Salvatore (Sal) Mercogliano: What's Going on With Shipping, YouTube Show Review | Turn the Lens Ep41

Salvatore (Sal) Mercogliano (Sal), has a Ph.D. in Military and Naval History from the University of Alabama. He served in the Merchant Marine, has been an Adjunct Professor of History/Engineering at the US Merchant Marine Academy for over 17 years, and Chairs the Department of History, Criminal Justice, and Political Science for Campbell University for over 14 years.

So when something happens with ships, shipping, the US Navy or other major maritime news around the world, I go to Sal to find out what’s really going on.

Welcome to the first in a series of YouTube Show reviews that I hope can shed more light on some of the amazing information sources that operate as independents. These experts bring a wealth of knowledge and experience, a network of trusted colleagues, information on the open source data and applications, with knowledge on how to best use them to draw out the relevant information around a specific incident. 

When you want to get beyond the sound bite, and have a knowledgeable expert walk you through the details, known and unknown, answers and questions, you get a much better picture of what’s happening in the world around us. Watch a few, with different sources, and one can begin to triangulate consistencies and patterns.

So we kick off the series with Sal Mercogliano, maritime historian, former merchant mariner, and the expert behind the YouTube channel ‘What’s Going on With Shipping’

Sal’s channel ‘blew up’ with his coverage of the Motor Vessel EVER GIVEN gumming up the Suez Canal, and temporarily halting all global shipping through this most important passage. You’ll be amazed at the number of new things happening in and around the oceans impacting us almost every day. 

Salvatore (Sal) Mercogliano: What's Going on With Shipping, YouTube Show Review | Turn the Lens with Jeff Frick Ep41

#Commerce #GlobalCommerce #Maritime #Oceans #PanamaCanal #BlackSea #TradeWar #MotorVessel #EverGiven #Ships #Tariffs #Panama #WhatsGoingOnWithShipping #Trade #GlobalTrade #USSTruman #Logistics #Maritime #OpenSource #Shipping #Review #SalMercogliano #SupplyChain #SuezCanal #Trade #TurnTheLens #YouTube

YouTube - Click Here 

Transcript and Show Notes - Click Here 

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
3, 2, 1 ..
Hey welcome back everybody
Jeff Frick here.
Coming to you for another episode of‘Turn the Lens’ with Jeff Frick.
And we're going to go a littlebit different direction today.
You know I was sharing someinformation with a friend of mine.
I spent a lot of timeon YouTube.
Basically I got commercial free YouTube and
once you go commercial free,it's really hard to watch regular TV.

(00:21):
Just like if you have commercial free Spotify
it’s really hard to watch or listento commercials on Spotify.
So anyway, so I have, paidYouTube, which is great.
No commercials.
So I watch a lot of stuff andshare it with a lot of people.
And my buddy said,
‘Jeff, why don't you help other peoplediscover some of these things?’
And really, I thinkin the context of information

(00:42):
in the context of new sources,in the context of open source,
I think it's importantthat we look
at a lot of different sourcesof information and media,
to try to get the informationas to what is going on.
I don't really watch news,U.S news anymore.
As a lot of, you know, I follow the Ukrainian war pretty closely
and came across a number of folks there

(01:03):
that are publishing stuff,
who are Ukrainian
who have access to the open source data,
and are subject matter experts,
and can give youa little bit more context,
and then you've got 3 or 4 of them
and they're all using differentopen source data sources.
You can kind of startto triangulate
and get a little bit better feel for what's going on.
None of us ever really know.
But I want totake a minute

(01:24):
and just highlighta couple of cool, things
that maybe you should check out on YouTube.
That maybe you didn'tthink about,
but actually havea lot of
information about what's going on in the world today.
You'll be amazed at how much information these people get
from the open source resources.
So the one I want to highlight today
is called ‘What's Going On With Shipping?

(01:44):
It's hosted by a guyby the name of Sal Mercogliano,
And you think‘What's Going on With shipping?’
Is that very exciting?
Well, it turns out Sal launchedhis channel when the,
the big Evergreen container ship (Vessel EVER GIVEN)
got stuck in the Suez Canal,if you recal
and clogged up the Suez Canal for a little while ago.

(02:05):
And you think, okay, well,that's a big global issue,
that impacts shipping,that impacts everybody.
It impacted the routesthat all the ships are going
it impacted global commerce.
But there's been other thingsthat have gone on that
maybe youdidn't think about,
like the crash of the ship [MV DALI] into the[Francis Scott Key] Bridge in Baltimore,
that knocked that bridge down,which is a horrible tragedy.

(02:26):
But why didthat happen?
What happened to that ship?
And these guys can go inand break it down,
even to the levelof the engine systems,
the electrical systems,
if you recall, the lightsflickered on and off
a couple timesbefore it hit the bridge.
Sal and people like Sal
will go through the detailas to what happened,
what type of electrical system,what can they guess,
happened fromthat data?

(02:48):
Another thing that's been happening is the aircraft carrier [USS Harry S. Truman]
got run into rightoutside the Suez Canal.
If you recall.
Sal breaks it down.
Where was the aircraft carrier?
Where was it going?Where was the ship that hit it?
How did it hit?
What direction were they going?
What's the most likely cause?
And do they havetransponders on?
All these things that if you don't know much about shipping,

(03:10):
maybe you didn't knowabout this thing.
The Russian oil fleetis breaking apart
in theBlack Sea.
So, Sal will break it down.
What ships broke?
How old were they?
It turns out that they wereships really designed
for inter coastal passageway,not out in the ocean.
And that's why they that's why they break.

(03:31):
There's all the issueswith going on with
ships breaking communications,and power cables,
all around the,all around Europe.
And we've seen it in a number of places in Taiwan
where ships either on purposeor, not on purpose,
dragging anchors and breaking communication cables
and energy cables,

(03:52):
which is not goodand important to all of us.
There was just recently
a crash of a ship into a tanker
that was supporting the US Navy.
I think it had, jet fuel on it, you know,
nuclear aircraft carriersrun on nuclear power, obviously.

(04:13):
So they don't need diesel fuel,
but they need fuelfor the airplanes.
And this ship just ran into a US tanker[MV Stena Immaculate]
that was carrying jetfuel for airplanes
on an aircraft carrier.
Well, that impacts, aircraftoperations pretty significantly.
And we don't have a lotof those ships in the fleet.
There's the whole Houthisfighting with the U.S. Navy

(04:36):
and trying todisrupt shipping,
which is changing the waythat people ship goods.
There is, you know,what's going on with Trump
and his statements around Panama,
his statements around tariffs.
And if you're in the shipping industry
how does that impactyour planning
and what you're trying to do?
It's a big deal.

(04:57):
And with themchanging frequently
it makes it a little bit more difficult.
The list is long
and there's more interesting things happening
in some of these sectorsthat you might not have thought.
And because of the power of open source
and the power of these people that have the context
and know wherethe data is
and know how to operate the tools,
you will learn a lot more than you,you probably anticipated.

(05:19):
So check it out.
What's Going On With Shipping?[youtube.com/WhatisGoingonWithShippingwSalMercogliano]
I'll put a linkin the description below.
Thanks a lot.Let me know if you enjoy it.
If there’s any of your favorites
Please put themin the comments.
Take Care, Jeff Frickchecking out.
Thanks for watching.
Thanks for listening.See you next time.
Bye bye.
Hey, Jeff Frick here with a special shoutout to the podcast audience.
Thanks for listening in.
You can find transcripts and show notesat Turn the Lens podcast.com.

(05:44):
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