Day 4 - Sport, Plagiarism and Shipping Revolutions.

This morning we had a "Succeed@Solent" talk given by Solent's 'Academic Skills Developer'.  He reminded us that in the modern world of internet and wikipedia, avoiding plagiarism is incredibly important.  Solent has a lot of resources we can access to help us reference properly (using the Harvard method), write reports or essays, answer the question properly, research and much more.  I'm sure not all of this will be of use, but some of it will be invaluable.  Following this we had a lecture on the sports and recreation facilities available to us.  These were, in theme with everything so far, extensive.  Whether it's general gym or wellness classes, to full on watersports, it is covered.  The prices were extremely reasonable, especially for the sailing bits, where they were half or a third of normal prices.

One hour of the early afternoon was spent doing an hour of running and this time headed south passing some beautiful scenery and ending up on what I think was called Brownwich Beach.  This totalled between 7.5 and 8 miles so quite a good stretch.

We then had another lecture named 'Marine Challenges' by Simon Daniels, Senior Lecturer at Warsash.  This was more of an overview of why this is the most exciting time to be in the marine industry for two hundred years.  In brief (and to my limited understanding!), due to increased global warming, the North Western Passage is becoming more clear of ice.  This in time will become a navigable shipping route that will save massive mileage and thus fuel, consumables, and overally ££/$$.  It will also make the area ready for the minerals, and all useful to us, to be extracted from that area.  Thus, the area will be very valuable.  There will no doubt be arguments as to who the area will belong to.  Contenders will be America, Canada, and Russia apparently.  Russia's argument is that this is an extension of the existing ocean shelf they have so they have claim.  This is a good argument.  Howver, Canada can argue that they have surrounding population already in the area (Inuits), and this is also compelling.  Americam I'm not sure.  Of course it will be a lot more convenient for American ships to be able to take this route from Alaska to the Eastern Seaboard, than the longer alternative.  However, aside from the obvious claim arguments, there will be very strict rules as to conservation of the area, thus they don't want a million ships coming through polluting the area etc.  Also ships will have to be able to actually navigate the remaining ice and thin channels (this is all what I understand to be the case). This will call for much greater technological advancement needed of the ships passing through.  Thus exciting times, as apparently there haven't been many major advances needed in shipping in modern times (well for 200 years).  It was interesting and it only left me thinking: Is the cost of pollution really factored into all this trade we do?  Especially when we consider the following two facts: 1) Over 90% of the world's trade is carried by the international shipping industry. 2) In the UK, over 90% of Britain's imports come via shipping. 

One more statistic of the day that interests me is that when things are booming, a shipping company can make up to 300% profit! 

The day was finished off by a blinding sunset showing lots of reds within the clouds (see photos).