By Kim Murphy
Los Angeles Times
Traffic is up, isolation down in Nome, Alaska
Most days in Nome, you are not likely to run into anybody you did not see at the Breakers Bar on Friday night. More than 500 roadless miles from Anchorage, rugged tundra and frigid Bering Sea waters have a way of discouraging visitors.
So it was a big deal when the World - a 644'long residential cruise ship with condos costing several million dollars apiece - dropped anchor during the summer for a two-day look-see.
That’s about to change.
The record shrinking of the polar ice cap is turning the forbidding waters at the top of the world into important new shipping routes.
Four other cruise ships also docked in Nome recently. The Coast Guard deployed its first small Arctic patrol vessels last year. Fleets of scientific research vessels steamed north all summer, while ships surveying the vast oil and gas deposits under the Arctic seabed have talked of using Nome as a base.
Los Angeles Times
Traffic is up, isolation down in Nome, Alaska
Most days in Nome, you are not likely to run into anybody you did not see at the Breakers Bar on Friday night. More than 500 roadless miles from Anchorage, rugged tundra and frigid Bering Sea waters have a way of discouraging visitors.
So it was a big deal when the World - a 644'long residential cruise ship with condos costing several million dollars apiece - dropped anchor during the summer for a two-day look-see.“We never had a ship anywhere near this size before,’’ Chamber of Commerce director Mitch Erickson said. “My guess is they’ve probably been everywhere else in the world, and now they’re going to the places most people haven’t seen yet.’’
That’s about to change.
The record shrinking of the polar ice cap is turning the forbidding waters at the top of the world into important new shipping routes.
Four other cruise ships also docked in Nome recently. The Coast Guard deployed its first small Arctic patrol vessels last year. Fleets of scientific research vessels steamed north all summer, while ships surveying the vast oil and gas deposits under the Arctic seabed have talked of using Nome as a base.
In fact, this town of 9,300 on the edge of the Bering Strait sees itself as the gateway to a newly accessible maritime frontier. Nome’s ship traffic is eight times what it was in 1990, and the town recently spent close to $90 million renovating its port to accommodate bigger ships.
To the north, Kotzebue would like to build its own deep-water port a few miles outside town. And Barrow, a remote Eskimo whaling village that sits at the very top of the continent, has had cruise ships full of German tourists and Coast Guard patrol boats docking near its rudimentary landing facility the past few summers.
“We can no longer assume,’’ Governor Sean Parnell said at a congressional hearing, “that the Arctic is an impenetrable barrier.’’
The coming shipping boom has intensified concerns about how to regulate maritime operations and protect one of the most fragile and least-understood environments on earth.
Binding international rules on what kind of vessels can operate in the Arctic do not exist. Nor do uniform regulations for routine waste discharges from ships, or reliable protocols for cleaning spills in extreme ice conditions.
Detailed terrain maps that meet international standards exist for only about 9 percent of the Arctic floor, and there are no reliable high-frequency communications systems.
The Coast Guard has just two operable ice breakers in its fleet, and its closest refueling station is 1,000 miles to the southeast in Kodiak, eight hours away by rescue helicopter should a cruise ship founder on an iceberg.
More than 6,000 ships now ply the Arctic waters, according to one of the first comprehensive studies of shipping in the region, completed by the international Arctic Council in April.
The fabled Northwest Passage - linking the Atlantic and Pacific across northern Canada - saw a period of ice-free navigation in 2007 and 2008. Climate forecasts predict there could be 120 or more largely ice-free transit days each year by the end of the century. And last year’s record-breaking ice melt for the first time opened the Northwest Passage and the Northeast Passage, above Russia, for several weeks.
The Arctic Council found that growing worldwide demand for minerals hidden in the Arctic is playing an even bigger role than climate change in the opening of new shipping routes in the far north.
Red Dog - the largest zinc mine in the world, about 90 miles northwest of Kotzebue - operates the only major US marine cargo port in the Arctic. Some of the largest ships in the world pull up off the mine’s barren stretch of frigid coastline, bound for markets all over the world.
Operators said they have no plans to expand operations or reroute their Europe-bound vessels through the Northwest Passage as part of their current operations. They currently travel south through the Panama Canal.
The top fish, reeled in off Block Island aboard Pieros’ 27 Contender, was big enough to win both the tournament and the 1st Place Calcutta in this American Striper Association (ASA) sanctioned event. Captain Greg Nunn of Team Hapi Daze rolled in with his 32-foot Fountain and weighed in a very respectable 29.30-pound striped bass that was good enough for 2nd Place in the tournament. Captain Bob Fitzgerald of Team Comstock Regulator placed 3rd with a 26.95-pound striper, fishing aboard his 26-foot Regulator. Captain Ken Zwirko of Team Bunker Down used his 21-foot Contender to catch and weigh in a 24.75-pound striped bass, which was good enough to land 4th Place in the tournament.
Schneider was on site with a specially equipped truck to transport the four stripers from the Osterville Anglers Club on Cape Cod to the their new home in Connecticut. Schneider reported later that the fish had survived the journey, were actively feeding and were adjusting well to their new surroundings in the Maritime Aquarium exhibit. 
The Around the Americas expedition has just completed the first leg of its historic voyage – a west-to-east transit of the Northwest Passage above Alaska and Canada – and is currently sailing down the U.S. East Coast. Their route will take them down the Atlantic Coast of North and South America, around Cape Horn, then back up the Pacific Coast of both continents to its starting point in Seattle, Wash.
A significant departure from traditional “pulse” radars that use powerful magnetrons, Navico Broadband Radar is based on solid-state technology similar to that used in military and commercial radar applications. Broadband Radar delivers superior target resolution and separation where it matters most — in tight quarters and crowded waterways. This system is able to clearly differentiate between docks, channel markers, pilings, jetties, piers and other features as close as only a few meters from the boat (minimum range scale for Broadband Radar is 1/32 nm).
Broadband Radar will also be compatible with Northstar and Simrad systems operating Jeppesen Marine’s advanced C-Map MAX Pro cartography. The processor based Northstar 8000i and Simrad GB40 Glass Bridge system — both providing information via one or more 10”, 12” or 15” displays — are professional grade navigators made even more powerful with the addition of Broadband Radar. C-Map MAX Pro, Jeppesen Marine’s most advanced cartography for the recreational boating market, delivers the ability to combine Broadband’s inherently superior radar displays with state-of-the-art charting features like Virtual Earth 3D displays of land and sea contour, 2D and 3D satellite photo overlays, and more.
