Step out of your room and right onto the beach (Blast staff photo/John M. Guilfoil)

FALMOUTH — You know all those 1950s surf music videos, where people are on the beach, playing volleyball, surfing, drinking from coolers, and generally being best friends with strangers? Yeah, that’s not supposed to happen in real life. Or, if it did, it was something unique to that era, before people in New England generally hated strangers and local beaches.

So it was easy to go into a newly remodeled Cape Cod beach hotel with a certain amount of skepticism.

Imagine my surprise. Maybe I’ve been too cynical about our local waterfronts.

The Sea Crest Beach Hotel just underwent a $15 million renovation to smartly bring the resort back in time. From the soft, white sand on the beach, to the indoor and outdoor pools, outdoor dining, poolside bar and quaint, comfortable restaurant, the hotel offers a total package that screams vintage Cape Cod.

This is what a Cape vacation is supposed to be. This isn’t rows of tourist traps, awful gift shops and a endless line of Christmas Tree Shops stores. This is summer — or fall in my case — on a private beach, with employees who know your name and room number and bartenders who know what you’re drinking.

The other people staying at the hotel seemed to be taken away just as much as I was. People said hi as they walked by, and we did the same. Strangers held conversations and clanged glasses together.

Even the history of the hotel screams vintage and cool retro. In 1927, a young Henry Fonda, Margaret Sullivan and James Stewart and other beautiful and famous people created a summer playhouse and tea room on Old Silver Beach, where the hotel stands today. It burned down in a 1936 fire and was rebuild as the Old Silver Beach Club, a Prohibition-era speakeasy. It was destroyed in a hurricane two years later and re-built as The Latin Club, a club managed by Lou Walters, the father of Barbara Walters. There was a hiatus during World War II, but the property re-opened as a summer resort.

In 1963, a group led by Boston Celtics owner, the late Red Auerbach, purchased the resort and converted it into a year-round resort in 1971. It was purchased by a real estate venture last year.

The sun sets over the private beach (Blast Staff photo/John M. Guilfoil)

We began our Cape weekend with a visit to the Bourne Scallop Festival, one of many fall events and home to some of the best fried scallops I have ever tasted. There are also a variety of rides, games and local crafts.

We arrived at the resort mid-afternoon. The best rooms at the resort are the ground-floor rooms on the beach. You literally step out of your room, onto the beach. It is perfect for getting lost with a date, a bottle of wine, and a picnic lunch. We did. Hours passed slowly but surely as we let the late September fog roll offshore and the sun come out for one more hot day.

For the fall and winter, when it gets colder, there are a variety of fireplace rooms available. You can walk on the beach during the day and warm up by the fire at night.

Seated at the outdoor bar, I was really taken away by the facade covering the building and the blue and white awnings. I felt like I was much farther than an hour away from home. There is a real understated elegance to the Sea Crest. It’s not a cheap hotel, but it’s by far not the most expensive stay on the Cape, yet you feel like you should be spending a lot more money.

Dinner at Red’s restaurant was nice. It’s not a five-star restaurant, but the entrees are filling, the ambiance is comfortable and the service is great.

Here’s how I have to close the story: The Sea Crest hosts weddings, and even as a guy I can say it would be awesome to get married here.

Perhaps the most infamous U.S. dead zone is an 8,500 square mile swath of the Gulf of Mexico, not far from where the nutrient-laden Mississippi River, which drains farms up and down the Midwest, lets out.

So-called dead zones are areas of large bodies of water—typically in the ocean but also occasionally in lakes and even rivers—that do not have enough oxygen to support marine life. The cause of such “hypoxic” (lacking oxygen) conditions is usually eutrophication, an increase in chemical nutrients in the water, leading to excessive blooms of algae that deplete underwater oxygen levels. Nitrogen and phosphorous from agricultural runoff are the primary culprits, but sewage, vehicular and industrial emissions and even natural factors also play a role in the development of dead zones.

Dead zones occur around the world, but primarily near areas where heavy agricultural and industrial activity spill nutrients into the water and compromise its quality accordingly. Some dead zones do occur naturally, but the prevalence of them since the 1970s—when dead zones were detected in Chesapeake Bay off Maryland as well as in Scandinavia’s Kattegat Strait, the mouth of the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea and the northern Adriatic—hints at mankind’s impact. A 2008 study found more than 400 dead zones worldwide, including in South America, China, Japan, southeast Australia and elsewhere.

Perhaps the most infamous U.S. dead zone is an 8,500 square mile swath (about the size of New Jersey) of the Gulf of Mexico, not far from where the nutrient-laden Mississippi River, which drains farms up and down the Midwest, lets out. Besides decimating the region’s once teeming shrimp industry, low oxygen levels in the water there have led to reproductive problems for fish, leading to lack of spawning and low egg counts. Other notable U.S. dead zones today occur off the coasts of Oregon and Virginia.

Fortunately, dead zones are reversible if their causes are reduced or eliminated. For example, a huge dead zone in the Black Sea largely disappeared in the 1990s following the fall of the Soviet Union, after which there was a huge spike in the cost of chemical fertilizers throughout the region. And while this situation was largely unintentional, the lessons learned have not been lost on scientists, policymakers and the United Nations, which has been pushing to reduce industrial emissions in other areas around the globe where dead zones are a problem. To wit, efforts by countries along the Rhine River to reduce sewage and industrial emissions have reduced nitrogen levels in the North Sea’s dead zone by upwards of 35 percent.

In the U.S., dead zones have also been reduced in the Hudson River and San Francisco Bay following clean-up efforts. Hypoxic conditions continue to plague the Gulf of Mexico, however, with matters made worse by pollution unleashed by Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill, as well as by a federal push to increase Midwest corn production, which effectively loads even more algae-inducing nutrients into the already overloaded system. The Mississippi Basin/Gulf of Mexico Water Nutrient Task Force, a coalition of federal, state and tribal agencies, has been busy monitoring the dead zone and recommending ways to reduce it since its formation in 1997. But with industrial and agricultural activity throughout Gulf and Midwestern states only increasing—and Mother Nature not making the job any easier—the task force has an uphill battle on its hands to say the least.

CONTACT: Mississippi Basin/Gulf of Mexico Water Nutrient Task Force, www.epa.gov/owow_keep/msbasin.

Scientists speculate that some 10 million different species may inhabit the deep sea. Pictured: a ghostly grenadier on the Davidson Seamount, an undersea mountain 75 miles off the coast of Central California. The seamount is 7,480 feet tall, yet its summit is still 4,101 feet below the sea surface. (NOAA)

It may already be too late for some of the deep sea’s undiscovered life forms.

Advances in so-called “bottom trawling” technology in recent years has meant that fishing boats now have unprecedented access to deep ocean habitats and the sea floor itself where untold numbers of unknown species have been making a living for eons. Scientists speculate that upwards of 10 million different species may inhabit the deep sea. This is biodiversity comparable to the world’s richest tropical rainforests.

The Deep Sea Conservation Coalition (DSCC), a group of more than 50 environmental and other groups dedicated to protecting cold-water corals and vulnerable deep-sea ecosystems, reports that trawlers today are capable of fishing deep sea canyons and rough seafloors that were once avoided for fear of damaging nets. “To capture one or two target commercial species, deep-sea bottom trawl fishing vessels drag huge nets armed with steel plates and heavy rollers across the seabed, plowing up and pulverizing everything in their path,” the coalition reports. In addition, adds DSCC, large quantities of coral and unwanted fish species are hauled up only to be thrown back dead or dying. Indeed, the result of a few hours of trawling can be the destruction of fragile deep-sea habitats, such as delicate coral and sponge communities, that may have taken centuries to grow and thrive.

Bottom trawling also stirs up the sediment at the bottom of the sea. The resulting undersea plumes of “suspended solids” can drift with the current for tens of miles from the source of the trawling, introducing turbidity throughout the water that inhibits the transfer of light down to the depths where it is needed for photosynthesis in plankton, sea kelp and other undersea plants that serve as the basis for the marine food chain. Also, ocean sediments serve as natural safe resting places for many persistent organic pollutants (such as DDT and PCBs). Dredging these sediments up effectively reintroduces such toxins into the water where they are unwittingly absorbed and consumed by the fish we eat and other marine life already trying to cope with otherwise compromised undersea habitats. The sediment plumes also reintroduce nutrient solids from agricultural and other practices, increasing demand for oxygen in the water (causing algae blooms) and contributing to the outbreak of ocean “dead zones” devoid of marine life.

What can be done? For its part, the United States has banned bottom trawling in its offshore jurisdictions, but the practice continues mostly unabated throughout Europe and out on the world’s high seas. DSCC has gotten upwards of 1,400 marine scientists from 69 different countries to sign onto a statement expressing profound concern “that human activities, particularly bottom trawling, are causing unprecedented damage to the deep-sea coral and sponge communities on continental plateaus and slopes, and on seamounts and mid-ocean ridges.” The statement calls on governments and the United Nations to adopt a short-term global moratorium on deep sea bottom trawling to try to provide immediate protection to the mostly undiscovered biodiversity of deep sea ecosystems while governments hash out longer term conservation and management regimes. In the meantime, bottom trawling continues unabated in sensitive areas of the North Atlantic and elsewhere, harvesting now for us what our grandchildren may never know.

As the lowest link on the marine food chain, plankton—that tiny aquatic plant, animal and bacterial matter floating throughout the world’s oceans—is a vital building block for life on Earth. Besides serving as a primary food source for many fish and whales, plankton plays a crucial role in mitigating global warming.

Indeed, the ocean is the world’s largest "carbon sink": As much as one-third of man-made CO2 emissions are stored in the oceans and therefore do not contribute to global warming. This is because its plant component, phytoplankton (its animal component is called zooplankton), pulls massive amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere as it photosynthesizes.

But various environmental factors are taking their toll on plankton the world over. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported recently that marine phytoplankton is declining across the oceans. Even Canadian cod fishermen are noticing that the plankton-feeding fish they catch are often nearly starving as a result of lack of this crucial food source.

A 2007 study published in the scientific journal “Nature” found that human-caused increase in CO2 pollution is altering the pH (acidity) levels in the oceans. This change in chemistry is expected to have adverse effects on the entire ecosystem. More acidic ocean water inhibits the ability of shell-forming marine organisms—from plankton to mollusks to corals—to form properly. Smaller and less healthy populations of plankton would be bad news for all the other creatures above it on the ocean’s food chain.

Higher water temperatures, also attributable to our fossil fuel addiction, can also have a devastating effect on plankton. A recent report in the Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom noted that, in the Adriatic Sea cooler winter conditions — which are less frequent in a warmer world — are needed for plankton production and nutrient availability. Furthermore, warmer sea temperatures can cause "blooms" of other sea life (such as happens with algae), resulting in oxygen starvation in the water, a condition that is devastating to plankton and other marine creatures and organisms.

In other situations, blooms of phytoplankton themselves—the tiny plants can gorge on the nutrients from the run-off from farms and lawns on land—can lead to oxygen — starvation in the water. "The decomposition of these multitudes of phytoplankton removes oxygen from seawater, creating oxygen-poor ‘dead zones’ where fish cannot live," reports Carly Buchwald, a researcher at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Satellite imagery shows that these "dead zones" are expanding. Some scientists are advocating "iron fertilization" — the spreading of large amounts of iron across the world’s seas—to spur plankton growth. But others worry that such tinkering with complex ecosystems could have potentially harmful effects.

Dear EarthTalk: I want to convince my high school to go green. What would it cost for a school to switch to all recycled paper products and all energy efficient lighting? – Danel Berman, via e-mail

Greening your school is a great idea. It will not only benefit the environment but the student body as well. According to the “Greening America’s Schools” report, sponsored in part by the non-profit U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), green buildings provide a better study and learning environment for students. Improved lighting, air quality and acoustics are estimated to improve learning abilities and test scores by as much as five percent. And what better way to teach young people about the importance of environmental stewardship than starting right in the schools where they spend the majority of every weekday?

Since every school is different, there is no universal formula for calculating how much money going green will cost. Switching over to recycled paper, for instance, will not necessarily be cheap. A recent spot-check at a national office supply chain showed that the price for a ream (500 sheets) of 30 percent recycled copy paper was 20 percent higher than a ream with no recycled content. If you chose 100 percent recycled content, you would pay 35 percent more per ream. But prices can vary widely depending upon where you buy paper, and bulk purchasers like schools may be able to negotiate much better prices.

The best way to offset the added costs of switching to recycled paper is to cut paper usage at the same time. Start a program to educate students about how they can reduce paper waste by printing on both sides of a sheet and by not printing as many drafts, for example. You can also encourage your school to switch to e-newsletters instead of paper ones and find other ways to reduce administrative paper use.

Switching to recycled paper is definitely a big win for the environment. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) reports that 40 cases of 30 percent recycled copy paper (400 reams) will save more than seven trees, 2,100 gallons of water, 1,230 kilowatt-hours of electricity and 18 pounds of air pollution.

You can calculate this impact for your school. Ask your school purchaser how much printer/copier paper is purchased, and calculate its weight in pounds or tons. Then go to the Environmental Defense Fund’s online Paper Calculator. Enter the weight and type of paper you use and you can determine the amount of wood, energy, water, solid waste and greenhouse gas emissions you’ll save by switching to recycled.

As for lighting, many schools already use a lot of fluorescent lighting. If your school still uses incandescent bulbs, consider that for every 60-watt incandescent bulb switched to a 13-watt compact fluorescent, the school could save 75 percent in energy use-an average of $45 over the life of each bulb.

Ambitious schools can also put in occupancy sensors that turn lights off when rooms are vacant, or install task lighting to further reduce energy usage. Such add-ons might seem like luxuries for already strapped schools, but it just may be worthwhile anyway given the energy that can be saved and the lessons learned.

CONTACTS: EnergyStar, www.energystar.gov; U.S. Green Building Council, www.usgbc.org; Natural Resources Defense Council, www.nrdc.org; Green Schools Initiative, www.greenschools.net; Environmental Defense Fund’s Paper Calculator, www.papercalculator.org.

Dear EarthTalk: With all the talk of desalinization of ocean water for drinking, what do we know about the impacts this might have on climate, ocean salinity and other natural processes? – Fred Kuepper, via e-mail

Due to its high cost, energy intensiveness and overall ecological footprint, most environmental advocates view desalinization (or desalination)-the conversion of salty ocean water into fresh water-as a last resort for providing fresh water to needy populations. Sourcing fresh water from streams, rivers, lakes and underground aquifers and adhering to strict water conservation measures are much more viable for both economic and environmental reasons in most situations, although some desert regions with thirsty and growing populations may not have many such options.

The relationship between desalinization and climate change is complex. Global warming has increased droughts around the world and turned formerly verdant landscapes into near deserts. Some long held fresh water sources are simply no longer reliably available to hundreds of millions of people around the world.

Meanwhile, expanding populations in desert areas are putting intense pressure on existing fresh water supplies, forcing communities to turn to desalinization as the most expedient way to satisfy their collective thirst. But the process of desalinization burns up many more fossil fuels than sourcing the equivalent amount of fresh water from fresh water bodies. As such, the very proliferation of desalinization plants around the world-some 13,000 already supply fresh water in 120 nations, primarily in the Middle East, North Africa and Caribbean-is both a reaction to and one of many contributors to global warming.

Beyond the links to climate problems, marine biologists warn that widespread desalinization could take a heavy toll on ocean biodiversity; as such facilities’ intake pipes essentially vacuum up and inadvertently kill millions of plankton, fish eggs, fish larvae and other microbial organisms that constitute the base layer of the marine food chain. And, according to Jeffrey Graham of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography’s Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine, the salty sludge leftover after desalinization-for every gallon of freshwater produced, another gallon of doubly concentrated salt water must be disposed of-can wreak havoc on marine ecosystems if dumped willy-nilly offshore. “For some desalinization operations,” says Graham, “it is thought that the disappearance of some organisms from discharge areas may be related to…the salty outflow.”

Of course, as supplies of fresh water dwindle, the economic cost of desalinization-especially in coastal areas with easy access to ocean water-begins to look competitive with traditional water sourcing. To date there are about 300 desalinization plants in the United States, with 120 in Florida and less than 40 each in Texas and California. Some 20 additional plants are planned for the coast of California in the coming years, unless environmentalists extolling the virtues of conservation and wielding low-flow shower heads and toilets prevail.

CONTACT: Scripps’ Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine, www.cmbb.ucsd.edu.

GOT AN ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTION? Send it to: EarthTalk, c/o E/The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; submit it at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/thisweek/, or e-mail: earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php.

Dear EarthTalk: What are these “ocean deserts” I’ve been hearing about? Also, didn’t I read that there was a huge mass of plastic bottles floating around somewhere on the ocean surface? – Wally Mattson, Eugene, OR

So-called “ocean deserts” or “dead zones” are oxygen-starved (or “hypoxic”) areas of the ocean. They can occur naturally, or be caused by an excess of nitrogen from agricultural fertilizers, sewage effluent and/or emissions from factories, trucks and automobiles. The nitrogen acts as a nutrient that, in turn, triggers an explosion of algae or plankton, which in turn deplete the water’s oxygen.

According to the Ocean Conservancy, a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico-where the Mississippi River dumps untold gallons of polluted water every second-has expanded to over 18,000 square kilometers in the last decade. Many other such dead zones have also undergone rapid expansion in recent years.

A recent study by German oceanographer Lothar Stramma and a team of prominent international researchers confirms this phenomenon and also points the finger at global warming. Their data show that oxygen levels hundreds of feet below the ocean surface have declined over the past 50 years around the world, most likely a result of human activity. And as ocean waters warm due to climate change, they retain less oxygen. Furthermore, warmer upper layers of water stifle the process that brings nutrients up from colder, deeper parts of the ocean to feed a wide range of surface-dwelling marine wildlife.

The expansion of these dead zones is bad news for most marine inhabitants and the ecosystems they thrive in. Thousands of different species already stressed from over fishing and other threats, now must contend with expanding hypoxic areas throughout regions that once constituted healthy habitat.

The accumulation of plastic debris and other trash in the ocean is not necessarily related to hypoxic zones, but is yet another major problem facing the world’s fragile marine ecosystems. California-based sea captain and ocean researcher Charles Moore discovered what is now known as the Eastern Garbage Patch-an aggregation of plastic and other marine debris occupying some 700,000 square kilometers in the North Pacific Ocean-during a crossing of the North Pacific in 1997. In a 2003 article in Natural History Magazine, Moore reported being astounded that he couldn’t be further from land anywhere on Earth yet he could see plastic bags and other debris coating the ocean’s surface as far as the eye could see.

Individuals can help the oceans and their inhabitants by making smart daily choices that can have collective, positive impact. Lowering your carbon footprint-driving less, biking more, donning a sweater instead of turning up the heat-is one way to help stem the spread of hypoxic zones, which is directly related to industrial activity and the amount of greenhouse gases we spew into the atmosphere.

And limiting plastic and plastic bag use is the best way to prevent such litter from ending up swirling around mid-ocean. Some countries, such as China, and many large cities-San Francisco, for example-have banned plastic grocery bags. If your city hasn’t yet taken this step, pressure them to do so-and in the meantime bring your own reusable bags to the market and avoid plastic wherever else you can.

CONTACTS: Ocean Conservancy, www.oceanconservancy.org; Natural History Magazine, www.naturalhistorymag.com.

Dear EarthTalk: I’ve followed the trends in “eco-homes” now for many years. Are there equally encouraging things happening in the world of condos? – Charlie Anderson, Seattle, WA

Believe it or not, condominiums may be some of the most environmentally responsible housing out there today, especially since more and more developers are paying attention to sustainability from the get-go.

By their very nature, many condo complexes adhere to some of the most basic tenets of green housing: density, to maximize surrounding open space and minimize buildings’ physical and operational footprints; proximity to mass transit, given their typical location in urban areas; and reduced resource use per unit, thanks to shared systems, walls and common spaces. Builders can elect to layer on other green elements, such as high-efficiency appliances and HVAC systems, green roofs and organic landscaping.

“Projects are embracing green [to] be more responsive to what the buying public is looking for,” says Gail Vittori, chairperson of the U.S. Green Building Council, which produced and manages the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) design and building standards. “They also want to have the built environment become much more in line with environmental and health considerations.”

One example is Florence Lofts, a new development of 12 townhouses and a 4,200 square foot commercial building in downtown Sebastopol, California. The LEED-certified project features a photovoltaic solar system on the roof for hot water and other electrical needs, a commercial scale “gray water” system to divert sink and shower water for irrigation purposes, and a tank that collects storm water from roofs to prevent excessive run-off.

Another example is The Riverhouse overlooking the Hudson River in New York City’s Battery Park district. The LEED-certified, 320-unit building-the new home of actor/environmentalist Leo DiCaprio-has geothermal heating and cooling, twice-filtered air, non-toxic paint, and landscaped roof gardens.

But not all developers need to break the bank to go green on their condo and apartment projects. Two-thirds of the units in Harlem’s much-publicized 1400 Fifth Avenue building-touted as New York’s first green condominium, are considered affordable, priced at $50,000 to $104,000 and restricted to families of moderate income. Also in the New York metropolitan area, Habitat for Humanity recently announced it has assembled a green design team to build “real affordable condos” in New Rochelle and other parts of Westchester County.

“If you’re doing a moderately green building, the premium to build is typically in the 1.5 to two percent range. It’s very small,” says Leanne Tobias of Malachite LLC, a Maryland-based green real estate consulting firm. Additionally, the carrying costs for green units are lower, since such buildings operate on less energy and water and generate less waste than conventional high-rises. “All of those will be savings every month for the homeowners or residents of those buildings,” Vittori adds. “That’s a big plus.”

CONTACTS: U.S. Green Building Council, www.usgbc.org; Habitat for Humanity, www.habitat.org; Malachite LLC, www.malachitellc.com.

GOT AN ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTION? Send it to: EarthTalk, c/o E/The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; submit it at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/thisweek/, or e-mail: earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php

Lighthouse Interactive released images of three of the ships from the upcoming oceanic real-time strategy game Easy India Company.

Pictured are the Cutter, the East Indiaman and the Flute.

East India Company is a PC title and is scheduled for release across North America early next year.

Game summary:

In the 17th century, European powers created East India companies — nations within nations that conquered cities, local towns, and villages to establish large commercial centres. In East India Company, you will assume the role of Governor Director of one of the East India Companies or other rival companies. There are eight nationalities to choose from: British, Dutch, French, Danish, Portuguese, Swedish, Italian or Spanish – with the goal of bringing new colonies and wealth, such as: tea, spices, gold, diamonds, and other precious cargo back to Europe, but you must dominate the other rival empires along the way. With mighty fleets and armies at your command, the power to choose between diplomacy or war is yours.‚ Starting modestly, you will build your fleet, establish connections to far away countries, and keep the rivalling nations at bay. Choose from an array of ship classes, types of transport, and military vessels: the Cutter, East Indiaman, Flute, Frigate, Ship of the Line or Xebec. Create different fleets and assign them to specific trading routes. Controlling well situated ports and upgrading them is one key to success.‚ Conflicts and wars are inevitable. When hostile fleets engage each other, the spectacular naval battles are fought at a real-time tactical level. Devastating broadsides are fired with a deafening roar and cannon balls tear through enemy ships and their crew. At a tactical level, you have direct command over your ship and give independent orders to each of your other fleets. Create a trading empire that will rule above all others!

Game features:

Fight!

• ‚ Declare war on rival empires fought at a real-time tactical level
• ‚ Command ships and fleets independently
• ‚ Wage war on the vast open sea
• ‚ Sink your rivals’ ship or board them to take control in bloody hand-to-hand combat

‚ Manage!

• ‚ Hire and manage your own crew
• ‚ Buy guns and ammo
• ‚ Repair and upgrade your ships at port
• ‚ Buy and sell goods
• ‚ Establish profitable trading routes
• ‚ Open diplomatic relations or declare war
• ‚ Negotiate tense political situations‚ 

Rule!

• ‚ Lead the most powerful company in history
• ‚ Take over colonies and expand your empire
• ‚ Build a powerful fleet to rule the seas
• ‚ Conquer strategic ports
• ‚ Accomplish tasks ordered by your company or the Crown

Multiplayer (Internet or LAN) Features:

• ‚ Supports up to 8 simultaneous players
• ‚ Player statistics tracked on the EIC game server
• ‚ Raise your ranking by thwarting your opponents
• Head-to-head missions are a true test of strategic skill