Monthly Archives: October 2019

Inaccessible Island, an extinct volcano at the heart of the South Atlantic, sandwiched between South America and Africa but incredibly far from each, is perhaps one of the last places on Earth youd expect to be littered with plastic trash. But, like many remote islands, it is, and a new study sheds light on why.

After it was highlighted by distressing footage in the BBC series Blue Planet 2, the plastic crisis surged into the spotlight. Various governments pledged to ban single-use plastics and reduce waste, while many members of the public turned away from bottled water and plastic straws, cutlery, and Q-tips in favor of less environmentally damaging alternatives.

However, a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that consumers of plastics on land are just a part of the problem. It seems huge amounts of ocean plastics originate on merchant ships.

The team behind the new study collected thousands of pieces of plastic on Inaccessible Island in 1984, 2009, and 2018 and worked out where they came from. At first, much of the plastic appeared to have traveled to the islands from South America, however, by 2018 three-quarters of the plastic was found to have come from Asia, with China being the biggest culprit.

An overwhelming majority of plastic bottles washed up on the island had arrived there since 2016, but it would take at least three years for them to be swept across the oceans from East Asia. Therefore, it seems Chinas rapidly expanding fleet of merchant ships is to blame.

Many of the bottles had been squashed in a space-saving fashion to maximize onboard storage. However, it seems crew aboard merchant vessels toss their vast collections of plastic waste overboard, instead of disposing of it once reaching port. Chucking waste overboard in this way has been banned since 1989 under the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships.

So much plastic builds up on Inaccessible Island because it sits in the South Atlantic gyre, an immense collection of swirling currents. Plastic caught up in these currents gets swept into a grim assemblage of floating waste, known as an oceanic garbage patch. When it comes to who to blame for these masses of trash, the finger is often pointed at consumers and their penchant for buying throwaway plastics. While this is certainly part of the problem, and is responsible for much of the litter found in coastal areas, its important to remember the huge role that industry plays in polluting our seas. Today, about 2,400 ships pass by Inaccessible Island each year.

Recent studies of litter in the North Pacific garbage patch and remote islands in the Pacific Ocean show that fishing gear and other shipping-related equipment account for much of the mass of plastic at sea, said lead researcher Peter Ryan, an expert on marine plastics at the University of Cape Town.

The challenge comes in understanding the origin of general litter food packaging and domestic products which could come from ships or land-based sources.

To tackle the issue, we need to identify the source of the problem, and out on the high seas that source is cargo ships and fishing vessels.

"Everyone talks about saving the oceans by stopping using plastic bags, straws and single-use packaging. That's important, but when we head out on the ocean, that's not necessarily what we find," oceanographer Laurent Lebreton told AFP.

See the original post here:

Plastic Waste On The High Seas Comes From Merchant Ships And Fishing Vessels - IFLScience

Five years ago, a mobile phone was left behind in the back of a taxi in Fiji, and its contents triggered an extraordinary murder investigation. A video recorded on the phone showed four men flailing in the sea among wreckage of an overturned wooden boat. They are being circled by fishing boats, whose crews do nothing to help and then open fire. The helpless men are picked off one by one, and the sea around them turns red.

The story of this atrocity is told in The Outlaw Ocean, in which New York Times journalist Ian Urbina explores a parallel world, spanning two thirds of the Earths surface but almost entirely hidden from public scrutiny. It is a world of bandit trawlers, pirates, enslaved crews, brutality and neglect, afflicted by all the worst cruelties of life on dry land, without the redeeming hope of justice. Although the killings were witnessed by a significant number of crew members of several boats, they were not reported, and Urbina says there was not even a requirement to do so under maritime law.

The unfortunate truth is that in much of the maritime world the law protects a ships cargo better than its crew, he writes, tracing this all-embracing callousness back to English common law, rooted in an era of tall masted sailing ships when death at sea was viewed an act of God. In theory, the laws on board a ship are those of the nation whose flag it flies and there is a patchwork of maritime laws for the high seas. But it soon becomes evident that what laws there may be are almost never enforced. Even if a terrestrial police force could be bothered to send detectives to the scene of a murder there would be no grave to exhume. Offshore as one investigator tells Urbina the dead stay gone.

Captains of outlaw ships inflict capital punishment andfishermen frequently kill each other inbrawls

The Fijian police open and close a cursory investigation after the phone is discovered in the taxi, but ultimately the mystery is unravelled by Urbina and other journalists as well as NGOs, outraged by the cold-blooded nature of the crime. The victims turn out to be young Pakistani fishermen who came too close to Taiwanese-owned tuna ships in the Indian Ocean in August 2012. The motive for the murders is never entirely clear. The tuna ship skippers declare the Pakistanis to be pirates and have their boat rammed and the crew executed in the water. But they would have seen their victims were unarmed. Urbina speculates that the Pakistanis were killed because they were considered to be competition. At the time of the book going to print, there has been no sign of justice for the murders. One of the tuna boats involved eventually sinks, quite possibly scuttled to destroy evidence, but no one is convicted. For Urbina, it is not the inhumanity of the incident that is remarkable, but the fluke of the evidence left on the phone.

Captains of outlaw ships inflict capital punishment and fishermen frequently kill each other in brawls. Impunity is the dominant theme of this book. The high seas are crisscrossed by vessels operating outside the law fishing in another countrys territorial waters, with crews trapped in debt to the owners or intermediaries. They are unable to jump ship or complain about the appalling conditions and lack of safety. When shipowners run short of money, ships are often anchored out of port and their crews marooned with no pay and no way of getting home. Most are desperate men from the poorest countries. Their identity cards have been taken from them when they board. If such conditions were discovered in factories on land, there would be immediate outrage, criminal investigations and consumer boycotts, Urbina notes. Not so at sea.

Urbina devoted five years of his life to the project, three of them at sea, hopscotching from one ocean to another, risking his life multiple times in storms, often on ropey vessels among armed and suspicious seafarers. He learned to take up as little space as possible and say almost nothing until his hosts adjusted to his presence. His rendezvous with contacts on at least one occasion was arranged for 100 miles offshore through mountainous waves, so he first had to find someone willing and able to take them there. Little wonder the stories he tells have not been told before.

He describes his journeys as an exploration of places where the worst instincts of our human species thrived and flourished. But he also witnesses unparalleled beauty and true marvel and meets bizarre sometimes heroic actors. Among the heroes in his tale are a small band of enforcement officers and volunteers trying to uphold the law against all odds, like doomed sheriffs in the old westerns, hopelessly outnumbered by gunslinging outlaws.

The opening adventure in the book involves Urbina teaming up with the vigilante environmentalists of Sea Shepherd, a radical offshoot of Greenpeace, in an epic 110-day, 11,550 nautical mile pursuit of a trawler illegally fishing for toothfish (sold in restaurants as Chilean sea bass) in the Antarctic ocean. Along the way, they survive horrific storms and an attempt by the rogue trawler to ram them. It is a rare victory. The fugitive ship is forced to abandon its vast nets and is eventually scuttled off the coast of west Africa. But after a short spell in custody in So Tom, the officers are mysteriously released. Even this triumph is partial.

Urbina also recounts the efforts of the tiny Pacific archipelago nation of Palau, which tries to protect coastal fisheries the size of France with 18 police officers in a single patrol boat. The only way the authorities are able to intercept illegal fishing vessels is with the help of an environmental activist monitoring the satellite feed in an office in Virginia, and passing on directions to the patrol a heroic endeavour. Yet the overall tone of Urbinas book is pessimistic. Palau is beautiful but is surrounded by giant, state-subsidised poacher fleets and a plastic gyre as big as Texas.

The oceans are vast, but their bounty is finite and the outlaws are increasingly well equipped, with gadgets that tell them where the fish are. The global black market in seafood is worth more than $20bn, Urbina notes; appetites are insatiable. Consider the butchering of sharks for their fins, served at weddings around east Asia it brings down whole ecosystems, as the massacre allows smaller reef-eating fish to proliferate. With the worlds seafood stocks in crisis, Urbina lifts the thick veil on a global criminal culture, at just the moment when the damage inflicted on the oceans is becoming terminal.

The Outlaw Ocean is published by Bodley Head (18.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p on all online orders over 15.

Read this article:

The Outlaw Ocean by Ian Urbina review where murder goes unpunished - The Guardian

The director of SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK is setting sail on a most unfortunate voyage.

By Scott Wampler Oct. 01, 2019

We were big fans ofAndr vredal's Scary Stories to Tell in The Dark, just as we were big fans ofAndr vredal's The Autopsy of Jane Doe andAndr vredal's Troll Hunter. Seems a safe bet that we'll also be big fans ofAndr vredal's The Long Walk, based on the Stephen King (OK, Richard Bachman) novelof the same name, as well asAndr vredal's The Last Voyage of The Demeter, which is headed our way via the good folks at Amblin Entertainment.

That last project's a new one, just announced by The Hollywood Reporter. What's it about? I'm glad you asked:

"Demeterwas the name of the ship that transported Dracula from Transylvania to London in Bram Stoker's classic tale. In that 1897 novel, the ship washes up on the shores of England, tattered and broken, with one raving-mad survivor.Originally written in 2002 byBragi Schut(Season of the Witch), the script tells the tale of that journey, in which the crew is slaughtered one by one by a mysterious passenger."

Yes, The Last Voyage of The Demeter will findvredal monkeying around on the high seas with a boatfull of victims and one very dangerous passenger. This isn't Hollywood's first attempt to get this project off the ground (a previous iteration would've starred Noomi Rapace and Ben Kingsley, with David Slade directing), but with Amblin pulling the strings andvredal at the helm, it seems likely that this attempt - which THR says will "likely" be filmed aftervredal completes work on The Long Walk - might finally get the job done. We sure hope it does, because this is a great marriage of filmmaker and subject matter.

Nothing further to report at this time, but obviously we're very curious to see how this one shakes out, and will be keeping our ear to the ground for further updates. In the meantime: where'd y'all land on Scary Stories? Enjoy that one as much as we did, or not so much? Sound off in the comments below.

Here is the original post:

Andr vredal Will Tackle THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER For Amblin - Birth.Movies.Death.

Professor Steven Haines

By Steven Haines 2019-10-01 20:18:10

Professor Steven Haines, Professor of Public International Law University of Greenwich and Trustee of Human Rights at Sea, presented at the NATO Maritime Operational Law Conference at the Spanish Armed Forces Higher Defence College (CESEDEN), Madrid, on September 24, 2019. The following highlights the context and scope of his speech:

While these days I am occupying a chair in Public International Law, I am very much inter-disciplinary in my approach. My first subject of choice was history, and I also have a background in the study of politics, both domestic and international. I look at the law, but I prefer to do so by placing it within its historical, social, economic, technological and political context.

This panel is devoted to historical developments. They are important because they provide us with an understanding of how we got to where we are. It is a mistake, however, to assume that history invariably provides lessons that suggest we should necessarily act in ways we acted in the past. Far too frequently, an understanding of the history can seduce us into believing that we should do things the way we always have done.

Such intuition comes with risks, however. Past success is very often the influence that leads us in the direction of future failure. I am a believer in the value of a bit of counter-intuitive thinking. It is vitally important that we understand the context, and that is ever changing, sometimes gradually but occasionally surprisingly quickly, catching us unawares. That is what I am going to focus on this morning.

I am working today on issues to do with ocean governance. My study of the historical development of ocean governance and the law that provides its framework has led me to the conclusion that we are in a process of transition from a situation which prevailed for over three centuries, into something quite different. It seems to me that this requires a fundamentally different approach if we are to arrive at an effective way of managing the future.

My starting point is a period that I refer to as the Grotian Era. That is the period from roughly the beginning of the 17th century to the middle of the 20th. If you want conveniently quotable dates, let us say from 1600 to 1950.

This was a unique period in history as far as the oceans are concerned. It was the era of maritime imperial rivalry. The maritime empires that were central to this rivalry were, essentially, European: Portugal, Spain, the Dutch, England (and subsequently Britain and its global empire), France and, latterly, Germany, with the extra-European powers of the United States and Japan bringing up the rear.

Their rivalries over 350 years resulted in a uniquely intense period of naval warfare, from the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the 17th century to the two World Wars of the 20th, including such general naval wars as the Seven Years War and the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Naval wars throughout this period were either in progress or very much in prospect. In other words, naval war was a constant presence.

There were, of course, naval wars prior to 1600, going back to classical times, but the three and a half centuries of the Grotian Era were especially intense in terms of naval conflict predicated on the needs and demands of imperial rivalry, with a heavy emphasis on economic warfare in both the mercantilist period into the 19th century and in the free trade era from the 19th onwards.

I call this period the Grotian Era because it was dominated in philosophical terms by the notion of free seas, what Grotius termed Mare Liberum. The oceans were free for all to use for legitimate purpose, including the waging of naval conflict, regarded as a sovereign right throughout that period. As far as the law was concerned, the foundational principle was that the seas should be subject to minimum regulation consistent with free use.

I suggest that there were three legal pillars that gave meaning to Mare Liberum: the law of sea piracy; the exclusivity of flag state jurisdiction; and the laws of naval warfare. Piracy was a threat to free use and trade and needed to be eradicated if the seas were to be free for legitimate use. Only flag states could exercise jurisdiction over their own ships on the high seas. Finally, for naval warfare to be waged in a legitimate manner, some measure of normative influence was necessary to protect neutral shipping from belligerent interference while allowing the warring states to interfere with each others trade as a means of applying economic pressure in pursuit of victory.

The three bodies of law that emerged influenced the normative character of the oceans and they remain influential today. And navies, especially those of the major maritime powers, base much of their thinking on what drove them during the Grotian Era they look back on their success then, and this has significant influence on their thinking today.

So much for the Grotian Era.

In 1950, the seas were still regulated to a minimum, territorial waters extended the states jurisdiction to a mere three miles from shore and there was a minimum of regulation for the high seas beyond three miles. This was about to change, however, and in remarkable ways. The status quo was about to be overturned and the ocean environment transformed. It took a short while for the process of change to gain momentum, but once it did the results were profound.

One of the advantages of getting older is that one develops a perspective that one did not have in ones youth. I first went to sea as a young naval officer while still in my teens, almost 50 years ago. It was 1972, two years before the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea was first convened in 1974. At that time, global maritime trade was a quarter of what it is today and my navy had four times as many ships as it has now. I have witnessed a considerable amount of change over the course of the past 40 or 50 years. I have no intention this morning of boring you with the detail but it is sobering looking back from my perspective today at the profound shifts that have occurred.

In my research I am analyzing the ocean environment through detailed examination of its various dimensions. I use eight headings as an analytic framework: political; economic; technological; social; military physical; institutional; and normative. Every single one of these has gone through and continues to experience substantial and often increasing rates of change. Each of the eight dimensions has an influence on the other seven. Let me just mention one or two pertinent facts which may help this audience to comprehend what I mean.

States have proliferated there are four times as many as there were in 1950 while maritime empires have all but disappeared. Navies have similarly proliferated and the bigger ones are, perhaps surprisingly, much smaller than they were then. Most navies today are focused on law enforcement within their own coastal zones. War-fighting may concentrate the minds of those serving in the U.S. Navy and some other second and third rank navies, but the vast majority are not in the serious naval war-fighting league.

Coastal state jurisdiction has extended by a factor of over a hundred from the former three mile territorial limits to the maximum 350 mile limits of the continental shelf. Law has proliferated, with an increasing number of conventions negotiated, including important regulatory instruments negotiated under the auspices of the International Maritime Organisation.

Despite my years at sea, including in very temporary command of one of my navys warships, I would not now be permitted to do the job I once did, because I do not have the formalized internationally recognized sea-going qualifications that are now required under STCW. And that is probably no bad thing, because I would not know how to operate given technological advances. I can probably still wield a sextant with effect but would need to be taught how to use the electronic charts and other navaids that are the norm today.

These days I am very involved with the NGO Human Rights at Sea. For those of a younger generation I perhaps ought to explain that as a young man in the 1970s and 1980s I was completely unaware and unconcerned with human rights law, which only really took off to the degree we now recognize in the years after the 1990s. Today, we most certainly should be aware of the millions of people who are at sea as I speak. I have a provisional estimate of between 30 and 40 million actually at sea now. They have human rights, but there are serious shortcomings in the arrangements for ensuring they are recognized and complied with.

This is unfortunate because far too many seafarers are living and working under dreadful conditions, people are being trafficked and others are being used as slave labor on board fishing boats operating thousands of miles from their base ports. Maritime crime is on the increase and people are victims of it at sea every day. As Brian Wilson remarked to me recently, the high seas are the largest crime scene in the world.

For three hundred years and more the fundamental foundation principle was Mare Liberum. We have heard already at this conference about the need for free seas and freedom of navigation. That is the received wisdom. I used to rely on that received wisdom myself, and I cannot blame others for continuing to do so. But, as John Maynard Keynes used to say When the facts change, I change my mind. And the facts have most certainly changed. Today I am of the view that, while Mare Liberum was probably a very sensible foundational principle over the course of relatively recent history, today it is becoming less and less appropriate given a serious need for good order at sea.

We all need to be able to use the seas for legitimate purpose. But what is legitimate and what is not is being redefined year on year. Where previously there was minimum regulation consistent with free use, today there are very necessary layers of evolving regulatory systems applying at sea. There are also plenty of people determined to breach those regulations and benefit from the proceeds of criminal activity. They threaten the security of those who wish to use the seas for legitimate purpose.

I am convinced, indeed, that rather than free seas, we need safe and secure seas on which good people can go about their lawful business. I like the notion of lawful seas and have even given it a Latin tag. My message is that we need to shift our thinking from Mare Liberum to Mare Legitimum.

The vast majority of us here for this conference are in some way focused on navies and their roles. We are either still serving in uniform, retired from having done so, or are in some other way concerned with the ways in which navies go about their business and have a concern with the law that regulates their operational activities. We need to question our devotion to the old Grotian Era bodies of law seriously to assess their continuing value.

The old Law of Sea Piracy is wholly inadequate for dealing with general criminality at sea, something that has at least been recognized by the development of such instruments as the SUA Convention though that is far from perfect. Some older definitions of piracy included the conduct of the slave trade, with my own navy having long been proud of its record in suppressing it in the 19th century. What are navies doing today to suppress the slave trade and the use of slave labor, in the fishing industry in particular? The answer to that is very little indeed, I shall go further than that and say nothing.

Is the prevention and prosecution of maritime criminality helped or hindered by the old principle of exclusive flag state jurisdiction? Just a few weeks ago, an 18 year old Italian man was accused of sexually assaulting a 17 year old British girl on board a Panamanian registered cruise ship in the Mediterranean. The alleged crime was investigated here in Spain where the ship next docked, the accused was taken before a Spanish court, which then dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction.

The accused was unable to defend himself and arguably more important the alleged victim had her right to justice and effective remedy denied. I have no evidence that the flag state is doing anything at all to exercise jurisdiction. That being the case, there is an obvious and blatant shortcoming in the law. We should all be profoundly concerned about this and the myriad other abuses and injustices being experienced at sea on a daily basis.

My message is that we all need to consider seriously what needs to be done to render the seas well regulated, to enforce the law that does exist, and to take steps to ensure a safe and secure environment for those who rely on the oceans for their livelihoods. That is what a modern interpretation of free seas should mean. Sadly, for many with criminal intent, free seas provides an evil opportunity of an anarchic character. May I urge you all to shift thinking from the traditional notion of Mare Liberum to a new vision of Mare Legitimum.

I stress again, it is not free seas that we need, but safe and secure seas.

Source: Human Rights at Sea

The opinions expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of The Maritime Executive.

Read this article:

In Pursuit of Safe and Secure Seas - The Maritime Executive