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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The Enemy Within

I have a sneaking suspicion that while some of us armchair critics expound on the state of affairs in the maritime world in terms we like to think are mordant wit, the industry itself is out to lunch. I believe that not many in any position of responsibility really want improvements; here I include those in a position to influence governments, regulators, ship owners and managements. I reserve my largest dollop of contempt for managements within many private shipping organisations, though, many of whom seem to revel in their stance of obdurate obfuscation. They make no real attempt to improve anything substantially in any arena, although everybody probably descends on seminars (and the free martinis at seminars) that seem to do nothing except cost money feeding egos and stomachs both.


Decades of this behaviour have ensured that this backward (and backward looking) system is well and truly set. I could live with it if the closed and tightlipped nature of commercial shipping stopped here, but the problem is that the nature of the beast does not merely discourage improvement and open management; it actively opposes it.


Take the issue of criminalisation of seafarers; much hue and cry is generated by all in shipping about the abhorrent treatment seafarers face across the world. Committees are setup, guidelines published and great outrage shown. Much bravado and bluster is on display. Meanwhile, the satraps will tell the media, in hushed tones amidst air conditioned and genteel tinkling silence, that their organisations stand behind their seagoing employees. This, barring very few exceptions (I doff my hat to those few) is hogwash. The vast majority of ship owners and their third party managers care for nothing except their bottom lines; they are the enemy within, because, after an incident, they will sacrifice the same seafarers to protect their wallets, falsify documents and 'protect Owners' interests' faster than a porn actress strips when the camera is switched on.


Or, take environmental issues. Other international transportation industries are miles ahead of us here: the Airline industry, for example, engages governments and regulators regularly on emission standards and such, even as statistics show that flying is one of the most fuel inefficient ways of travel. The oil industry spends billions annually to promote an ecologically sensitive image of their conglomerates even as they decimate local ecologies in Africa and Latin America, and indeed around the world. Shipping, by contrast, continues to be perceived as a dirty industry with questionable integrity despite its generally excellent record. Although I believe that shipowners and managers within our industry have pretty average integrity levels, I do not believe that these are generally lower than the integrity of officials in, say, the oil or airline industries. Actually, what happens is that there is no attempt by anybody to improve the image of an industry that is no worse than most. And this is because the big organisations, managers and industry bigwigs that do this in other industries just do not care enough in ours.


This attitude towards the industry, both by outsiders to it and insiders within, manifests itself in many ways: for example, bluster by managers and filibuster by maritime government officials is commonplace. Playing the blame game is another sideshow. In any event, the intent does not seem to be to solve the problem, but to perpetuate the status quo one way or another.


I sense that much of this callous inertia in shipping is because of the peculiar way in which the industry is structured. In particular, the rummy ownership and management relationship that has existed for far too long. This discourages improvement in management practices, because the middleman, which is what the Ship management companies really are, has no real stake in the industry. Granted some are huge middlemen, but size does not mean better management or even greater commitment. What matters more is retention of clients to these folk, for which the Owner's short term bottom line is paramount. It is this ambience of penny pinching and the obsession with Profit and Loss statements that stunts any progress. Seafarer and environmental issues have nowhere to fall except between the cracks that such monocular vision generates.


I think, though, that environmental issues may well be the ones that will, in the near future, jump up and bite the ship management industry in the unmentionables. In a world that is becoming increasingly intolerant of oil spills and more stringent about greenhouse gas emissions, it is just a matter of time before the middlemen are made to feel more heat. A salvo may well have already been fired in the Cosco Busan case, with Fleet Management hit with a ten million dollar fine for, amongst other things, improperly trained crews. I would not be surprised if more countries started penalising the middlemen more; this would mean that Owners and Ship management companies would have to rethink the nature of a relationship that has left many legal implications in conveniently grey areas thus far.


If this happens, as I think it just might start to after the UN Climate Change Conference at Copenhagen in December this year, we might actually see more managers actually doing what they are paid to do: manage. I doubt if this will change attitudes or eliminate inertia in a hurry, though it would be par for the course even if it did that. The shipping industry has usually made changes only when forced to do so. I call it management by third party decree.


Otherwise, any voices shouting for change have usually been heard as loudly as the sound of somebody breaking wind is heard against the sound of thunder.

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Sympathy with the Devil

By all accounts, Capt. John Cota, the pilot on board the Cosco Busan sentenced to a ten month jail term last week, is an irascible and hot tempered man. Whatever, in the foggy morning of November 7, 2007, he boarded the outbound Cosco Busan at Oakland Port, a mere five minutes after a Company Superintendent had departed after a voyage with the crew where they were briefed on company policies, amongst other things. The Superintendent was Indian and had language difficulties with many of the Chinese crew, so the Master translated for him. One of the policies that the crew was told about, as it came out at John Cota’s trial, was the requirement of ‘berth to berth’ planning.


Nevertheless, no outbound passage was planned from the berth at Oakland by the Master Even worse, there was no proper Master/Pilot exchange of information and the Bridge Team had clear communication issues with Cota as many spoke Mandarin or broken English. To add to what would become a series of coincidental events resulting in catastrophe, the 59 year old Cota had just ten hours of sleep over the previous two nights and was on his seventh consecutive day of pilotage duty. In addition, he boarded under the influence of performance inhibiting prescription medication at a time when fog had reduced visibility to about a couple of hundred metres at best.


Capt. Sun of the Busan and the pilot unberthed the 65,131 ton Hong Kong registered ship container ship in thick fog even as six other ships (or their pilots) in the Oakland/San Francisco area refused to do so for safety reasons. Cota, a veteran pilot with twenty seven years experience in the area, planned to take the Busan through the Delta Echo span of the Bay Bridge.


This pilotage would be marked by a noteworthy tragedy of synchronous errors, as the investigation found. The crew were tired, having spent hours checking container lashings just before departure. The Chief Officer and the Bosun were on lookout at the foc’le, but the Mate left for breakfast just before the accident without informing the Master. Cota had repeated problems with the Radar. Though later investigations proved it was working normally, he was so frustrated with the Radars that he gave up looking at them and relied only on the electronic chart on the Busan. A major lack of understanding of the symbols on the electronic chart and language difficulties with the Master and the Third Mate on the bridge ensured that conical buoy symbols were mistaken for bridge spans. No paper charts were consulted or positions marked for the two hours or so it took the Busan to make its way to the Bay Bridge, and, eventually, crash into it. The VTIS monitoring the Busan called up Capt. Cota on the VHF a minute before the accident, confirming his intention to use the Delta Echo Span, but failed to warn him even when they saw the vessel was off course.


In the end, Cota thought he was going under the bridge when he was heading straight for one of the towers, doing ten knots in thick fog. Capt. Sun, the ship’s Master, seems to have been a not so innocent bystander throughout this disastrous piece of navigation.


Much was made, later, of the fact that Cota was on medication at the time, medication that had been prescribed after dental treatment. The medicines apparently contained drugs that effected performance. In addition, Cota’s alleged alcoholism was repeatedly brought up by the media leading up to the trial.


Back to the Busan. By the time the Bosun saw the tower ahead and screamed a warning into his walkie talkie, more than two hours after unberthing, it was already too late. Last minute attempts by the pilot to sheer the vessel away from the tower were only partly successful. The 900 foot Cosco Busan scraped past the tower for sixteen seconds, gouging a 200 foot gash in her hull and rupturing two fuel tanks. The discharge of about 53,000 gallons of heavy fuel oil from the ship fouled 26 miles of shoreline and killed more than 2,400 birds of about 50 species, some protected. Inexplicably, the Coast Guard waited until dusk to activate its complete contingency plan, by which time much of the oil had sunk or dispersed. They then spent $70 million cleaning up what was left.


Inevitably, as any mariner will tell you, the circus kicked in immediately thereafter. American media vilified the pilot, mocking his almost three decades of experience and pointing to the sixteen other accidents he had been allegedly involved in. One said he was “tripping on drugs” at the time of the disaster. The Master and some crew of the Busan were detained: later, six would spend more than a year in the US, kept back on draconian ‘material witness’ warrants with passports impounded (serving a sentence longer than Cota’s ten month jail term handed down recently). The crew would be later granted immunity in exchange for their testimonies. As for the VTIS officers who silently watched as the tragedy unfolded, they were sent for ‘retraining’.






The operators of the Busan, Fleet Management, were in the line of fire as well. Today the company faces criminal and civil lawsuits related to allegations that its crew were inadequately trained, contributed to the accident and doctored documents later to mislead authorities. It may be liable for hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines after offering to plead guilty to environmental misdemeanors. If found guilty on felony charges that its officials forged documents to mislead spill investigators, it could be liable for fines of millions of dollars more. In addition, it may also be billed hundreds of millions of dollars for cleanup and environmental restoration costs.



It is clear to this mariner, at least that Capt. John Cota seems to have exhibited an appalling amount of negligence in the saga of the Cosco Busan. Nonetheless, this tragedy could not have occurred without contributory negligence from almost all parties involved. Therefore, I cannot help but wonder:

• If Capt. Cota was so incompetent, and if he had a history of involvement in accidents, why was he still allowed to pilot ships in the Bay? Why was his licence not revoked?

• Was Capt. Sun as incompetent as the pilot was? It certainly appears so. Why, then, was he spared? Why were he and some of the other officers and crew granted immunity when at least some exhibited abysmal standards of competence and discipline? The Captain clearly left everything to Capt. Cota, not even bothering to monitor the ship’s movement in thick fog for a couple of hours after unberthing. The Third Mate did not put down a single position. They failed to communicate properly with the pilot. The Chief Mate deserted his station at a critical juncture. There was no plan, no Master/Pilot exchange of information and, effectively, no Bridge Team.


• Why were so many of the officers and crew unable to comprehend English, the working language of the ship and one in which all the manuals were written? More importantly, why is this shortcoming, common and universal as it is, ignored by Owners, regulators, auditors and managers at sea? The entire industry is in the dock on this one, as far as I am concerned. Is it really all that expensive to fix this problem? Is it easier to imprison a seafarer or two and go back to sticking our heads in the sand?

• Why were the VTIS officers not implicated for failure to warn Capt. Cota that he was dangerously off course?

• Was the pilot sufficiently rested when he boarded the Cosco Busan? There is a question mark on this one.


• Why was the Coast Guard not held culpable for contributory negligence in not tackling the spill with overwhelming resources immediately? Why did they wait until dusk?

• Why, to begin with, did the port not declare that it was closed to all navigation because of thick fog?


• Why does the port not give laptops laden with charts and GPS connected, as many do, to Bay pilots? The single most important cause of the crash seems to be Capt. Cota’s failure (along with Capt. Sun’s contribution, of course) to realise that the symbols on the charts represented buoys and not the bridge span. Familiarity with his own system would have pre empted this glaring and tragic error.


• Why were laws meant to detain terrorists and such used against the crew? ‘Material witness’ laws have been criticised as being against human rights by many in this case; the crew could have very easily deposed and gone home. Material witness laws can turn bystanders into prisoners. Why is this allowed? By many accounts, lawyers for the Owners and managers are as much to blame for this as are the prosecutors in the case. Would the US accept similar treatment of its own citizens in, say, China?


• It seems that at least some of the deck crew were fatigued in port. Did they have sufficient rest as mandated when they went for their departure stations?


• We need to consider the wider implications of seafarer medical treatment if taking prescription medicines can lead to a situation where a crewmember’s performance is seriously impaired. Besides causing an accident, there is precedent now for him to be jailed as a direct result of this. So what happens, if, for example, I visit a Company approved dentist while in Command and later am involved in an accident? Am I a criminal now regardless of whether or not I had criminal intent and just because I took prescription medicines? If so, this is a truly abhorrent and unacceptable state of affairs for any seafarer. And so is being called ‘a junkie tripping on drugs’ in such circumstances.


• Where does the Cota trial and imprisonment leave the already nuanced legal division of responsibility that exists between a Master and a pilot? The verdict against Cota rubbishes the notion that the pilot is just an “advisor”. Therefore, after the Cota trial, I ask: who is in charge in US waters? The Captain or the Pilot? This is a huge question, and, like Pontius Pilate, I am not expecting any worthwhile answers anytime soon.



This circus will continue for a while yet; Fleet Management is to go on trial in September. No doubt, many issues will be raised and precedents set at that circus.



Nevertheless, for me, the biggest issue will still be this: Outdated and over the hill regulators make laws in shipping without, usually, a clue to the real situation on the ground. Owners and managers protect themselves the best they can and blindly pass on instructions and procedures to crews, many of whom do not even have a working knowledge of the language they are written in. No attempt is made to ensure that the crew can even understand the language the ship’s operating manuals are written in. Crews, pilots, port navigational authorities and other key personnel are often not familiar with English, the international language of communication. Crew training in basic communication, understanding and language is abysmal across the board. It becomes very clear to everybody in the industry that this is a game in which the only objective is not to be caught. Because if it were not, people would take their own rules, and their own manuals, more seriously.


In any event, accidents at sea become much more likely because of the manner in which regulations are made and implemented. When catastrophes inevitably occur, everybody lawyers up the best they can. The hapless seafarer (or the pilot in this case) with the least protection at the end of the food chain, is then the convenient villain. In Capt. Cota’s case, he is also the only one. He is drawn, quartered, and fed to the lions. The curtain comes down on the circus and the show ends, at least until the next disaster. The blind return to leading the blind in our industry, content that the law has taken its course.


Maybe it has, but this isn’t justice.

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Bad Press:

MEPC session attracts criticism of Shipping Industry.


The recently concluded fifty ninth session of the IMO’s Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) saw delegates agreeing to proposals aimed at cutting carbon emissions from ships. Environmental groups, however, were critical of the MEPC proposals, saying that strong legislation was required instead of the voluntary proposals that resulted from the MEPC session. In any case, they said, the proposals fell way short of what was needed.


The run up to the MEPC session saw media criticism of the maritime industries coming to the forefront. Many environmental campaigners accuse the maritime industry of dawdling on climate change issues for more than a decade. International environmental groups have long protested that shipping and aviation are the only industry sectors unregulated by the Kyoto Protocol that targeted greenhouse gas emissions starting 2008. The BBC reported last week that, “since 1990, the Kyoto baseline year, global shipping's emissions have risen by 85% (Second IMO GHG Study 2009)” and that shipping now emitted more CO2 (870 million tonnes each year) than UK's entire economy. Obviously, if the maritime industry were a country, it would rank amongst the culprits emitting high greenhouse gases.


The shipping industry is responsible for three percent of global CO2 emissions today. Critics have long argued that this percentage would rise by 150 to 250% by 2050, given increasing trade, unless steps were taken urgently to improve emissions from ships. Pressure is now growing on the industry to make changes, and soon. A critical climate change summit is due in December in Copenhagen, and the present MEPC session is seen by many to be a precursor to that conference, which is part of a broad UN proposed climate change agreement.


MEPC Delegates approved non compulsory measures to reduce greenhouse emissions from ships. The steps are both technical and operational and include modification of designs in new ships to make them more environmentally friendly. The IMO statement that these were interim and voluntary guidelines sparked off protests from many environmentalists. The WWF’s head of transport policy, Peter Lockley said that the IMO proposals should have been mandatory with set targets. "This does not meet our demands or what is necessary to protect the climate and we are going to call on the UNFCCC to set targets and timelines and guiding principles," he said. The UNFCCC is the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.


Peter Hinchliffe, marine director with the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) told Reuters that the proposals were an important first step and indicated that shippers wanted these formalised into law. Other industry bosses agree, in private, that given shipping's global nature, any solution must be directed by the IMO. Analysts agree that the IMO has been slow to come up with a workable framework to curb emissions from ships because of obfuscation by Member States. IMO Secretary General Efthimios Mitropoulos disagreed when he told MEPC delegates last week that they should avoid the temptation to seek "overly ambitious results we cannot deliver." The IMO is facing additional pressure from developing countries who say that they should not be penalised as heavily as rich nations who have contributed disproportionately to greenhouse gas emissions.


Nevertheless, some countries have already proposed legislation: France, for example, has called for curbs to ship emissions to be mandated at Copenhagen. Australia has often expressed frustration at the slow pace of change within the shipping industry, and the EU has threatened to make their Emission Trading System more stringent and in line with the MEPC proposals. Environmental groups within the US back their government’s proposals that seek to reduce ship emissions by improving efficiency in order to meet targets within designated time frames. Oceana, one such group, said recently that “a levy on shipping fuel and the participation of the sector in an emissions trading system were potentially effective ways of reducing emissions”. (The ‘levy’ funds to be used for adaptation to climate change in developing countries).


In an indictment of the industry, BBC's veteran Environment Analyst Roger Harrabin, after a quarter of a century of reporting on the environment, gives the example of Tributyltin (TBT), an anti fouling compound commonly in use until recently. He says that, fully twenty four years ago, TBT was causing “female dog whelks to grow penises”. Even after the IMO agreed with scientists on TBT findings, its anti fouling convention “drifted in the Doldrums” and was only ratified in 2008, fully 23 years later. “It doesn't fill you with confidence about the industry's level of concern for the environment in which it makes its money”, he says.


Lockley from the WWF puts the problem in perspective. "The IMO has got the technical expertise," he says. "But this is a bigger political issue and we need to see some movement in Copenhagen if it's going to progress."

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The Ostrich Strategy.

Inured as I am, like the rest of us, to catastrophic scenarios about global warming, and frustrated as we all are with our individual inabilities to seemingly do anything about it, a few recent reports have, nevertheless, made this mariner sit up and take notice. To be honest, the first of these confirms my two and a half year old suspicions when I encountered the worst weather I have seen at sea in decades in the North Atlantic. It was, simply, scary.


But let me list those recent reports here


1. A study by the Florida State University (FSU) says that the increasing strength of tropical revolving storms witnessed in recent years is because of global warming. And that hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons will continue to get stronger and stronger.
Although the theory has its critics, FSU says that this reasoning, first put forward by Kerry Emmanuel at MIT in 2005, is consistent with the study of Hurricanes on the US East coast over the last 30 years. The reason for this, the ‘heat engine’ theory, seems to be that warmer oceans give the ocean greater energy which it then provides to storms.

2. A recently released UN study identifies India as a ‘hot spot’ that is particularly vulnerable to extreme weather conditions which will be caused by climate change. Incidentally, unusual weather patterns experienced worldwide have been witnessed in India too. Melting glaciers, drought, floods and cyclonic activity is just a start. One of the major fears put forward in the UN report is that coastal areas of this country, including the cities of Mumbai and Kolkata (and London and New York elsewhere) could go underwater by 2050 if sea levels continue to rise.

2050. That is well within our children’s lifetime, or should be if we have any. I would, in all honesty, recommend contraception instead.

(A ‘hot spot’, according to the UN report, is one particularly vulnerable demographically, politically and economically. There are also major security implications, given that Pakistan is also a ‘hot spot’, along with Indonesia and large swathes of Africa.)

3. A Reuters report quotes the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says that Asian short term pollution from power plants, cooking and heating will be responsible for a fifth of global warming by 2050. "We found that these short lived pollutants have a greater influence on the Earth's climate throughout the 21st century than previously thought," an official said.


And, of course, the new consumers of the world, China and India, lie in Asia.


Given that nobody will wave a magic wand tomorrow morning before cornflakes and make this reality disappear, and given that worldwide measures to tackle this display the familiar lack of political will, spinelessness and short sightedness we expect from our leaders, things will get worse before they get better. Maybe they won’t get better, and mankind would have run its course.


Thing is, there is probably going to be no ecological doomsday tomorrow morning either, which means that we will still have to pay the electricity bill day after tomorrow. So we cannot just surrender and die. And since we can’t do that, we will have to let this game play out either way, and things are therefore going to get worse for another few decades or so. The maritime industry, besides the world, has to prepare for a situation which will deteriorate as surely as fresh cream in Indian summer.

As the Times of India says in an editorial, “Adapting to the inevitable, at least in the short run, is as important as planning long term strategies to counter the effects of climate change before we are able to establish a global culture of sustainable living.“





Here’s my list, then. In no order of importance, this is just some of what climate change is likely to do to our industry. I am assuming that these reports are accurate enough under the circumstances, or at least indicative.

· Worse/unpredicatable weather. Responses may be a review of load line zones including seasonal ones and higher safety and construction standards. Fallout of this is obviously higher operating costs.
· Higher casualties, greater loss of life and ships, escalated environmental damage.
· Higher insurance premia as risks increase, including risks of marine pollution due to ‘Acts of God’
· New ports as older port areas and connected hinterland slowly immerses with rising sea levels.
· More stringent emission standards. Higher costs.
· Greater difficulty finding people willing to go out to sea
· Relocation of shipping nodes (if Mumbai, London and New York are to slowly sink..)
· Reduction in trade as many cargoes get financially unsustainable for export because of rising freight and insurance costs and countries start looking inwards rather than outwards.
· Major issues sourcing financing for shipping. This is a cyclical long term game, and the realisation will dawn that the long term isn’t looking too good.
· New sea routes as Arctic glaciers melt. More dangerous, because they are more North in areas of more extreme conditions.



We listen to these predictions and think, subconsciously, that 2050 is a long way away. I am sorry to burst that bubble, but a) recent events with melting polar ice caps have indicated a much faster rate of deterioration than hitherto imagined, and b) the world will not collapse over cornflakes and a hangover on New Year’s day, 2050.



It will continue to deteriorate, week in and week out, and at some point, the collapse will accelerate and become catastrophic. So, unless we have a good crystal ball lying around, we better start thinking about our options now.


So far the maritime industries, like the rest of the world, have their ostrich heads in the sand.


Which is not such a hot idea. As sea levels rise on the beach, that bird will be the first to go, regardless of where the head, or other sensitive parts, are.

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