GFCR Partners Pledge Over $25m for Coral Reefs
10 million hectares of marine and coastal ecosystems—including approximately 5 percent of the planet’s remaining coral reefs. As part of this portfolio, GFCR and UNCDF announced at UNOC the launch of a USD$1 million portfolio guarantee facility to support reef-positive enterprises in Papua New Guinea. Structured in partnership with Women’s Micro Bank and UNDP, the facility will unlock over PGK 5.7 million in loans for sustainable, women-led MSMEs that strengthen reef and community resilience. By 2030, the GFCR aims to catalyze over 400 reef-positive businesses and sustainable financing
DeepOcean Expands Subsea Market Scope with Shelf Subsea Acquisition
offers engineering and project management for subsea construction and installation, subsea survey and positioning services, subsea IMR services, as well as removal and recycling of subsea assets.Shelf Subsea is headquartered in Australia, with further offices in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and Saudi Arabia. The company has approximately 200 employees.It currently operates a fleet of three chartered multipurpose dive support vessels, multiple ROVs, various subsea installation equipment, plus a number of diving systems.“DeepOcean and Shelf Subsea offer similar services, but
Global Coral Bleaching Crisis Spreading
.In December 2024, a weak La Nina pattern, which typically brings cooler ocean temperatures, gave scientists hope that corals might recover, but it only lasted three months.Instead, the bleaching has continued to spread, said NOAA Coral Reef Watch coordinator Derek Manzello. The Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea were recently added to the list of 82 countries and territories registering bleaching-level heat stress in their waters.It will take scientists years to understand the global extent of coral reef death, but they say they have already observed widespread mortality in parts of the Caribbean, Red
WW2 Shipwreck Found 81 Years After Tragic Sinking
, ending a tragic chapter of the country's history.Marles said the SS Montevideo Maru, an unmarked prisoner of war transport vessel missing since being sunk off the Philippines' coast in July 1942, had been discovered northwest of Luzon island.The ship was torpedoed en route from what is now Papua New Guinea to China's Hainan by a U.S. submarine, unaware of the POWs onboard. It is considered Australia's worst maritime disaster.The long-awaited find comes ahead of April 25 commemorations for Anzac Day, a major day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand for their troops killed in all
Subsea Mining: All Eyes on Marine Minerals Offshore Norway
the next step is to move to sea trials and INESC TEC is seeking authorization to do a technical demonstration at three areas with different morphologies, water depths and current profiles offshore Portugal to test its equipment.Deep Sea Mining Finance (DSMF), which acquired the Solwara 1 Project in Papua New Guinea, has been working on an autonomous sampler for geochemistry.Instead of samples taken at random points in time with a towed system, this is a system that’s dropped – in multiples for aerial coverage – to the seabed to sample and later recovered. It’s about the size of
Indonesia Processing Requests for Deep-sea Mining Waste Disposal
two companies’ requests to dispose mining waste into the ocean, a senior government official said on Sunday, at a time of heightened sensitivity about the environmental impact of mining.The requests come as mining waste management is increasingly scrutinized after a nickel plant in neighboring Papua New Guinea spilled red mud into the sea last year due to an operational failure.Indonesia was a major nickel ore exporter until last year, before the government stopped exports in January to support the development of domestic smelters.The government is keen to produce stainless steel and battery-grade
Nido Robotics Debuts Two Underwater Drones
Pro and Sibiu Nano underwater drones. Sibiu Pro and Sibiu Nano underwater drones offer a new degree of precision, flexibility and convenience to sectors ranging from aquaculture to search & rescue. Nido Robotics' CEO and co-founder Roy Torgersen was engaged on a dive in 2012 in Papua New Guinea to locate the wreckage of a downed USS Dakota plane. The thought occurred to him that deep-sea missions of that nature, often conducted in extreme conditions, would be made substantially easier and safer with the use of suitably adaptable, affordable and portable mini ROVs.The fact that Torgersen
China Leading the Deep Sea Mining Race
increasing over time," Lodge said.If the rules are approved, it could take about two to three years to obtain permits to start deep sea mining under the current draft, Lodge said.Canadian Nautilus Minerals had tried to mine underwater mounds for copper and gold in the national waters off Papua New Guinea, but it run out of money and had to file for creditor protection earlier this year.This has not deterred others, such as Global Sea Mineral Resources (GSR), a unit of Belgian group DEME, and Canada's DeepGreen, to continue technology tests and research.In July, Greenpeace called for an immediate
Searcher Completes Northern Basins Study
Searcher Seismic announced the expansion of its modern offshore data library with the completion of its Northern Basins Prospectivity Study in Papua New Guinea.The independent multi-client company providing seismic datasets and associated products to the global oil and gas industry, said that in conjunction with Discover Geoscience, it has compiled the Northern Basins Prospectivity Study following its successful acquisition of the Solomon Sea Broadband Non-Exclusive 2D seismic survey in 2017.The study offers the industry a detailed understanding of the basins and hydrocarbon potential of the region
February 2025
