From the Desk of Capt. Jeff Monroe, MM, AMPE Climate change remains one of the hottest topics currently in the public realm. While the causes of climate change tend to spark political debate, the realities of a changing climate are decidedly apolitical: warming temperatures, rising sea levels, melting ice sheets, and changing weather patterns. As with any other major force of change – technological advancement, shifts in the global economy, patterns of consumption – successful ports will contemplate a changing climate when planning. Ports are in the process of looking at long-range infrastructure investments based on the revised 100-year flood plain maps put out by FEMA and Environment Can

From the Desk of Capt. Jeff Monroe, MM, AMPE THE AMERIMAX SHIP Ports have been heavily focused on eliminating infrastructure limitations including terminal capacity, waterway depth and channel configurations, bridge heights, rail capacity, and roadway access. New cranes are arriving for the container trade on a regular basis. The question comes up “How big do we build?” Recently, the discussion of the AMERIMAX containership has come up. These ships are roughly the maximum size of the ships that can be handled in the new locks in the Panama Canal, but also reflect the general limitations of most of the largest container ports in North America. Coming in at just under 15,000 TEU’s and wit