Lübeck, officially the Hanseatic City of Lübeck, is a city in Northern Germany. With around 220,000 inhabitants, it is the second-largest city on the German Baltic coast and the second-largest city in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, after its capital of Kiel, and is the 36th-largest city in Germany.
Dithmarschen is a district in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It is bounded by the districts of Nordfriesland, Schleswig-Flensburg, Rendsburg-Eckernförde, and Steinburg, by the state of Lower Saxony, and by the North Sea. From the 13th century up to 1559 Dithmarschen was an independent peasant republic within the Holy Roman Empire and a member of the Hanseatic League.
A coast guard or coastguard is a maritime security organization of a particular country. The term embraces wide range of responsibilities in different countries, from being a heavily armed military force with customs and security duties to being a volunteer organization tasked with search and rescue without law enforcement authority. In most countries, a typical coast guard's functions are distinct from those of the navy and the transit police, while in certain countries they have similarities to both.
Search and rescue (SAR) is the search for and provision of aid to people who are in distress or imminent danger. The general field of search and rescue includes many specialty sub-fields, typically determined by the type of terrain the search is conducted over. These include mountain rescue; ground search and rescue, including the use of search and rescue dogs ; urban search and rescue in cities; combat search and rescue on the battlefield and air-sea rescue over water.
His Majesty's Coastguard (HMCG) is the section of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency responsible, through the Secretary of State for Transport to Parliament, for the initiation and co-ordination of all maritime search and rescue (SAR) within the UK Maritime Search and Rescue Region. This includes the mobilisation, organisation and tasking of adequate resources to respond to persons either in distress at sea, or to persons at risk of injury or death on the cliffs or shoreline of the United Kingdom. Since 2015 it has also been responsible for land-based search and rescue helicopter operations.
The Bundesanstalt Technisches Hilfswerk is the federal civil protection organisation of Germany. It is legally part of Bundesministerium des Innern und für Heimat and controlled by the German federal government. 97% of its more than 80 thousand members (2021) are volunteers.
Responsibilities for traditional coast guard duties in Australia are distributed across various federal, state and community agencies. The de facto coast guard of Australia is the Maritime Border Command, a joint command of the Australian Defence Force and the Australian Border Force which works alongside the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Fisheries Management Authority, and the Australian Maritime Safety Authority. Each state and territory government have specific maritime safety agencies and police marine units. In addition, there are several private volunteer coast guard organisations which act as auxiliary search and rescue services and maritime safety educators with the largest organisations being the Royal Volunteer Coastal Patrol established in 1937, the Australian Volunteer Coast Guard established in 1961, and Marine Rescue New South Wales established in 2009.
The German Maritime Search and Rescue Service is a membership organisation in Germany. It is responsible for Search and Rescue in German territorial waters in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, including the Exclusive Economic Zone.
Northern Germany is a linguistic, geographic, socio-cultural and historic region in the northern part of Germany which includes the coastal states of Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Lower Saxony and the two city-states Hamburg and Bremen. It contrasts with Southern Germany, Western Germany and Eastern Germany.
The United States Coast Guard is the coastal defense, search and rescue, and maritime law enforcement branch of the United States Armed Forces and is one of the country's eight uniformed services. It carries out three basic roles, which are further subdivided into eleven statutory missions. The three roles are:
The Wasserschutzpolizei is the river police that patrols the waterways, lakes and harbours of Germany around the clock. The WSP are part of the Landespolizei. The Federal Police maintains 16 patrol craft and helicopters are part of the Coast Guard (Küstenwache) and assigned to coastal BPOL stations. The watercraft include six offshore patrol vessels, e.g. those of the Bad Bramstedt class, as well as a number of fast inshore vessels and one tugboat.
An emergency tow vessel, also called emergency towing vessel, (ETV) is a multi purpose boat used by state authorities to tow disabled vessels on high seas in order to prevent dangers to man and environment. The disabled vessel is either towed to a safe haven or kept in place against wind and current until commercial assistance by tug boats has arrived on site or until it has been repaired to the extent of being able to manoeuvre on its own. The need for ETVs as a preventive measure has arisen since the number of available commercial salvage tugs was reduced while potential dangers from individual vessels have increased. E.g. Spain has fourteen, Turkey has eleven, Germany operates eight, Norway has seven, France has five, Sweden three and the Netherlands, Poland, South Africa, Iceland and Finland each have one official emergency tug boat. Australia also operates emergency response vessels. The United Kingdom's four strong ETV fleet was to be disbanded in September 2011 due to budget cuts but the two vessels operating in Scottish waters received an extension of contract until the end of 2011.
M/V Pallas, callsign C6LO9, IMO number 7039206, was a 147-metre (482 ft) cargo ship built in 1971. On 25 October 1998, her cargo of lumber caught fire while traveling the North Sea off the west coast of Jutland. The ship ran aground on 29 October off the German island of Amrum, in the Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea National Park. Around 200–300 tons of fuel oil was lost overboard and caused Germany's most notable maritime environmental disaster.
Allied Forces Baltic Approaches (BALTAP) was a Principal Subordinate Command (PSC) of the NATO Military Command Structure, with responsibility for the Baltic Sea area. It was in existence from 1962 to 2002 and consisted of the Danish Armed Forces, units of the West German Bundeswehr and allied wartime reinforcements.
Operation Sophia, formally European Union Naval Force Mediterranean, was a military operation of the European Union that was established as a consequence of the April 2015 Libya migrant shipwrecks with the aim of neutralising established refugee smuggling routes in the Mediterranean. The operational headquarters was located in Rome. The EU mandate for the operation ended on March 31, 2020. Operation Irini is the successor operation.
SMS Comet was a Camäleon-class gunboat of the Prussian Navy that was launched in 1860. A small vessel, armed with only three light guns, Comet served during the Second Schleswig War of 1864 and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, part of the conflicts that unified Germany. The ship was present at, but was only lightly engaged in the Battle of Jasmund during the Second Schleswig War. She served in a variety of roles during peacetime, including fishery protection and survey work. Comet went on one lengthy deployment abroad, with an assignment to the Mediterranean Sea from 1876 to 1879. She saw little active service after returning to Germany and was decommissioned and hulked in 1881. The vessel remained in the navy's inventory until at least 1891, being broken up sometime thereafter.
SMS Camäleon was the lead ship of the Camäleon class of steam-powered gunboats of the Prussian Navy that was launched in 1860. A small vessel, armed with only three light guns, Camäleon saw little active use. She served during the Second Schleswig War of 1864 and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, but saw no action in either conflict. Her peacetime career was limited to survey work in 1865 and limited tender duties in and around Kiel in 1867–1868. In poor condition by 1872, she was stricken from the naval register and used as a storage hulk in Kiel. She was broken up for scrap some time after 1878.
Climate change adaptation strategies on the German coast include European, national, and regional politics, different economic and civilian sectors as well as coastal protection. In general, climate change refers to statistically identifiable changes in climate properties that persist over a longer period of time. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) defines it as a change in climate caused by human activity that can be observed in addition to natural climate variability. This can be described as anthropogenic climate change. Climate change poses local level impacts on the German coast and for the present and future, suitable adaptation strategies are necessary. In 2008, the Federal Cabinet of Germany decided on a German Climate Change Adaptation Strategy with the objective of creating a national action framework for reducing the risks for the population, habitats as well as the economy.
The Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre Bremen is responsible for coordinating air-sea rescue for the German sea-area of North Sea and Baltic Sea. It covers a shoreline of 3.660 km length and is owned and operated by German Maritime Search and Rescue Service at their headquarters in the Hanseatic City of Bremen. The MRCC works along with the Central Command for Maritime Emergencies (CCME) in Cuxhaven.
The Minden is a ship built in 1985 as a lifeboat as one of a series of seven rescue cruisers of the Deutschen Gesellschaft zur Rettung Schiffbrüchiger in the 23.3 Meter class. The ships were built between 1980 and 1991 by the Schweers shipyard in Berne-Bardenfleth and Abeking & Rasmussen in Lemwerder.
