Orcas have rammed the ''Azurea', with two French crew members on board, off the northern coast of Spain on July 21, 2025, at around 2 p.m.. The yacht issued a mayday call after the attack left its steering disabled just north of the town of Deba in the Spanish Basque Country. The two sailors, one of whom was aged 60, were rescued by the Spanish Coastguard, and taken with their boat under tow to the port of Getaria. Sailors were urged to be cautious in the Bay of Biscay.
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TORM SPLENDID
On July 24, 2025, the 'Torm Splendid' has been detained in Fos-sur-Mèr following a port state control by the Ship Safety Center of the Mediterranean Interregional Directorate for Maritime Affairs (Dirm Med). The tanker had sailed from Bizerte on July 21 and arrived in Fos harbor on July 23.
Prince Rupert
Calgary based Melius Energy has successfully transported bitumen from Edmonton, Alberta to Prince Rupert, British Columbia, continuing to global markets in custom 20-foot shipping containers utilizing intermodal rail and vessel infrastructure. The shipment is the company’s first BitCrude™ transportation process demonstration, proving the ability to move bitumen safely and efficiently, in adherence to Canada’s regulatory framework.
Visakhapatnam
Container lines Hapag Lloyd, ONE, YML, COSCO and OOCL will jointly run a new direct service from Visakha Container Terminal (VCT), the privately-run facility at State-owned Visakhapatnam Port Trust, to the Mediterranean and Europe, which will also bring connectivity with Africa and the America. The announcement strengthens Visakha Container Terminal’s rising stature as a regional container transshipment hub on the east coast, said shipping industry sources. “The commercial benefits offered by Visakhapatanam Port Trust makes the terminal even more attractive in the long run by being the gateway to the East for both northern and southern regions extending right up to Bangladesh and even Myanmar,” the terminal operator said. The terminal, majority owned by International Cargo Terminals & Infrastructure Pvt Ltd, is located centrally and strategically on the East Coast of India between Kolkata and Chennai. The facility handled over 0.45 million TEUs during FY19 and is on the verge of crossing the 0.5-million TEUs in FY20, aided by a 16 pre cent growth in traffic, complemented rail movement and also transshipment.
ICON OF THE SEAS
A crew member of the 'Icon of the Seas' has died after going overboard. A man overboard call went off aboard the ship on July 25, 2025, at around 7:00 p.m., a few hundred miles off the coast of the Bahamas. Crews deployed rescue efforts. The crew member was located and pulled onto a dinghy; however, he passed away.
EL.VENIZELOS
The 'El Venizelos' is expected to permanently join the Algérie Ferries fleet under a lease-purchase agreement. A lease agreement with a purchase option has been signed between the two parties, providing for a transfer of ownership after a five-year period. The 'El Venizelos' is one of the oldest vessels in the fleet of the Greek maritime group Attica. Since June 2025, the ferry has been operating between Algeria, France, and Spain under the Algérie Ferries banner. Its acquisition would bring the Algerian company's fleet to five, which currently includes the 'Badji Mokhtar III', the 'Tassili II', the 'Djazaïr II' and the 'Tariq Ibn Ziad'. The latter, which has been under repair for two years, is expected to return to service in Aug 2025.
Abbot Point
Three South Korean brokerage firms, including Samsung Securities Co. Ltd., underwrote around 250 billion won ($208 million) of a subordinated debt on Abbot Point coal terminal in Australia in the second investment by South Korean institutions in the export terminal. Samsung and Hanwha Investment & Securities Co. Ltd. acquired 150 billion won of the five-year debt in aggregate for an expected yield of about 8%. They are selling them down to domestic institutional investors.
Miami
Carnival Cruise Line is to fully renovate and significantly expand Cruise Terminal F at Florida’s PortMiami to accommodate its Excel-class cruise ships, which will be the largest in its fleet and will be powered by LNG. Following approval from the Miami-Dade County Commission, Carnival has shared its plans to work with Miami-based design firm Berenblum Busch Architects to create a terminal with a simple and open layout. The terminal will be equipped with various technologies, such as facial recognition systems, to make the embarkation process quicker and safer. Terminal F is set to open in October 2022 to coincide with the arrival of Carnival’s second Excel-class ship (yet to be named) and is one of three dedicated to the line’s operations in Miami.
X-PRESS PEARL
The Supreme Court of Sri Lanka ordered on July 24, that the Singaporean shipping company X Press Feeders has to pay $1 billion in interim damages for the sinking of the "X-Press Pearl". The Sri Lankan authorities have requested $40 million in compensation the day after the accident, now up to $1 billion, which could increase further depending on the calculation of other compensation, according to the judgment. The accident caused an unprecedented ecological disaster, preventing all fishing activity for several months and causing significant deposits of chemicals and plastic pellets along 80 kilometres of coastline. Despite obtaining an order from a London maritime court in July 2023, limiting their liability to a maximum of $25 million, the Singaporean owners are facing an appeal of this decision by Sri Lanka and are now awaiting a decision from the London court. The owners have already had to pay $7.85 million for cleanup and compensation to the fishermen. Sri Lankan authorities believe the fire was caused by a nitric acid leak, which the crew appeared to have been aware of nine days before the fire began. Ports in Qatar and India had refused to unload the leaking nitric acid.
FREMANTLE HIGHWAY
Within a few days, it will become clear whether two Rotterdam buyers will be allowed to sell 260 brand-new BMWs or whether the vehicles must be destroyed. They were stored in the hold of the 'Fremantle Highway', when a fire broke out on board on July 25, 2023, approximately 27 kilometers off the coast of Ameland. while the ship was en route from Bremerhaven to Singapore with nearly 4,000 new cars, but ultimately had to be towed to Eemshaven. The entrepreneurs bought the seemingly flawless BMWs in Eemshaven for over five million euros. They intended to resell them. According to them, the BMWs are in excellent condition, but the German car manufacturer itself claims the cars were damaged in the fire. BMW seized the vehicles and, in legal proceedings, demanded that all 260 be destroyed. BMW is against the sale, partly because cars intended for the Asian market are not allowed to be sold in Europe. Furthermore, BMW can no longer guarantee the safety of the cars, the car manufacturer's lawyer argued in February 2024. BMW's position is that the cars have been damaged by the heat and soot, and by the ship itself, that the quality has deteriorated, and that any future claims will cause BMW problems. The judge will rule on the case no later than the first week of August. All 260 hybrid cars are still parked in an industrial estate in Moerdijk. If the judge in the main proceedings does decide that the cars must be destroyed, Bakker and his colleague buyer will face enormous expenses. Not only the demolition is expensive- The storage also costs money, and while the cars are getting older every day, their value decreases.
Altamira
Kalmar, part of Cargotec, has signed a contract to supply Infraestructura Portuaria Mexicana (IPM) with two ship-to-shore (STS) and three rubber-tyred gantry (RTG) cranes for the IPM Altamira terminal. The order, which also includes Kalmar SmartPort process automation solutions for the RTGs, was booked in Cargotec’s 2019 Q3 order intake with handover scheduled to be completed during Q1 of 2021. The IPM Altamira terminal is located on the Gulf of Mexico, in the state of Tamaulipas. The terminal’s current equipment fleet already includes one Kalmar STS crane, eight Kalmar RTGs and a variety of Kalmar mobile equipment such as terminal tractors and forklifts. The Kalmar STS cranes will be Super Post-Panamax size with an outreach of 21 container rows and have twin-lift capability with a capacity of 65 tonnes under the spreader.
Antwerp
ECOsubsea, the Norwegian cleantech firm with a unique hull cleaning technology has won contracts to clean in North European ports of Antwerp and Zeebrugge thanks to the technology’s ability to remove all hull fouling from the water, the company said in its release. The technologically-advanced system has now been approved for use in the two North European ports following around 500 vessel cleanings in Southampton and Norway and its proven ability to meet strict environmental requirements. While hull cleaning is an important part of vessel efficiency it has become mired in controversy due to the high risk of invasive species being easily transferred across the oceans and becoming an environmental and economic hazard.