The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred in Prince William Sound, Alaska, on March 24, 1989. Exxon Valdez, an oil supertanker owned by Exxon Shipping Company bound for Long Beach, California struck Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef, 1.5 mi (2.4 km) west of Tatitlek, Alaska at 12:04 a.m. and spilled 10.8 million US gallons (257,000 bbl) of crude oil over the next few days.
A ship is a large watercraft that travels the world's oceans and other sufficiently deep waterways, carrying cargo or passengers, or in support of specialized missions, such as defense, research, and fishing. Ships are generally distinguished from boats, based on size, shape, load capacity, and purpose. Ships have supported exploration, trade, warfare, migration, colonization, imperialism, and science. After the 15th century, new crops that had come from and to the Americas via the European seafarers significantly contributed to world population growth. Ship transport is responsible for the largest portion of world commerce.
Oriental Nicety, formerly Exxon Valdez, Exxon Mediterranean, SeaRiver Mediterranean, S/R Mediterranean, Mediterranean, and Dong Fang Ocean, was an oil tanker that gained notoriety after running aground in Prince William Sound, spilling its cargo of crude oil into the sea. On March 24, 1989, while owned by the former Exxon Shipping Company, captained by Joseph Hazelwood and First Mate James Kunkel, and bound for Long Beach, California, the vessel ran aground on the Bligh Reef, resulting in the second largest oil spill in United States history. The size of the spill is estimated to have been 40,900 to 120,000 m3. In 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil spill was listed as the 54th largest spill in history.
Mitsui O.S.K. Lines is a Japanese transport company headquartered in Toranomon, Minato, Tokyo, Japan. It is one of the largest shipping companies in the world.
In maritime law, flotsam,jetsam,lagan, and derelict are specific kinds of shipwreck. The words have specific nautical meanings, with legal consequences in the law of admiralty and marine salvage. A shipwreck is defined as the remains of a ship that has been wrecked—a destroyed ship at sea, whether it has sunk or is floating on the surface of the water.
A merchant ship, merchant vessel, trading vessel, or merchantman is a watercraft that transports cargo or carries passengers for hire. This is in contrast to pleasure craft, which are used for personal recreation, and naval ships, which are used for military purposes.
China Ocean Shipping Company, Limited, formerly China Ocean Shipping (Group) Company, commonly known for its abbreviated name COSCO Group, or simply, COSCO, is a former Chinese Government owned shipping and logistics services supplier company. It is one of the major holding company for China COSCO Shipping. China COSCO Shipping itself is formed by a merger of COSCO Group and China Shipping Group as one conglomerate, by a creation of a new common parent company of the two groups.
Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha, Ltd. is a Japanese transportation company. It owns a fleet that includes dry cargo ships, container ships, liquefied natural gas carriers, Ro-Ro ships, tankers, and container terminals. It is the fourteenth largest container transportation and shipping company in the world.
Marine debris, also known as marine litter, is human-created waste that has deliberately or accidentally been released in a sea or ocean. Floating oceanic debris tends to accumulate at the center of gyres and on coastlines, frequently washing aground, when it is known as beach litter or tidewrack. Deliberate disposal of wastes at sea is called ocean dumping. Naturally occurring debris, such as driftwood and drift seeds, are also present. With the increasing use of plastic, human influence has become an issue as many types of (petrochemical) plastics do not biodegrade quickly, as would natural or organic materials. The largest single type of plastic pollution (~10 %) and majority of large plastic in the oceans is discarded and lost nets from the fishing industry. Waterborne plastic poses a serious threat to fish, seabirds, marine reptiles, and marine mammals, as well as to boats and coasts.
USS Ingraham (DD-694) was a United States Navy Allen M. Sumner-class destroyer, the third ship in U.S. Navy history to be named for Duncan Ingraham. She was in commission from 1944 to 1971. Following her US service, she was sold to the Hellenic Navy and renamed Miaoulis. The ship was sunk as a target in 2001.
Curtis Charles Ebbesmeyer is an American oceanographer based in Seattle, Washington. In retirement, he has studied the movement of flotsam to track ocean currents.
Friendly Floatees are plastic rubber ducks marketed by The First Years and made famous by the work of Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer who models ocean currents on the basis of flotsam movements. Ebbesmeyer studied the movements of a consignment of 28,800 Friendly Floatees—yellow ducks, red beavers, blue turtles, and green frogs—that were washed into the Pacific Ocean in 1992. Some of the toys landed along Pacific Ocean shores, such as Hawaii. Others traveled over 27,000 kilometres (17,000 mi), floating over the site where the Titanic sank, and spent years frozen in Arctic ice before reaching the U.S. Eastern Seaboard as well as British and Irish shores, fifteen years later, in 2007.
A flow tracer is any fluid property used to track flow, magnitude, direction, and circulation patterns. Tracers can be chemical properties, such as radioactive material, or chemical compounds, physical properties, such as density, temperature, salinity, or dyes, and can be natural or artificially induced. Flow tracers are used in many fields, such as physics, hydrology, limnology, oceanography, environmental studies and atmospheric studies.
This is a list of notable events relating to the environment in 2009. They relate to environmental law, conservation, environmentalism and environmental issues.
Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them is a book by Donovan Hohn concerning 28,800 plastic ducks and other toys, known as the Friendly Floatees, which were washed overboard from a container ship in the Pacific Ocean on 10 January 1992 and have subsequently been found on beaches around the world and used by oceanographers including Curtis Ebbesmeyer to trace ocean currents.
Tokio Express was a container ship, built and registered in Hamburg in 1973 for Hapag-Lloyd. In 1984 she was renamed Scandutch Edo before being acquired by Pol Gulf International in 1993 and restored to her original name. In 1997, she was acquired by Westwind International and in 1999, by Falani, before being broken up for scrap in 2000.
Grande America was a roll-on/roll-off cargo ship built by Fincantieri in 1997, owned and operated by Grimaldi Lines, a subsidiary of Grimaldi Group. It sank in the Bay of Biscay in March 2019.
