An outbreak of Covid-19 has been reported aboard cruise ship Coral Princess, where more than 100 people were currently sick, with many isolating on board the vessel in Brisbane, according to 7NEWSBrisbane.

Others were evacuated to isolate at home or in other accommodation and currently.

A Princess Cruises spokesperson told ABC News Australia that it was adhering to comprehensive protocols that were agreed in conjunction with federal and state authorities and we are confident that they are working effectively.”

After successfully controlling the virus for much of the early stages of the pandemic, Australia has been rocked by soaring Covid-19 case numbers, hospitalizations and deaths in recent months. Queensland, the province where the Coral Princess is currently located, recorded over 4,800 daily cases with 41,000 active cases documented.

The Coral Princess had an outbreak in early 2020 where at least two people died before the ship was permitted to dock in Miami. The Diamond Princess was one of the first headline grabbers when it came to Covid-19, suffering a large outbreak in February 2020 that led to several deaths.

source:https://insurancemarinenews.com/insurance-marine-news/another-cruise-ship-reports-major-covid-outbreak/

Because of a combination of threats from dams and climate change, the Tonle Sap Lake is facing the eminent risk of ecological collapse.  Once plentiful fish and other species are fast disappearing, along with the livelihood of the people which for centuries have depended on the Tonle Sap for subsistence.

“The beating heart of Mekong is now on life support”, said Brian Eyler, senior fellow and director of Energy, Water, and Sustainability, Southeast Asia at the Stimson Center.  He was referring to Tonle Sap, a lake in the northwest of Cambodia, which is part of the Mekong River system.

The Tonle Sap, the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia, can swell across a floodplain up to 20 times the size of Singapore during the monsoon season.

According to journalist Abby Seiff, the lake, which awed ancient Chinese emissaries and European explorers with its vast size and bottomless fish population, is now at risk of ecological failure.

Threat from hydropower dams

China started damming the Lancang, its section of upstream Mekong River, in 1986.  Since then, China has built 11 hydropower dams along upstream Mekong within China’s borders and another 11 in Laos and Cambodia on the mainstream, along with hundreds of dams on its tributaries.

Hydropower dams have had a drastic effect on the Mekong River and its tributaries such as unseasonable flooding and droughts, low water levels in the dry season, and drops in the amounts of sediment carried by the river, with extreme consequences for biodiversity.

Every year, the Mekong floods force the Tonle Sap to swell five times from its low-water size and thus creating the largest lake in Southeast Asia. However, in 2019, the lake was in a state of record low-level, the water was warm, shallow and oxygen starved.

Using satellite imagery and river height gauges, a study by Eyes on Earth, a water resources monitor, gave credence to suspicions that Lancang water policies were partly responsible for the record droughts.

“The satellite data does not lie, and there was plenty of water in the Tibetan Plateau, even as countries like Cambodia and Thailand were under extreme duress,” Alan Basist, who co-wrote the report for Eyes on Earth, told New York Times. “There was just a huge volume of water that was being held back in China.”

According to the report, during the 2019 drought, China’s portion of the Upper Mekong received uncommonly high levels of rain but the resulting flow was stopped by the Lancang dams.

The lack of cooperation over dam operations between countries combined with shorter monsoon season and a longer dry season because of climate change, have resulted in loss of habitats, making it difficult for bird and fish species to survive in the ecosystem.

Farmers have difficulty farming

Agriculture was once the backbone of Cambodia’s economy, however, the agriculture industry’s share of GDP had dropped from 47 percent in 1995 to 22.8 percent in 2021.

“Both infrastructure projects in the stream and climate change contribute to the low water level(s),” said Khoy Rada, a research consultant specializing in agricultural development at Angkor Research and Consulting. This has resulted in lower groundwater levels and higher evaporation of existing water resources. Communities along the Mekong, specifically those that rely on the Tonle Sap, are all set to be affected, Rada said.

Yin Savuth, the director of the Department of Hydrology and River Works at Cambodia’s Ministry of Water Resources and Meteorology, also acknowledged climate change consequences, dams as well as the less intense rainfall, caused the record low levels of water in Tonle Sap.

Hydropower dams have drastically altered the natural rhythms of the region’s water resources. The natural cycle of the Mekong floods reversing the flow of Tonle Sap, thus creating a lake, has come later for the past two years, devastating fisheries and complicating agriculture.

The dwindling water resources have been changing communities.  Many started to move closer to the lakes while others fought each other for water as the streams began to run dry. Farmers further from the lake, realizing that floods may never come again, are forced to trap water as it comes into Tonle Sap from its tributaries.

“Folks at the periphery of the Tonle Sap are super water-stressed,” said Brian Eyler. “The next village downstream (then has) their water stolen. Streams can be diverted and I’ve heard that it’s getting ugly in that peripheral band where this water-stealing phenomenon has taken off in the last decade or so.”

Fishermen that can’t fish

Tonle Sap was teeming with fish once upon a time, earning the title of the world’s most productive inland fishery.  The lake acted as a crucial nursery for more than 300 species of fish, whose larvae are carried downstream into the lake by the flood pulse.

However, in recent years, the combined threats of overfishing, illegal fishing, drought, habitat destruction and the impacts of upstream dams on the Mekong River’s natural flow have wreaked havoc on fish populations and aquatic habitats throughout the river system.

Fishing can no longer put food on the table.  This forced locals to move to urban areas for low-paying and notoriously difficult construction work, according to Oudom Ham, an independent Cambodian consultant on climate change and river issues.

“Now they cannot even catch fish for their own consumption. They need to buy, which is ridiculous because they are fishermen but they cannot find fish for themselves,” he said.

“Fishermen compensate for depleting fish catches by taking out loans to help them get by but fishermen can’t do this in perpetuity. Something is going to break, either the livelihoods of millions or regional food security,” said Eyler of the Stimson Center.

The situation has been worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic.  Hou Savy, head of the Kampong Khleang Ecotourism Association in Siem Reap province, said that he has seen his community struggle through the Covid-19 pandemic.

“While Covid-19 has killed tourism and even the price of produce, the dams are killing the Tonle Sap. People used to be able to migrate to Thailand where there’s always work, but not now,” he said.

“No fish, no floods, no tourists and no migrant work – it’s really hard. I’ll sell my fish or my crops at low market prices,” he added. “The prices we’re selling at aren’t acceptable, but if there are buyers, we’ll sell. We all have debts to pay and they (the financial institutions) want their interest.”

“No one can definitively say whether the Tonle Sap has reached its ecological breaking point or when that breaking point will come,” says Brian Eyler. “We know it’s soon. But the thing that concerns me most is that it could be here and now.”

Source: https://maritimefairtrade.org/tonle-sap-danger-dying/

This is coming on the heels of the Bureau receiving the lowest number of reported incidents for the first half of the year since 1994, evidencing its efforts in raising awareness to make the waters safe globally.

The Gulf of Guinea Declaration on Suppression of Piracy has confirmed that there has not been any case of Seafarers kidnap one year after the May 2021 declaration. This is considered commendable progress in comparison to the 2020 statistics when 130 seafarers were kidnapped.

The status report from the GoG declaration also confirmed that there has not been any case of kidnap for ransom in 2022, as against 20 cases in 2020 and 12 in 2021.

The Director General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, NIMASA,Dr Bashir Jamoh said that Nigeria is committed to sustaining the momentum of the success recorded in recent times in the fight against piracy in the region.

“It is heart-warming that the international maritime community is acknowledging the progress made so far. It is a direct result of collaboration amongst national, regional and non-regional stakeholders. It is our hope that this trend will be sustained and very soon, we will start reaping the benefits such as a change of status concerning the Insurance premium paid on Nigerian bound cargoes; the War Risk premium being paid at the moment. We hope this status will change very soon,” he said.

While commending the progress, Baltic and International Maritime Council, BIMCO the world’s largest direct-membership organization for ship-owners, charterers, shipbrokers and agents called for the effective and full deployment of Deep Blue Assets on Anti-piracy tasking.

Efforts of the Nigerian Navy in clamping down on pirates camps, the Deep Blue project C4i coastal surveillance and collaboration with international Navies for law enforcement off Nigerian waters and the series of meetings under the umbrella of the Gulf of Guinea maritime coordination Forum, Shared Awareness and DEconfliction, GoG/SHADE were identified as key to the success in the war against Piracy in the Region.

​On its part, the International Maritime Bureau IMB has also confirmed that no case of vessel hijack took place in Nigerian waters in the first half of 2022. The ICC and International Maritime Bureau (IMB) have confirmed that the first half of 2022 witnessed the least cases of piracy globally in 28 years with only 58 reported cases as compared to 68 within same period in 2021. Of the 58 incidents, 2 were classified as Piracy attacks in the Gulf of Guinea, with NONE of them occuring in Nigerian waters. While the reduction in reported incidents is indeed encouraging, the IMB PRC continues to caution against complacency.

IMB Director, Michael Howlett said: “Not only is this good news for the seafarers and the shipping industry, it is positive news for trade which promotes economic growth. But the areas of risk shift and the shipping community must remain vigilant. We encourage governments and responding authorities to continue their patrols which create a deterrent effect.”

Source: https://www.sunnewsonline.com/international-maritime-bureau-confirms-piracy-decline-in-gulf-of-guinea/

On September 24, 2020, it was reported that a man was found dead in the West Sea near the North Korean borders. According to South Korea’s military, the man was Lee Dae-jin, a 47-year-old who worked for the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries.  He was shot dead by North Korean soldiers, who later burned his body.

A few days after the incident, the South Korean Coast Guard told the media that Lee was killed in the process of “voluntarily” fleeing to North Korea, which was highly unusual, to say the least.

On September 21, Lee, who was among 18 officials on a fishery inspection ship, went missing and only his shoes were found onboard.  A day later, his body was found in North Korean waters in the West Sea.  North Korean soldiers allegedly killed and burned Lee to prevent the Covid-19 virus from entering the country.

In an initial report to the Blue House, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said that the possibility of Lee defecting to the North was low. The fisheries department also said on September 24 that there was no evidence to support such a claim.

However, on September 28, the Coast Guard reported that Lee escaped from the ship in an attempt to defect to North Korea, based on what it said was evidence collected through wiretapping.  There were also unverified allegations that Lee had incurred heavy gambling debts.

Two years have passed but Lee’s bereaved family and the South Korean public are still waiting for answers.  The government refused to make public its “evidence” because of confidentiality.

Last June 16, the Coast Guard made a U-turn on its claim about Lee’s voluntary defection and said that there is no evidence to show that is the case.

“We investigated whether the dead public official had defected to North Korea but could not trace how he reached North Korean waters or find any intention of defecting to the North,” Park Sang-chun, who leads the Incheon Coast Guard, said.

Shortly after the announcement, nine high-ranking Coast Guard officers, including Commissioner General Jeong Bong-hoon, offered to resign but the new president did not accept their resignations.

However, as with the Moon administration, the new administration refused to grant access to records of Lee’s death.  The records are now classified as presidential records, to be kept concealed for up to 15 years.  The president will only release these records when two-thirds of lawmakers at the National Assembly voted yes, which is highly unlikely, or when the court ruled so, which it did last November when Lee’s family filed a lawsuit.

Although Lee’s family won the case, the former administration filed an appeal, citing national security concern.  When the new administration took over in May 2022, president Yoon Suk-yeol withdrew the appeal and promised to disclose parts of the records, subject to national security clearance.  Lee’s family and the public will then be able to finally find closure.

Source: https://maritimefairtrade.org/south-koreans-want-answers-to-murdered-official-found-floating-in-west-sea/