Hello, we seem to have a serious weed problem in our canals!
What a truly bizarre spectacle this is. It seems that climate change is causing excessive weed growth in UK canals as of July 2025. The poor guy in the boat (pictured above) seems to have been almost swallowed whole by the green stuff which is clearly out of control. Here’s the story.
Every year the Canal & River Trust removes over 2,500 tonnes of invasive weed, at a cost of more than £1 million. The charity’s teams are already preparing for action, readying the fleet of boats that will scoop weed from the water before it can spread further. Over the summer, they will be out every day fighting the spread of the invasive weed. Continue reading “What caught my eye: July 2025”
This is the first of three stories I have chosen to highlight this month, all of which originate from Norway.
In recent years, IIMS has published a number of articles about the growing problem of what to do with end-of-life boats and the challenges of recycling them. It remains a thorny subject and will be discussed in this edition of what caught my eye: February 2025.
Let’s face it, we all love a good ghost story, don’t we? Engineers (along with a different branch of the surveying family) have braved spooks and spectres to inspect the Harecastle Tunnel in Staffordshire, UK to ensure it is safe for waterway users to navigate, this and other things caught my eye in January 2025.
Dear member and fellow maritime professionals
When I read this story in December 2024 despite the report coming out in October, it did not shock me, but it certainly saddened me. I guess we all know the inherent dangers that fishers the world over face. So, I read that a global safety charity is calling for urgent change and investment after its latest report named fishing as the world’s most dangerous occupation.
Well, who wouldn’t want to take a trip down the river in their very own floating hot tub. Sounds like a great and rather cool idea to me. And now you can add San Francisco to the list of cities offering hot tub rides through its scenic waters. This seems to be part of a larger trend as last winter the City of Chicago made headlines by offering holiday hot tub tours down the Chicago River.
The first artwork on water by Alex Chinneck, the sculpture celebrates Sheffield’s historic waterways and industrial heritage. It takes the form of a full-size canal boat, whose body behaves in an extraordinary way, performing a six metre-high, gravity-defying, loop-the-loop.
It seems we have gone full circle. Cargo ships powered by sail were lost to us a century or more ago, and to the current generation such vessels are regarded as outmoded transportation from a bygone era. But now they are back, more sophisticated and sustainable than ever. Recently I read about the Anemos, which has claimed the title of the world’s largest sailing cargo ship as she made her inaugural voyage from Concarneau, South Brittany, France.