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Paul Allen's yacht destroyed 14,000 sq.ft of reef in the West Bay Caymans
- teraflop 11y agoPedantic point of clarification: there's no such thing as "the West Bay Caymans". The damage happened off the coast of the West Bay district of Grand Cayman.
- jonathankoren 11y ago"Any vessel that causes damage to local reefs can be fined. However, despite a number of incidents of reef damage over the last few years by both cruise ships and luxury yachts, the government has failed to collect on sanctions." What the fuck?
- cjhveal 11y agoI'd guess that they're balancing levying fines against these entities and the tourism/money that they're bringing to the islands.
- acqq 11y agoCan anybody demonstrate the "balance"? I always had an impression that yachts don't pay much to the average place where they anchor but only to the marinas?
- kika 11y agoIf this had happened in the so called "marine park" then it usually means that the yacht paid the "mooring fee" for just the right to drop an anchor in the designated space. Designated by the "local authority", btw. And for megayachts these fees are quite high (hundreds or thousands of dollars).
- sandworm101 11y ago>>> Allen’s communication team shows the billionaire is not taking responsibility and implicated the Port Authority, saying the crew followed officials’ instructions on where to place the vessel. Don't care. Captains are always 100% responsible for the movement of their ship. Though rare in practice, captains are expected to override anyone, including pilots, to ensure safe and lawful operation of their vessels. The captain works for the owner. The owner is financially responsible for mistakes of his employee. Allen should pay up.
- briantakita 11y agothis is a symptom of hoarding capital. paul allen did "earn" all of his wealth, right? good thing he a "responsible" citizen of the world, wielding his abstractions
- zo1 11y agoIt's quite disturbing to see people latch on to this individual's wealth as some sort of automatic "reason" or "explanation" for the incident. You know, it's entirely plausible that this was a genuine accident that couldn't have been foreseen. It's not like rich people go around wanting to damage and destroy the world on purpose.
- briantakita 11y agoall good points that i understand & have once held > it's entirely plausible that this was a genuine accident 100% agree > that couldn't have been foreseen the amount of traffic & large watercraft in close proximity to the reefs are bound to cause issues > It's not like rich people go around wanting to damage and destroy the world on purpose. the issue with wealth in today's global economy is the hoarders of wealth don't feel the consequence of their actions if their wealth contributes to the destruction of the environment, human rights abuses, or the plethora of the consequences of their influence; then it does not matter whether they damage and destroy the world on purpose
- adventured 11y ago
- a_bonobo 11y agoThat yacht hosts one of the SeaKeeper oceanographic monitoring systems for the SeaKeeper society, so for it to destroy a reef while (automatically) measuring sea health is a bit ironic
- plorg 11y agoLink for the curious: http://www.seakeepers.org/ http://www.seakeepers.org/ For me this doesn't seem to show up on the first page of Google results for "SeaKeeper". Instead there's a gyro roll-stabilizing device for yachts that goes by the same name. This made me question whether you had confused two devices on the yacht. But a more precise Googling did in fact find the society you mention.
- stevecalifornia 11y agoIt is terrifying and sad to see the world I grew up with slowly ground away through negligence. As an eleven year old I went snorkeling for the first time in the pristine Caymans. In my short life-time (I'm only mid-thirties) I have seen the great reefs I once explored demolished. I can't even... I am just floored at how quickly we destroy things that took ages to grow.
- sandworm101 11y agoWhile a shame, this sort of damage is not totally unnatural. Hurricanes have been decimating reefs for millions of years. A drifting tree trunk, at low tide in moderate surf, can do this much damage in a few minutes. The real manmade reef killers are chemical, not physical.
- toomuchtodo 11y agoTrue! Global warming/climate change is destroying vast quantities of reefs, yet people latch on to events like this.
- winter_blue 11y agoThis is really small compared to the systematic destruction of rain forests in the Amazon. I don't think you should be sad about something that was caused by an unintentional error, like Paul Allen's crash. What is right to be poignant about is all the intentional corruption-driven destruction caused by humans.
- dzhiurgis 11y agoIf you seen reefs at their pristine condition and see reef at most of the places nowadays, you'd be more indifferent to these news. I saw a live reef several years back in Egypt and it was a astonishing, beautiful and alive. After this I've been few other places and while there were some fish, it was nothing like that. Everything I saw is like the 'destroyed' picture in the article. I think such damages don't do much impact on these reefs as they are effectively dead anyway.
- aokyler 11y agoI don't see how the airings of Paul Allen's yacht news is particularly relevant to Hacker News. It's gossip, at best. Even in the guise of having conversation around environmental responsibility.
- reustle 11y agoIt is interesting to follow this to see how he responds. It is a glimpse into his true character.
- aokyler 11y agoOur interpretation of the events is very possibly limited - we as a community are hardly informed enough to be judges of Paul Allen's character. It's just poor content, that leads to a lot of silly trolling and adds very little to Hacker News.
- onion2k 11y agoI agree that it doesn't add much to HN when stories like this are voted up on to the front page, but the implied alternative where stories like this are purposefully blocked from being on the front page by some mechanism is so much worse. It's far better to accept a little irrelevant gossip at the cost of the community than to start censoring what we can vote on and destroy the integrity on HN altogether.
- aokyler 11y agoRight, I agree with that completely - I'm more suggesting we should be a bit ashamed of ourselves as a community for pushing the equivalent of tech tabloid news to the front page. There are more appropriate mediums to argue in if we feel Paul Allen isn't responding well enough to "the incident".
- onewaystreet 11y agoThis has been a recurring issue in the Caymans. Just a few months ago the reef was damaged by a cruise ship. There has been a long debate between the Cayman government and environmental groups over building a large pier to better handle cruise ships and yachts. Environmental groups have been fighting it because some of the reef would have to be relocated to build it.
- luckydata 11y agoGood thing our loose regulations help those responsible individuals amass immense fortunes to be used to the benefit of mankind. Exactly like Paul Graham explained in his "thoughtful" essay. Oh, wait...
- tempestn 11y agoPaul Allen has pledged to give the majority of his fortune away[1][2], and has already founded the Allen Institutes for Brain Science and Cell Science, among other charitable endeavours (not that he's under any obligation to do either). So he spent a tiny fraction of his wealth on a yacht (which also employs people for what it's worth). Should he be putting 100% of his savings toward the benefit of mankind instead of only 99%? [1] http://givingpledge.org/ http://givingpledge.org/ [2] http://givingpledge.org/pdf/pledge-letters/Allen_Letter.pdf http://givingpledge.org/pdf/pledge-letters/Allen_Letter.pdf
- lmm 11y agoThe percentage you give away is a less relevant measure than how much you keep. To me it seems obscene for an individual to own a 300ft yacht.
- kika 11y agoJust a few decades ago it was obscene for some civil individual to express their opinion on the public world wide network without DoD permission and security clearance. Shame on you!!
- Silhouette 11y agoTo me it seems obscene for an individual to own a 300ft yacht. Well, OK, you're obviously entitled to your own opinion and principles. But where then do you draw the line between what is obscene and what is not? If you've ever travelled to a foreign country on holiday, you've enjoyed more luxury in those few days than many people in the world ever will, and you might have spent more money on your holiday than it would take to build a well in Africa and save a whole village from multiple hours of walking every day just to access potable water. If you've ever had major medical support paid for by some form of insurance or national healthcare provider, you've probably enjoyed better treatment than is accessible to most people in developing economies today. If you've ever had a $5 drink in a coffee shop, the money you spent on that could have bought an entire meal for a homeless person in your own city who is going hungry instead. There is always someone richer and always someone poorer. What we regard as obscene, in either direction, often seems to be more a subjective product of our own background and position on the scale than any objective measure.
- aresant 11y agoFer goodness sakes, it's not like he was insensitive to the delicate ecosystem - I mean the guy just brought his small yacht - the Tatoosh (303ft) - not the big one (the 400+ ft Octopus)! The way you people are carrying on youd think we were dealing with a megalomaniac here. (1) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus_(yacht) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus_(yacht)
- McKayDavis 11y agoI'll take this opportunity to point out that Paul Allen is a strong supporter of research to save the ocean's coral reefs. Last June he funded [1] a nearly $4 MM USD 5 yr project for researchers at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa (HIMB) [2] and the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) to study assisted evolution to increase the resilience of coral species. [1] http://www.vulcan.com/news/articles/2015/coral-reef-research-support http://www.vulcan.com/news/articles/2015/coral-reef-research... [2] http://www.hawaii.edu/news/2015/08/04/ruth-gates-research-to-reverse-rapid-coral-reef-decline-supported-by-paul-g-allen/ http://www.hawaii.edu/news/2015/08/04/ruth-gates-research-to... (disclaimer: my wife works at HIMB) edit: It looks as this comment is viewed by some as excusing the incident -- that's not the intent. I just wanted to point out that Mr. Allen was already helping to save reefs, not destroy them.
- sandworm101 11y agoDonating to MADD doesn't get one out of obeying traffic laws. If anything, this shows that Allen was well aware of how sensitive reefs are and so should have made sure his boat wasn't part of the problem.
- ghshephard 11y agothe crew followed officials’ instructions on where to place the vessel. Shifting winds reportedly changed the position, pushing the ship toward the reserve but it was relocated to avoid damage.
- sandworm101 11y agoFollow all the instructions you want, captains are still responsible for the physical movement of their vessels. The captain probably should have recognized that safe mourning was impossible and moved the ship elsewhere. Captains, like doctors and lawyers, are not hired to simply follow orders.
- ghshephard 11y ago
- voynich61 11y agoLet's see him get reservations at Dorsia now!
- _pmf_ 11y agoIt's OK, guys, he's rich. Let's go back to telling developing countries that they should respect the environment more.