Thriving Oceans

Apparently levying six and seven figure fines is an oily drop in the bucket to commercial shippers as yet another company has been caught illegally dumping their waste. It seems Casilda Shipping Ltd. got off easy with a $750K fine for violating international law by forging their “oil record book” and discharging waste oil at sea prior to coming to port in Oakland. By easy, I mean that this was a mere sub-million dollar fine imposed for polluting our oceans with untreated waste oil over a period from July 2007 to May 2008. They should consider themselves quite lucky that their ecological indifference and criminal activities did not result in fines topping $7 million, as was the case with an Egyptian shipping company earlier this year.

Since commercial shipping companies continue to bypass their anti-pollution systems, discharge waste, and risk fines, we need to ask ourselves if these fines are at all adequate. Obviously guilty operating companies are performing a classic cost-benefit analysis and realizing that it is cheaper to incur periodic punitive assessments than disposing of the sludge properly, which can be quite expensive and time consuming.

The Journal of the U.S. EPA Oil Program (2003)

• A National Academy of Sciences (NAS) study estimated last year that ships worldwide generate 500 million gallons of this sludge.
• NAS estimates that roughly 5 percent of waste from the largest tankers was discharged illegally and that 15 percent generated by smaller ships was discharged illegally.
• The study concluded that 65 million gallons is dumped annually.

Well who knew that the first thoughts I’d transcribe under Thriving Oceans would be so politically charged. I guess it is perfect timing considering the upcoming elections as anti-this and pro-that rallies drift from state to state solely for the opportunity to discharge their nematocysts and hook passersby with talking points.

Additionally, environmentalists, conservationists, legislators, representatives, and citizens continue to spar over the safety and expansion of nuclear power plants. Even a few years back, Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, declared in The Washington Post, “Nuclear energy is the only large-scale, cost-effective energy source that can reduce these emissions while continuing to satisfy a growing demand for power. And these days it can do so safely.” Such comments exploded like Chernobyl, setting off a chain of events that resulted simultaneously in condemnation and praise.

While our society still continues to swim amongst the fall out, a bloom of jellyfish managed to exercise their innate marine right to congregate and protest yesterday. The target of these activist cnidarians was the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in California. Although they did not manage to shut down the plant completely, they were effective enough to force a reduction in operating power.

Now that we know the stance of jellyfish on nuclear power, it will be interesting to see how this floating “block” influences our future alternative energy decisions.