recent years has fueled rapid expansion of the virtually unregulated California fishery. Lack of regulatory management, in combination with dramatic increases in fishing effort and landings, has raised numerous concerns from the scientific, fishing, and regulatory communities. In an effort to address these concerns, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary (CINMS) hosted a panel discussion at the October 1997 California Cooperative Oceanic and Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI) Conference; it focused on ecosystem management implications for the burgeoning market squid fishery. Both panel and audience members addressed issues such as: the direct and indirect effects of commercial harvesting upon squid biomass; the effects of harvest and the role of squid in the broader marine community; the effects of environmental variation on squid population dynamics; the sustainability of the fishery from the point of view of both scientists and the fishers themselves; and the conservation management options for what is currently an open access and unregulated fishery. Herein are the key points of the ecosystem management panel discussion in the form of a preface, an executive summary, and transcript. (PDF contains 33 pages.

Comments on hydrographic and topographic LIDAR acquisition and merging with multibeam sounding data acquired in the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary

In April 2005, a SHOALS 1000T LIDAR system was used as an efficient alternative for safely acquiring data to describe the existing conditions of nearshore bathymetry and the intertidal zone over an approximately 40.7 km2 (11.8 nm2) portion of hazardous coastline within the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary (OCNMS). Data were logged from 1,593 km (860 nm) of track lines in just over 21 hours of flight time. Several islands and offshore rocks were also surveyed, and over 24,000 geo-referenced digital still photos were captured to assist with data cleaning and QA/QC. The 1 kHz bathymetry laser obtained a maximum water depth of 22.2 meters. Floating kelp beds, breaking surf lines and turbid water were all challenges to the survey. Although sea state was favorable for this time of the year, recent heavy rainfall and a persistent low-lying layer of fog reduced acquisition productivity. The existence of a completed VDatum model covering this same geographic region permitted the LIDAR data to be vertically transformed and merged with existing shallow water multibeam data and referenced to the mean lower low water (MLLW) tidal datum. Analysis of a multibeam bathymetry-LIDAR difference surface containing over 44,000 samples indicated surface deviations from –24.3 to 8.48 meters, with a mean difference of –0.967 meters, and standard deviation of 1.762 meters. Errors in data cleaning and false detections due to interference from surf, kelp, and turbidity likely account for the larger surface separations, while the remaining general surface difference trend could partially be attributed to a more dense data set, and shoal-biased cleaning, binning and gridding associated with the multibeam data for maintaining conservative least depths important for charting dangers to navigation. (PDF contains 27 pages.