Northwest Passage 2012 dot com: Icebreakers: Proof the US lacks big thinkers and Arctic vision

Polar Star - UUSCG icebreaker drydocked since 2006 due to budget cuts.
It was the first ship to cross the Arctic Sea over the North Pole.

Northwest Passage 2012 dot com: Icebreakers: Proof the US lacks big thinkers and Arctic vision: "Our country lacks big thinkers championing our interests in polar regions. Big thinkers like President Thomas Jefferson who defied critics by dispatching Lewis and Clark into the “wastelands,” big thinkers like President John F. Kennedy who met emerging Soviet threats by leading this nation into space exploration."

But we do have Jim DeMint and Michelle Bachmann. - GWC

Rite of winter: buoy tending by the Katherine Walker, USCG

The Katherine Walker

As I came down the block I saw the Coast Guard buoy tender Katherine Walker - WLM 552 - pulling up the Hudson River 2 channel marker - a flashing  3 meter tower.  I ran upstairs , grabbed my camera, and watched them lowering a small nun - an ice buoy - in anticipation of the coming freeze.  The location: the North River - just off West 181 Street above the George Washington Bridge. (click on images to enlarge)

lowering the winter buoy - lighted tower on deck

pushing away using bow and stern thrusters

USCGC Escanaba calls at Pier 17, NY

A friendly Port visit by the US Coast Guard Cutter Escanaba.  Watercolor left and photos thanks to Bowsprite.

Scallop draggers - Barnegat Light

"We drag it just above the bottom - the steel rings and fingers scrape em up, into the bag", said the captain of the William & Lauren. "Shouldn't be giving away my secrets - but that's about all there is to it." (click on the 3rd thumbnail to see details)

We never think about scallop draggers until we see a short item about a winter search off the coast of New Jersey or Nantucket. That's why the Coast Guard developed Rescue 21. And that's why there are rigid-inflatable motor life boats with a pair of 200 horsepower engines ready to fly out of the Coast Guard stations at Barnegat Light, Atlantic City, New Bedford and the other fishing ports along the coasts. Speed could save a crew member, like on the F/V NORTHERN EDGE – Dec. 20, 2004, 75-ft scallop boat sank 45 miles SE of Nantucket, 5 lost, 1 survivor.

These shots were taken at Barnegat Light and the Marina at Barnegat Light, a busy fishing port more famous as a summer resort beach town on the Jersey shore 45 miles south of Sandy Hook.

Here is some video of a scallop dragger at work. I know there are people who think it is crude, rapacious, and destructive of the ocean bottom. Maybe but I really don't feel any sympathy for a scallop as I bake it or an oyster as I pop it into my mouth with some tabasco.