Congress held hearings yesterday to review the Coast Guard and National Transportation Safety Board's marine casualty investigation program.  Concerns were expressed about training, tour lengths and dissemination of information and recommendations.

The Department of Homeland Security Inspector General's office provided testimony. 

The NTSB provided comment denoting some bureaucratic wrangling in the wake of the…

The Coast Guard issued an interim rule with a request for comments by July 21, 2008. 

The rule intends to implement the International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers qualification requirements for vessel security officers.

I had earlier posted about the UFO Chuting v. Smith case.  The Ninth Circuit held that the State of Hawaii’s partial ban on parasailing off the coast of Maui did not violate the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution and was not preempted by federal law.

The parasail operator filed a Petition for a Writ…

On Monday, May 19, 2008, I will be giving a presentation to the Hawaii State Bar Association’s Admiralty Section.  The title is "Federal and State Regulation of Hawaiian Ocean Waters."

Co-presenting is Deputy Attorney General Bill Wynhoff, who represented the State of Hawaii in the UFO Chuting case posted here.

The talk will be…

The Winston Strawn firm in D.C. published a detailed analysis of the Coast Guard authorization bill posted earlier here.

The Coast Guard has proposed new safety regulations for commercial fishing industry fishing vessels.  The Notice includes a good history of the Coast Guard’s attempts to oversee the safety of the commercial fishing fleet.

They are available for download here.  Public comment is due by July 29, 2008.

I wrote an earlier post about this case, here. 

Prof. Shaun Martin of California Appellate Report has some interesting analysis about the opinon.