The UK Marine & Coastal Access Act and Marine (Scotland) Act provide for the identification, designation and management of a network of MCZs (and equivalent Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in Scottish territorial waters) to protect nationally rare/threatened and representative habitats and species and features of geological and geo-morphological importance. 

Marxan is a commonly used tool to inform conservation network planning. However, until now the inputting of common boundary lengths of neighbouring planning cells to Marxan has been a manual and laborious process.  To support its application of Marxan to various marine conservation planning studies, ABPmer has developed a customised GIS geo-processing tool and is pleased to make this freely available to the wider Marxan community. 

Stephen Hull, ABPmer’s Technical Director, said: “We are delighted to provide Marxan users with a much needed tool that will allow ArcGIS 10 users to load existing conservation network boundary data and automatically extract all shared boundary lengths into a Marxan ready text format.  This .NET application is developed using the latest ArcGIS 10 add-in model which means that it can easily shared between users as they do not require installation programs. 

Our dedicated GIS Data Team has extensive experience of working with marine datasets for over a decade.  This group is accustomed to managing multiple datasets creating meaningful information that is applied within a variety of consultancy and research projects and is therefore very familiar with the Marxan tool.” 

The Marxan Tool can be FREELY downloaded from http://www.abpmer.co.uk/allnews4066.asp

This co-operative relationship may not last, given that the two groups are ideologically opposed to one another. Furthermore, the agreement only came about after pirate syndicate leaders were captured by al-Shebaab, which indicates that it was not based on a particularly solid foundation and may not last for very long. The monetary relationship between the two sides is not likely to last.

The town has previously been contested by groups such as Hizb ul-Islam and pirates will still be able to operate further north if they are forced to leave the area.

Container operations
Emergency medical supplies have been released to Christchurch today and we expect to unload our first container ship on Saturday 26 February. We are working with Transit NZ to ensure that the tunnel road is operational and KiwiRail have indicated they will be operational from Saturday 26 February. We are aiming for receival and delivery services to be operational on Monday 28 February 2011.

General cargo operations
General cargo assets continue to be assessed. On Saturday 26 February we will be accepting the Transfuture 7 which is bringing in emergency vehicles and palleted water supplies. On Sunday 27 February The Spirit of Resolution will be bringing in general supplies and on Monday 28 February The Antwerp will be bringing in bananas.

Oil berth operations
We are working towards recommencing receiving fuel on Saturday 26 February. There is some final checking to be completed tomorrow (Friday).

CityDepot operations
We expect to commence receival and delivery operations on Monday 28 February.

We would like to thank all of our customers for their understanding and patience in what has been a stressful and busy time for everyone.

There is still no advice on when the port may re-open. It is understood that the authorities are making special exceptions with some commercial shipping being allowed into the port after being assessed on a case-by-case basis. Restrictions, such as daylight navigation, are imposed for vessels allowed into port.