On March 26th and 27th UMass Dartmouth hosted a symposium on the promise of short sea shipping. Today’s Standard Times has an article about the conference and the great potential for locating short sea operations at East Coast ports:

A “perfect storm of opportunity” could drive the East Coast to embrace short sea shipping and put ports such as New Bedford and Fall River back on the map as significant players in moving cargo up and down the Atlantic seaboard.

Climate change and transportation issues, including the push to cut emissions and rising fuel prices, could combine with the re-emergence of cities as sought-after places to live, spinning up the “perfect storm of opportunity,” according to Douglas I. Foy, former state secretary of Commonwealth Development.