BY Captain Bobbie Scolley, U.S. Navy (ret.) and Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, U.S. Navy (ret.)For more than six decades, spanning from 1905 to the late 1970s, the U.S. Navy’s diving apparatus for deep ocean operations and salvage remained fundamentally unchanged. During this period, the demographic of navy divers also saw little alteration.
Each year, as we prepare for the largest U.S. based maritime industry conference in New Orleans, we tend to look back on the state of the industry and initiatives that were announced from the conference that took place the year before. 2023 provided us with plenty to talk about. In September of 2023
HII announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire substantially all of the assets of W International SC, LLC and Vivid Empire SC, LLC (collectively “W International”), a South Carolina-based complex metal fabricator specializing in the manufacture of shipbuilding structures, modules and assemblies.
ST Engineering’s Marine business and Siemens Energy have been awarded a second contract by Transcontinental Capital Corporation (Bermuda), a subsidiary of Seaboard Corporation, to deliver Estrella del Mar IV, a barge-mounted power plant to Santo Domingo in Dominican Republic.The new power plant will be based on its predecessor, the Estrella del Mar III, which was commissioned in 2022.
Exmar has signed contracts with Regasificadora Del Pacífico (RDP) for the deployment of a floating storage unit (FSU) on the west coast of Colombia.RDP is developing a fast-track LNG import solution in the inner bay of Buenaventura, under a term contract signed with Ecopetrol in February of 2025 to provide regasification and logistics services for a volume of 60 MMCFD of gas.
HII is partnering with shipyards and fabricators in multiple states to grow its throughput and meet the increased demand for ships by the U.S. Navy. With its customer’s support, HII is bringing the work to more companies and more jobs in more states, expanding capacity of the U.S. shipbuilding industrial base and improving schedule adherence for all ships built by HII.
First High-Tech Exploration of Argentina’s Mar del Plata Canyon, Schmidt Ocean Institute’s Remotely Operated Vehicle SuBastian shines light on an offshore canyon in Argentine waters nearly twice as deep as the Grand Canyon — capturing images and video of 40 suspected new species, coral fields, and a seastar that resembled a famous cartoon character.
The Paris Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control (Paris MoU) successfully concluded its 58th Committee meeting in Malmö, Sweden, May 26-30, 2025. The meeting, formally opened by Ms. Pernilla Wallin, Deputy Director, Department of Civil Aviation and Maritime Affairs, Swedish Transport Agency, and chaired by Mr.
Torres del Paine National Park, Chile: MarineNews' Joe Keefe is on holiday in Patagonia this month. Off the grid; way off the grid. “I keep trying to escape the waterfront, but they keep dragging me back in,” Keefe writes, and today was no different.The 9-mile trek through the Patagonia forests and Rocky Mountains almost took Keefe out.
Panama has achieved a 96.5% compliance rate with international maritime safety and environmental protection standards. The Panamanian fleet undergoes regular evaluations based on criteria established by key international frameworks, including various Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) such as Paris, Tokyo, the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean, the Black Sea, the U.S.
Sanmar ends 2024 strong with the launch of the first fully electric tugboat to operate in Latin America.Ordered by SAAM Towage, the new tug is based on the exclusive-to-Sanmar ElectRA 2500SX design from naval architects Robert Allan Ltd, and is the eighth fully electric tug Sanmar has built.The tug built for SAAM Towage measures 25.4 x 12.86m with a draft of 5.
At the Sanmar shipyard, located in Tuzla Bay, Istanbul, Latin American's first electric tug was launched.The vessel is scheduled to arrive in Chile per the service agreement signed in January this year between Empresa Nacional del Petróleo (Enap) and SAAM. This advance reaffirms both companies’ commitment to the energy transition