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Displaying items by tag: Airstrikes

Global container line, AP Moller-Maersk hopes the presence of naval forces in the Red Sea in addition to political action will allow vessels to resume transiting the Middle East waterway, a major international link between the Indian subcontinent, Asia and Europe.

According to Tradewinds, the Danish-owned Maersk is among several prominent container shipping lines to have suspended its vessels using the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, due to Yemen’s Houthi rebels that have threatened and carried out attacks on merchant ships.

Both the UK and USA have taken military action, having launched more than 60 airstrikes against Houthi targets early on Friday (today, 12 Jan.) in an attempt to try and prevent further attacks in the Red Sea.

In an email to Reuters issued by Maersk they said “We hope that these interventions and a larger naval presence will eventually lead to a lowered threat environment allowing maritime commerce to transit through the Red Sea and once again return to using the Suez Canal as a gateway”

Also today, the multinational Combined Maritime Forces have advised international merchant ships plying the Bab el-Mandeb strait (between Yemen, Arabian Peninsula and Djibouti and Eritrea, Horn of Africa) to stay clear following a bombing campaign in Yemen.

The 70 mile long strait is where the Red Sea meets the Gulf of Aden, which by extension links the Indian Ocean. Notably, the narrow-most point along the strait is just short of 16 nautical miles.

More here on the development in the region.

Published in Ports & Shipping
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Coastal Notes Coastal Notes covers a broad spectrum of stories, events and developments in which some can be quirky and local in nature, while other stories are of national importance and are on-going, but whatever they are about, they need to be told.

Stories can be diverse and they can be influential, albeit some are more subtle than others in nature, while other events can be immediately felt. No more so felt, is firstly to those living along the coastal rim and rural isolated communities. Here the impact poses is increased to those directly linked with the sea, where daily lives are made from earning an income ashore and within coastal waters.

The topics in Coastal Notes can also be about the rare finding of sea-life creatures, a historic shipwreck lost to the passage of time and which has yet many a secret to tell. A trawler's net caught hauling more than fish but cannon balls dating to the Napoleonic era.

Also focusing the attention of Coastal Notes, are the maritime museums which are of national importance to maintaining access and knowledge of historical exhibits for future generations.

Equally to keep an eye on the present day, with activities of existing and planned projects in the pipeline from the wind and wave renewables sector and those of the energy exploration industry.

In addition Coastal Notes has many more angles to cover, be it the weekend boat leisure user taking a sedate cruise off a long straight beach on the coast beach and making a friend with a feathered companion along the way.

In complete contrast is to those who harvest the sea, using small boats based in harbours where infrastructure and safety poses an issue, before they set off to ply their trade at the foot of our highest sea cliffs along the rugged wild western seaboard.

It's all there, as Coastal Notes tells the stories that are arguably as varied to the environment from which they came from and indeed which shape people's interaction with the surrounding environment that is the natural world and our relationship with the sea.