INGRID MAJALA

Offshore wind caught a favorable gust with the 2020 election of Joe Biden, and the following breeze from the early 2021 reconfiguration of the U.S. Senate toward Democrats. Though widely touted as a growth engine for maritime businesses (as well as shoreside trades), the latter years of the Trump administration seemed to see delay after delay.The class society DNV has been involved in offshore wind since its outset in the early 1990s, and now has 2,000 energy experts working in its efforts supporting this power source.

Russia's biggest shipping company Sovcomflot says, according to Interfax news agency:The company is ready to buy back up to $400 million of Eurobond-2023, to finance it via new issue;The offer price is $1,072.25 per paper of a nominal price of $1,000;Sovcomflot plans to issue 7-year Eurobond, will hold calls with investors starting from April 14, Interfax cites a source.(Reporting by Moscow Newsroom)

Canada's manufacturers on Monday asked the federal government to curb a brewing labor dispute after dockworkers at the country's second largest port said they will work less this week.Unionized dockworkers, who are in talks for a new contract since 2018, will hold a partial strike starting Tuesday, by refusing all overtime outside of their normal day shifts, along with weekend work, they said in a statement on Monday.The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Quebec's 1,125 longshore workers at the Port of Montreal rejected a March offer from the Maritime Employers Association.

NOAA is updating its baseline numbers used for gauging hurricane season activity using more recent storm data.Once every decade, the agency revises its set of statistics used to determine when hurricane seasons are above-, near- or below-average relative to the climate record. Beginning with this year’s hurricane season outlooks, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center (CPC) will use 1991-2020 as the new 30-year period of record. “This update allows our meteorologists to make forecasts for the hurricane season with the most relevant climate statistics taken into consideration,” said Michael Farrar, director of NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction.

Four dead gray whales washed ashore on San Francisco Bay area beaches in nine days, with experts announcing that two of the giant aquatic mammals died from ship strikes and an investigation is ongoing Saturday on the other two.Biologists with the non-profit Marine Mammal Center in California said in a release Saturday that two dead whales washed ashore in the Bay area on Thursday, joining two more that were discovered dead in area beaches since March 31.Of the four animals, two died from blunt force trauma from ship strikes, the center said.