One of the dark underbellies of the maritime shipping industry that no one likes to talk about is smuggling. But the weekly magazine Bloomberg Businessweek has taken on the problem head-on in an expose detailing how one of the biggest goods shippers in the world, MSC – Mediterranean Shipping Company – was infiltrated in recent years by Balkan gangs engaging in vast amounts of drug smuggling. In recent years, officials have found that multiple MSC vessels were carrying drugs, and a $100 million ship, the Gayane, was seized by authorities after finding $1 billion worth of cocaine onboard. This information…

Hello and Happy New Year, This is just a reminder that starting the first week of January, the Pacific Maritime Online newsletter is going from a twice a week schedule to being sent out on just Tuesdays. Among the reasons for this is to align the digital newsletter more closely with two of PacMar Online’s sister publications, Professional Mariner Online and Fishermen’s News Online, which each generate newsletters once a week. (Another of our sister publications, Ocean Navigator, has a monthly newsletter, FYI.) With the PacMar Online newsletter becoming a weekly, each edition will contain five stories, rather than four…

The governors of three U.S. Pacific Coast states and British Columbia’s premier gathered in San Francisco recently to sign an agreement that looks like it could result in additional environmental initiatives being launched at West Coast ports. California Governor Gavin Newsom, Oregon Governor Kate Brown, Washington Governor Jay Inslee and British Columbia Premier John Horgan signed the Pacific Coast Collaborative Statement of Cooperation on Oct. 6. The Statement of Cooperation (SOC) promotes collaboration between the four regional governments on accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy, investing in climate infrastructure like electric vehicle charging stations and a clean electric grid,…

I’d like to take a moment to bid a fond adieu to Mike Conroy, who spent a number of years as the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations (PCFFA) and its sister organization, the Institute for Fisheries Resources. Also, as most longtime readers of Pacific Maritime’s sister publication, Fishermen’s News, know, Mike wrote the PCFFA’s monthly Fishermen’s News column after he became the organization’s executive director. Not only his columns were always well thought out, they delved into issues that typically weren’t covered elsewhere in the pages of this magazine, or anywhere else, for that matter. In September, Mike left…