Waiting for Godot

Yellow and brown colours show relatively high concentrations of chlorophyll in August 2012, after iron sulphate was dumped into the Pacific Ocean as part of a controversial geoengineering scheme. Photograph: Giovanni/Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center/NASA

Three months ago, says the British Guardian, American businessman George Russ dumped around 100 tonnes of iron sulphate two hundred miles west of Queen Charlotte Islands that lie off British Colombia, Canada. This geoengineering process- “iron seeding” or “ocean fertilisation” - is a means of stimulating a phytoplankton boom. Phytoplankons are small, sometimes microscopic marine organisms that contain chlorophyll. Large numbers of plankton spawned by geoengineering- the Russ kind- absorb carbon dioxide and fall to the ocean floor,  effectively burying the CO2 and mitigating, somewhat, the effects of greenhouse gas emissions.

More than somewhat, actually. The Carnegie Institution says that large-scale iron-seeding could help us sequester around one percent of all emissions on earth.

Nonetheless, George’s move has many –environmentalists, lawyers, the UN and others- up in arms. The fact that Russ is a businessman may have something to do with it; this commercial seeding is meant to make him considerable money using the carbon credits route. Then, Russ’ has a controversial history. He tried- and failed- to do similar stuff off the ecologically sensitive Galapagos and Canary Islands earlier, an attempt that had the US, Spanish and Equadorean governments clamping down hard on him. That episode pushed the UN into passing an international moratorium limiting ocean engineering experiments. There is also a London convention banning such activity, and the Biodiversity Conference held this month in Hyderabad had some nations calling for a comprehensive ban of geoengineering.

His critics say that Russ’ experiments are dangerous, that there are fears amongst scientists that commercial dumping will harm more than it will help, and that seeding may actually make waters more toxic, acidic or inert and so kill marine life. Says Dalhousie Univerity’s John Cullen, "Some possible effects, such as deep-water oxygen depletion and alteration of distant food webs, should rule out ocean manipulation. History is full of examples of ecological manipulations that backfired."
Seems to be an open and shut case, by the looks of things. Except that Russ’ experiment has- on the face of it- worked.

As the map shows, significantly higher concentrations of chrophyll have been detected after Russ’ ocean seeding. Satellite images show that an artificial plankton bloom as large as 10,000 square kilometres has been catalysed. Difficult to argue with that. Russ says, somewhat optimistically, "We've gathered data targeting all the possible fears that have been raised. And the news is good news, all around, for the planet."

This is the conundrum: For decades, international organisations, academicians, world leaders and scientists and envriomnetalists have all sat on their thumbs, debating global warming, researching ad infinitum, holding conferences and participating in junkets that are all Shakespearan sound and fury, eventually signifying nothing. All attempts at setting targets have gone nowhere. All protocols and conferences have failed even before Kyoto. Hidden agendas, corruption, bureaucratic lethargy, research funding imperatives and greed have combined to ensure that the same litany is repeated year after year without any concrete action forthcoming.

In this scenario, a wealthy individual can, as George did with a million dollar stake, go ‘rogue’ and start commercial dumping. The ocean is a big place and difficult to police (and so is the air- another controversial proposal is to spray sulfates into the air to cool the earth. In any case, many of the ideas to combat global warming are cheap). If there are commercial advantages to this- as Russ finds there are, with money to be made in carbon credits- one can rest assured that the people the rest of the world considers rogues- even environmental groups or nations on the edge of the climate change knife- will find a way to circumvent regulation, especially if it is useless, frustrated, coming in the way of solutions or otherwise difficult to enforce.

In any event, what the Russ controversy tells us is this: it is time to get off our backsides and actually do something about global warming instead of debating the issue until Christmas comes.

Or Godot.

Or Armageddon.
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Reserving opinion

Deeply suspicious as I was about the motives of the Australian government when it announced the creation of a 3.1 million square kilometer protected marine reserve- the largest in the world, the size of India and covering a third of Australian waters - I am slowly veering to the position that the plan is, in spite of being an excellent example of crony capitalism combined with cynical and bleary logic, overall not such A Bad Thing after all.  

True, the timing of the announcement caused even my thinning eyebrows to rise. Just last month, a somewhat vituperative UN report had said that the Great Barrier Reef's UN World Heritage listing could be restated as "at risk" unless the reef was protected from the oil, gas and mining boom in Australia. The marine reserve announcement was therefore cleverly timed, stuck between the UN condemnation and the upcoming Rio summit where 130 world leaders would meet to discuss sustainable development. 

That Rio summit has now come and almost gone, leaving behind, in the words of one commentator, "the shattered remains of a slew of proposals that never got off the ground". Unsurprising, because, as Political Director of Greenpeace comments, "Governments, overall, are in the business of delaying and doing nothing."

Unsurprising, too, that the Australian marine reserve proposal drew sharp and immediate criticism. Shallow and transparent, it was said. Will be 'devastating' to local fishing communities since it restricts commercial fishing. The Australian Marine Alliance said the plan would mean a loss of $4.35bn and 36,000 jobs. (Eighty percent of the area will be open to fishing, though, and fishing communities are being promised a financial package). Another criticism harder to refute is that oil and gas exploration is being allowed near protected areas, and that 'no-go zones' seem to have been planned keeping the oil industry's interests uppermost in mind. The World Heritage Ningaloo Reef is a case in point, with the massive gas hub planned at nearby James Price Point. 

So yes, environmentalists' claims- in the words of the Guardian- that the Australian government has "deliberately created "holes" in the marine reserve network to appease the mining industry, which is pushing for a huge increase in shipping through the Great Barrier Reef to accommodate the boom in mineral exports to overseas markets, predominately China and India"- are justified. So are the apprehensions of WWF Australia, which says that areas rich in biodiversity have not been protected- like the Rowley Shoals- for the usual suspicious reasons. No doubt the oil and gas lobbyists worked overtime with the Australian government. 

All that is true. But here's the thing; see where we are coming from. Humanity has dumped nuclear and chemical waste into the oceans. Despite futile international summits, we continue to decimate nature everywhere today in pursuit of its mineral and other resources. (The Rio summit's Oceans Rescue Plan will probably go the way of other such commitments). Look at what corruption in the mining and oil exploration has done to Indian waters and shores. In Australia, coral cover has halved in the last fifty years because of bleaching and chemical run-off. Across the world, corruption equals politically sanctioned encroachment of reserves equals destruction equals junkets and seminars and sustainability summits in Rio.

The Australian proposal should be seen in this context. At a time when the rest of the world is doing precious little to slow down- leave alone reverse- our headlong dash to destruction, the Australians have increased the number of protected marine areas from 27 to 60; as I said before, the reserve will cover a third of that country's waters, including the diverse Coral Sea. All said and done, the new initiative means greater protection to Australian waters. And, while Australian environment Minister Tony Burke's statement- that he wanted the reserves to set a global benchmark for environmental protection and ensuring food security- may be taken with a dollop of salt, I have to agree with what he said later- "We have an incredible opportunity to turn the tide on protection of the oceans and Australia can lead the world in marine protection." 

So, is the Australian announcement a good start or is it just another sleight of mouth? Only time will tell, I guess. The thing is, we will probably run out of that precious commodity long before we run out of oil or ore.

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Snake Eyes

(‘Snake eyes’- two pips on the dice- is the lowest score a gambler can roll in a game of craps. A loser’s roll, obviously)

If the IMO, like its parent the UN, represents the will of the international community, then I have to say that where there is no will there is no way.

On the first of this month, the IMO’s Marine Environmental Protection Committee met, deliberated and failed to reach any consensus on proposals to cut emissions from new ships. Shipping is not covered by the Kyoto Protocol and is said to be responsible for 3 percent of global CO2 emissions. The meet threw up, once again, the huge chasm between the developing and developed countries that seems to be the norm on environmental issues these days.

Around the same time, the BBC reported that Russia is planning to float the first of eight floating nuclear power stations in 2012: Part ship, part platform, these vessels will be positioned in the Arctic circle to take care of the energy needs of a country that is increasingly targeting the exploitation of natural resources in the frigid Arctic. “The territory includes an underwater mountain range called the Lomonosov ridge, an area which some Russian scientists claim could hold 75 billion barrels of oil. This is more than the country's current proven reserves,” the Beeb says. Each Arctic nuclear station can stay twelve years onsite (what? no dry-docking?) without maintenance, and supports power needs for exploration and for 45000 people, the Russians claim.

Other recent events- the Norwegian/Russian deal on the Arctic, Russia accelerating the promotion of the northern route as an alternate (with Russian icebreaker assistance) to the eastern passage to China or Japan, the discovery of new gas and oil reserves off Greenland and the continuing mad race by some Western nations to exploit the Arctic- confirm my suspicions that activity around the North Pole will escalate exponentially, and very soon.


That, with its inevitable consequences on climate change, is bad enough. What is worse is that I see no regulatory body on the horizon that will moderate this change, make operations safer or mitigate environmental risks. Worst of all, I do not think we even know what we are letting ourselves in for in the Arctic. We sure as hell don’t know enough about the weather, or the impact of extreme conditions on men and machinery, or the devastation that would surely ensue if there is, say, a Deep Water Horizon incident out there. Besides the fact that there are extremely limited facilities for refuge in emergency, the race for the Arctic assumes, fallaciously as usual, that proper regulation and procedures will be in place. As things stand, they will not. We are ‘lassoing’ the ice using tugs and moving it away from platforms out there right now: we do not even know what impact this will have on the delicate polar ecology and whether the lasso will turn out to be a noose around our necks later.

It is clear to me that a) the maritime industries, with their abysmal record of self regulation, are hardly going to start properly regulating their operations in the North voluntarily anytime soon; b) The IMO, with its equally abysmal record of reacting to events (using the permanent out it has, like the UN, with its hand-wringing claims that it only represents collective will of member states and is thus hamstrung) , its snail-like speed of action and its general inability to actually solve problems, is the wrong horse for this course; c) The rift between the developing and developed world will widen- shipbuilding and ownership in the latter is growing, and fears that regulation on shipping will become a one sided affair impacting largely the developed countries are not unfounded and d) the oil industry, as the Deep Water Horizon incident has shown, controls governments, including those of some of the most powerful nations in the world today. Their gung-ho operations will continue as usual with the thin veneer of regulation that pretends to be workable.

Unfortunately, it is hugely naive to expect that shipping, or the oil industry- with the public perception of a dirty business run by shady operators- will see the opening of the Arctic as an excellent opportunity to clean up its act and turn perception on its head. To be fair, though, these are far from the only industries that pay lip service to environmental issues while continuing down risky, unethical –or illegal- courses, cutting safety corners and exposing the environment to potential catastrophe. But that is neither here nor there. What we need is this: We need an international body to regulate these international businesses, we need the regulations to be placed before we put even one more sailboat in the Arctic, and we need this body to be proactive and control safety and environmental issues as its only priority. The IMO is, right now, the only game in town, but it is a rigged game played by unwilling players with loaded dice. The game’s final score, to me, is inevitable. Snake eyes.

As for those Russian plans, I cannot help but recall Chernobyl, parts of which were kept running for sixteen years after the worst nuclear accident in history devastated the immediate area when four hundred times Hiroshima’s radioactive material was released into the atmosphere. Radiation levels rose across almost entire Europe. Thousands of children and adolescents have been reported with thyroid cancer in Ukraine and Russia since then. The full environmental impact of this disaster- a quarter of a century later- is still not known.

That was a nuclear power plant too.

Maybe it will take a Chernobyl in the Arctic before sense prevails; maybe we can step back from the abyss once again. Maybe we should get some workable rules in place. If we cannot, we should stop playing the game.
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Vulture culture

Although this piece is predicated on the Chitra collision in Mumbai, it is not my intention to judge events there; that would be presumptuous and premature. Before we jump in to condemn, as some seem to be doing already, it is worth remembering that any Master worth his salt has had his fair share of near catastrophic incidents- I certainly have had mine- and know that sometimes the difference between a near miss and a sensational casualty is plain dumb luck.


That said, there are some attributes that are common to most marine accidents, big or small, though the manifestations of what I see as typical behaviour are undoubtedly exaggerated in the case of a major disaster. Then, the Master and crew are trying to protect themselves, the managers and owners are trying to blame the Master (error of servant, My Lord!) or count beans or prevent clients walking away, the media is trying to grow its TRP ratings and most everybody is trying to blame the ship. A Master is lucky if he escapes a career without being at the receiving end of this barrage of conflicting interests that crawl out of the woodwork after any accident. Many of these- managers and owners are often at the forefront here, sadly- descend like vultures on a ship after an accident. Their primary imperative: cover management and owner’s backsides asap. Blame the ship, which usually means the Master or Chief Engineer.

I can tell you from experience that the resultant disgusting behaviour displayed by many is usually devoid of any basic human decency; the crew may have come through a life-threatening incident or other catastrophe, stressed after struggling for days without sleep, sometimes, to bring the ship safely to port. It does not matter; they are still run ragged working with no additional support- and work obviously increases after an accident, always. The crew may be suffering from extreme stress; that does not matter either. The vultures will chew their bones dry and spit them out anyway. Probably not their fault; it is the nature of the beast they have chosen to become. Something needs to be done about this behaviour, much of which is displayed by ex-seafarers now ashore, after a marine accident. Ship’s crew is not carrion to be fed upon.

I hope the Masters and crews of the two ships involved are being treated humanely by all concerned in Mumbai, but somehow I doubt it. Old habits and other diseases of the soul die hard.

The Chitra oil spill, and the potential for greater environmental disaster, will no doubt consume the Indian electronic media for a couple of weeks- bad news sells. It is easy when the pollutant is black, like oil, and can be seen easily. It is also easy when the scene is that close to Mumbai, never mind that one fisherman died when he drowned in the process of ferrying some eager beaver crew from a TV news channel to the crash site. In another incident, a constable died when he fell overboard off a speedboat on patrol in the vicinity. There were reportedly three police personnel in the boat on patrol, none of whom could swim (and, I am sure none were wearing lifejackets in the monsoons, even if these were available)

Amazing. Only in Incredible India. At the risk of political incorrectness, I think we continue to display the mentality of a Third World country when it comes to basic safety. A developing country must develop some common safety sense as well, surely? And while we are at it, what about developing some decent salvage capability of our own, or must we suffer the ignominy- not to speak of criminal delay- in negotiating with companies in Singapore or Dubai each time there is an incident and wait for their men and equipment to reach us?

The Chitra oil spill is generating hype because it is in Mumbai. I know many spills have gone unnoticed or unreported on our coastline in the last year or two. Near disasters on both our coasts, as when the Asian Forest and Black Rose capsized last year, did not create any hysteria at all, even though Greenpeace said at the time that the Black Rose incident could devastate Orissa’s coastline- and the Gahirmatha Marine Sanctuary. The spill did do a lot of damage anyway- it threw up thousands of dead fish and crabs off Paradip, judging from fishermen’s and villager’s reports, and dead dolphins at the Jatadhari river mouth were attributed to the oil leaking from the ship.

Rural Orissa, as the tribals will undoubtedly tell you, is not Mumbai. It is not even urban. It does not contribute to media TRP ratings, so it can be ignored. Nobody saw the tree falling in the forest and nobody reported it. Therefore, it didn’t happen.


If we must talk about Mumbai, let us talk, instead of the Chitra oil spill that was an accident, of the deliberate environmental decimation of a city and its surroundings that has gone on for decades. The sea has been encroached upon; worse, sewage from millions of residents is dumped untreated into the sea. Massive industrial waste is leached into the earth or creeks or the 18 km stretch of the Mithi River from where it finds its way to the Arabian Sea: this includes waste from chemical manufacturing units, besides oil slicks and garbage. The 2005 submersion of Mumbai in the rains has made no difference to anything. The continuous disposal of sewage and garbage into rivers has led to reports of dangerous levels of faecal matter concentrations in almost all water bodies of Mumbai. Even forgetting the millions that live in slums without sewage facilities, the BMC collects 2600 million litres of sewage every day of every year. Two thirds goes untreated directly into the sea; the treatment of some of the remainder is, additionally, substandard. Do the math on annual numbers for some staggering figures.

The pollution after the Chitra collision is another drop in the ocean, but this drop took over our television screens. Who can blame those earnest faced and self-righteous TV anchors for treating us to those pictures and videos of the beached ship and the glistening, sexy oil slick? With all her curves showing, the ship is certainly more photogenic than all those pipelines we see around the coast of Mumbai, spewing filth into the sea round the clock. Who can blame them, then, for the screaming ‘environmental catastrophe’ headlines?

All that said, the Chitra oil spill is a disaster- no mincing words there. It has sullied our coastlines and the reputation of our ports and industry; it has thrown up, once again, major weaknesses in our response actions and in our preparedness. A lot needs to be fixed, and fast.

However, the city of Mumbai, in its present form, may be a bigger threat to itself than the oil from that beached ship.
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Turning Turtle

Olive Ridley Turtle, Orissa beach (courtesy Kalinga Times)


We protest loudly enough at the unfair criminalisation of mariners and the acidic nature of PSC inspections; it is only fair that we should applaud authorities equally loudly when they get it right.


In the first prosecution under the Nonindigenous Aquatic Nuisance Prevention and Control Act, the US recently sentenced Capt. Panageotis Lekkas of the ‘Theotokos’ to ten months: six months in jail followed by four months of community confinement. His crime? Failing to inform the US Coast Guard of a broken rudder and illegal discharge of oily waste. Lekkas will also pay a $4000 fine, be deported immediately after release and is banned from calling the US for three years thereafter. Twenty ships of the Greek ship manager Polembros Shipping have been similarly banned from calling at any US ports for the next three years. Polembros has also agreed to pay a $2.7 million dollar fine and another USD 100,000 community service payment to the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. The fate of the Chief Engineer and the Chief Officer will probably be similar; both have pleaded guilty to violating environmental laws and making false statements to the USCG.


Sometime early last year, the Theotokos crew discovered a two foot long crack in the rudder on the 1984 built ship and reported it verbally to the Owners. Not only was ballast water from the Afterpeak tank leaking out of this crack, oil from a fuel tank was found leaking into the Afterpeak as well, with obvious implications. Stupidly but not unusually, Lekkas ordered that the Afterpeak, and therefore indirectly the oil from the leaking fuel tank, be pumped overboard at sea. He didn’t stop there, though. He had the Chief Officer obstruct the sounding pipe to the Afterpeak so that water would show on the sounding line and not oil in case of an inspection.


Meanwhile, Chief Engineer Stamou was doing his bit for the cause. The Oily Water Separator had stopped working sometime ago; after reporting it to the Superintendent on the phone, the Chief pumped the bilges directly overboard without (obviously) recording anything in the Oil Record Book. Again, stupid but not unusual.


They were caught by the Coast Guard in New Orleans in October last year. Everybody, including Palembros, pleaded guilty to mostly everything; easy to do once you are caught with your pants down.


The Theotokos story played itself out over the last two years. Meanwhile, just this year, in iron ore related casualties off the coast of India, both the Asian Forest and the Black Rose went down. The Asian Forest sank off Mangalore in July and had leaked oil twice, the last time in September. Officials pooh poohed the quantity of the oil that leaked out, but the fact remains that the ship was carrying almost 400 tonnes of bunkers when she sank. Even with plugged leaks, as authorities claim, she still poses a pollution risk.


The Black Rose, on the other hand, sank off Paradip on September 9. A month later, after finding that insurance and other documents related to the ship were fraudulent and that Paradip port would probably have to foot the cleanup bill, port authorities were still ‘preparing’ to appoint an agency to pump out almost a thousand tonnes of bunkers off the ship. "We are at present examining several tenders submitted for the purpose," one official said. As officials examined tenders and contemplated their navels, fishermen and others reported seeing thousands of dead fish at sea after the incident. Thousands more were reportedly washed ashore in Paradip. Greenpeace and others warned of ‘a devastating impact’ on the Gahirmata Marine Sanctuary just 30 miles away, home of the endangered Olive Ridley Turtles and at the Bitharkanika National Park, India’s second largest mangrove ecosystem.


Salvage work at the site finally started on Oct 23, a month and a half after the accident and after a US salvage company was appointed. As if this delay was not criminal enough, work was suspended for a while almost immediately because of paperwork and bureaucratic delays at the Paradip Port Trust and because Customs refused to permit the transportation of the salvaged oil by road. Only in India.


And, as is usual in indifferent India, this story is nowhere in the collective psyche of a nation used to littering, drinking milk made out of detergent and urea and throwing its industrial and household garbage out in the street. Par for the course.


The Black Rose incident highlights to me, once again, how ill prepared we are for development. At a time when infrastructure is the latest buzzword and port projects seem to be announced on a weekly basis, we have essentially no coherent environmental policy or disaster management infrastructure in place. We have many things to learn. For one, there is no evidence of India having access to, leave alone using, the GM bacteria and other advanced technology used elsewhere to fight oil spills. Secondly, as the Paradip incident demonstrates, we seem to have no domestic setup in place; we need companies from abroad to come and clean up our coast. As when other disasters strike, we have no plan, no training, no equipment, no allocations, no personnel, no will and, therefore, no clue. Thirdly, even though Jairam Ramesh’s Ministry of Environment and Forests is making appropriate noises and feeding titillating sound bytes to the media regularly, precious little timely progress is made after any incident, when babudom indulges in its favourite sport: buck passing.


I believe that the pathetic (and apathetic) response of our government, its regulators, the shipping industry in particular and civil society at large, coupled with the almost fated corruption in our public and private systems, will collectively ensure that our coastline will be environmentally decimated by blinkered development within a lifetime.


To continue with the spotlight on Orissa, there are ten more ports being planned in the next decade along its 487 km coastline. Ironically, on the same day that the Black Rose salvage finally commenced, the Orissa government signed a MoU with the Aditya Birla Group for the setting up of a Rs 1500 crore port at Chudamani. This, despite a Public Interest Litigation that raises serious concerns about the impact of this development on the Olive Ridley Turtle in particular and the broader marine environment in general.


Other questions are being raised about single hulled tankers being dumped to trade on Indian coastlines and radioactive ships being sent to be broken up at Alang. I am confident that these interrogations will remain unanswered; the historical evidence is not encouraging here at all. (Can you imagine the Black Rose or Platinum II incident playing out similarly elsewhere, barring in a few underdeveloped African countries? I can’t)


Therefore, for a change, I applaud the US for doing the right thing even as I hold the Indian response, preparedness and will to protect its environment in contempt. It is not enough, any longer, to cry (as we do at International Climate Change conventions) that the West must pay for cleaning up the environment proportionally to its contribution to the destruction of nature. It is not enough, any longer, for India to ape the turtle and stay within its shell, smug and blinkered on the path of extinction. Our policies, preparedness and infrastructure to protect our coastline must radically change. Critically, so must our will. We are not Somalia. The maritime industry, in particular, must stand up and be counted. We must stick our necks out; that is a precondition to any turtle making progress.


Of course, we have another option. We could always, and along with our oceans and seas, turn turtle and die.
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