6.30am AEDT Sunday 05 January 2014
US Coast Guard ice breaker to assist ships beset in ice in Antarctica
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority’s Rescue Coordination Centre (RCC Australia) has requested the US Coast Guard’s Polar Star icebreaker to assist the vessels MV Akademik Shokalskiy and Xue Long which are beset by ice in Commonwealth Bay.
The US Coast Guard has accepted this request and will make Polar Star available to assist.
The Polar Star has been en route to Antarctica since 3 December, 2013 – weeks prior to the MV Akademik Shokalskiy being beset by ice in Commonwealth Bay. The intended mission of the Polar Star is to clear a navigable shipping channel in McMurdo Sound to the National Science Foundation’s Scientific Research Station. Resupply ships use the channel to bring food, fuel and other goods to the station. The Polar Star will go on to undertake its mission once the search and rescue incident is resolved.
RCC Australia identified the Polar Star as a vessel capable of assisting the beset vessels following MV Akademik Shokalskiy being beset by ice overnight on 24 December, 2013. RCC Australia has been in discussion with the US Coast Guard this week to ascertain if the Polar Star was able to assist once it reaches Antarctica.
The request for the Polar Star to assist the beset vessels was made by RCC Australia to the US Coast Guard on 3 January, 2014. The US Coast Guard officially accepted this request and released the Polar Star to RCC Australia for search and rescue tasking at 8.30am on 4 January, 2014.
The Polar Star will leave Sydney today after taking on supplies prior to its voyage to Antarctica.
It is anticipated it will take approximately seven (7) days for the Polar Star to reach Commonwealth Bay, dependent on weather and ice conditions.
At 122 metres, the Polar Star is one of the largest ships in the US Coast Guard fleet. It has a range of 16,000 nautical miles at 18 knots. The Polar Star has a crew of 140 people.
The Polar Star is able to continuously break ice up to 1.8 metres (6ft) while travelling at three (3) knots and can break ice over six (21ft) metres thick.
RCC Australia will be in regular contact with the relevant US Coast Guard RCC at Alameda, California, and the Captain of the Polar Star during its journey to Antarctica.
Media Enquiries: 1300 624 633
www.amsa.gov.au/media
Related:
The ‘Clitanic’ Hot Sheet – News from the #SpiritofMawson fiasco
carlb says:
January 4, 2014 at 6:15 pm
Lake Vostok has been drilled.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_vostok
(I know it’s Wiki, but it has a handy collection of links & the Russian version with links to tghe original reports is just one click away.) No ancient/alien evil seems to have been unleashed… Or So We Have Been Told. Stay tuned.
I like how the Chinese discuss what they will do in the worst case scenario, and their ship is hopelessly trapped. They will save the lives of the crew before the dead of winter, and leave the ship to its fate. They don’t expect that to happen, but are honest about what they will do if the unexpected happens.
Such honesty once was a characteristic of Americans. What has become of us, that our media and our political leaders cower so, in the face of Truth?
When I was a small boy in the 1950’s I was told that George Washington never told a lie, and that, even as a small boy, he confessed to chopping down his father’s cherry tree, when asked.
However my children were told, “There is no proof George Washington ever said that. That story is spin, and propaganda, which is the norm and the way of the world.”
Is it any wonder we now have a generation that has little regard for the Truth? However the problem with such a cynical attitude towards Truth is that, as any engineer knows, Truth is reality, and if you don’t respect reality it will loom up and bite you. (Even if you respect reality, Murphy’s Law will hit you, but if you are disrespectful you get not just Murphy, but his thousand relatives.)
This farce we are witnessing down along the Antarctic coast is simply a case of people reaping what they have sown. Their flagrant disregard for Truth is their Chicken Littles coming home to roost.
If an engineer disregards a crucial truth his design will crash and burn or, even if it survives fair weather, it will be a “Galloping Gertie” when winds get strong. He stands to face the blame for a bad design.
However when a non-engineer designs a lead balloon, and it will not fly, they never face the blame. That would involve facing the Truth, and Truth is something they abhor. Amazingly, if you analyze their excuses, what they blame for their failures is Truth itself.
They blame fossil fuels, and progress, and those things that uplift mankind, and every honest engineer ever born. They blame religious people, and hard working blue collar types, and the history of mankind, and old-fashioned morality. They sneer at tradition, insistent they are progressive, however Truth is not a thing you can progress beyond. All you can do is deny it.
These people are the true deniers, and rather than laughing at the absurdity of this dunderheaded Antarctic exploit we should all be shuddering in fear, for these bozos have a grip on the reins of humanity’s destiny.
Once it was America that spoke the Truth, and across the Iron Curtain people tuned into “Radio Free Europe” (at great personal risk,) to hear the Truth.
How our forefathers must be rolling in their graves. For now, if we want an honest answer, we don’t listen to our own media. We listen to the Chinese.
Brought to you by Glowbull warming
My last reply may have triggered the “spam filter” by being too long. Sorry.
Wait a second! . . . We are going to “rescue” a Chinese “Ice Breaker”? That, is perhaps more interesting.
LMAO
http://m.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11181470
I stand corrected…. apparently January plus 6 months is June in the Southern hemisphere…. hmmm….??
… Bush did it !!
These einsteins were “in search of” global warming.
Reminds me of that TV show, “In Search Of”.
I think they were looking for UFO’s and bigfoot.
At least they didn’t get stuck in the global warming.
>>>> Heraldo Ortega says:
January 4, 2014 at 12:56 pm
So who is Guarding the Coast ?.<<<<<<
answer: That job has been outsourced to Mexicans.
Thank you Caleb. All you need to do (sorry!) is watch MSNBC & see how it’s OK to trash & apologize. That is “our” new norm. God Bless you & yours…
These guys can’t tell which way the ice is going. They can SEE the ice and if it is retreating or growing, and they STILL get stuck in the ice.
These are the same guys we are supposed to trust regarding climate for the next 100 years???????????-*-!!!
Polar Star left Sydney a couple hours ago according to Marinetraffic.com. Its location was -34.8795,151.2361 and proceeding at 17.6 knots. Looks like it will be in the location of Xue Long Wednesday night or Thursday morning.
I would be interested in seeing how the Chinese “Ice Breaker” does during a WINTER rescue. This gets more entertaining every time one reflects on it.
Turney would have been financed for this dubious research. Possibly choosing a Russian owned ship and crew was the cheapest offered. I bet the investors are chewing their nails down to the quick. I hope they get nobbled to the fact, rescue missions cost a lot. Some years ago the University of Cambridge hired a Irish navy ship to go to Antarctica. My cousin was on it, sent me pics of ice flows and claimed it was proof of climate change? The Russians have large nuclear powered ice breakers in the Arctic, and of course they are too far away to be of any help. But knowing the recent Russian response to Greenpeace activists I wonder what awaits the crew of the Russian ship when they return home. (If they dare too). I agree what were the Chinese doing there too.
Can’t happen. I read that their reactors require ice-water to cool, so they can’t cross the tropics to get there.
What’s funny is that the MV Akademik Shokalskiy was studying global warming with a whole group global warming scientists aboard. You won’t get this information on many news reports. This is just too funny.
Media ?? What media! and the media is going “” What “”” Global What ?? We don’t know Squat
Apparently there was an evident lack of smart phones on board of the “research” vessel. Crying shame.
Another way to look at this . . . these research fellas weren’t expecting ice. After all, it is Summer down there.
Who is going to get the bill for this?
a. The Russians
b. The Australians
c. The Chinese
d. The American Taxpayer
e. None of the above.
Tip: As I recall from my schooling days, if you are not certain of the answer always choose “D”
… Last I heard NASA still hasn’t fired Mann for knowingly producing his fake “hockey stick” graph, based on intentionally falsified data. And Al Gorp’s shoreline mansion is located at sea level, indicating he was intentionally scamming all along. Lastly, CO2 isn’t a greenhouse gas or poison at the tiny levels it exists in the atmosphere. It does, however, benefit the plants that give us oxygen to breathe.
As I’ve said before, amongst its many other qualities, “global warming” causes the freezing point of water to increase and that’s the reason for the record amount of ice this year.
The stars mission is to go to the poles and assist any vessals in destress along wirh her scientific duties. The US has 2 polar ice breakers , the star and the healy, we also have16 225′ seagoing breakers and 14 175′ near shore breakers. And yes we need more polar size breakers. They keep me employed
Good question. If you watch the promo video, Prof. Turney made it sound as if they were going to record tons of data: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-25/15-million-australian-expedition-to-antarctica/5116158
“”global warming” causes the freezing point of water to increase”–that is really great! Is that “fact” in that great bastion of scientific knowledge, ehrrr, geographic knowledge–the so-called, inappropriately so, National Geographic? Let me look for a shovel . . . the stuff is really piling up.
The Russians have the largest and (nuclear powered) heaviest ice-breakers in the world. I understand why the Australians and the Chinese are down there but why are we rescuing the Akademik Shokalskiy?