For all the landlubbers who think that ships are polluting the oceans, well I’m afraid that in some cases they are right, unfortunately.
I just read about another case of the “magic pipe” being discovered on a ship by the US Coastguard in Tampa, Florida. A magic pipe is a home made pipe used to bypass the oily water separator and to pump the oily water over the side into the ocean. Some ship operators seem to think that it is cheaper to pollute the ocean than to use the equipment fitted onboard to separate the oily water, and in this case the company had ordered their engineers to routinely dump oily water over the side.
Every ship has a log of all oil filling and transfer, even oily water, but these logs had been deliberately falsified so the illegal oil dumping could take place.
So how did they get caught? They had covered up their tracks, faked the records, and removed the magic pipe before arriving in Tampa.
Someone onboard blew the whistle, and tipped off the authorities, so the USCG came onboard and found what they needed to hold the ship and make arrests. Two Filipino citizens now face up to 6 years in prison and fines of $250,000. They carried out the act so they carry the can, but they were ordered to carry out the deed by their company in Japan, or probably lose their job, so lose job or go to jail….magic! They have 6 years to think about what they did.
And the whistle blower? He gets a hefty reward, probably more than he’d earn in a year. Maybe he might think about his shipmates in jail?
And the company, hardly a cheap alternative…not so magic really.
And the magic pipes? They will magically appear again on some other ship, carrying flat screen TV’s or cars or oil or whatever…….
I only found out after I had moved to Sweden that the state controls the sale of alcohol in “System Bolaget” stores, they are actually very well stocked have decent opening hours and a good selection so it is not all that bad and there are pubs and hotels and restaurants also where alcohol is served but absolutely no carry outs like back in Ireland where a 6-pack at closing time is very popular or was a few years ago anyway.
The System Bolaget is a very popular destination and is always thronged full of people on a Friday afternoon, getting the binge quantity of booze in for the weekend, you’d swear that it was New Years Eve every Friday, unless you have witnessed New Years Eve in the “Bolaget” then it’s like the end of the world. You never see an idle staff member in the Bolaget on a Friday and not many people have less than 3 or 4 bottles, it could be Swedish practicality that one person is buying for many, (and possibly many underage drinkers) unless the gangs of drunken youths are getting pissed on wine gums and low alcohol beer from the super market, they are more than likely getting stuff bought out for them. In the logical manner here they only drink at the weekend, really polluted drunk, then stay sober all week.
Then you have hooch, moonshine or what they call here “Hembrand” or distilled at home, leaves several people blind and dead every year so the technique is not what you would call reliable, but the very expensive spirit price drives production and casualties underground.
Last and by no means least you have private importation. The Swedish drive to Denmark and Germany to avail of the cheap booze there, they have much lower tax in Germany so it is popular to fill up the Volvo Estate with beer wine and spirits, and drive back to Sweden. The customs service is being reduced all the time so nowadays you don’t even have to worry too much about being over the limit, the only thing that you will be done for is overlaoding your vehicle, the cops will stop you if you have more weight in the car than it was designed for, to hell with the booze for a lifetime in the car, the back axle will crack before the customs will get involved. The big irony is that Swedish breweries export vast quantities of beer to Germany in big trucks, to be driven back into Sweden in a fleet of Volvos, so the citizens feel they are getting a good deal, the state feels that it is protecting the citizens from alcohol by controlling the sale and keeping the taxes high, even though the own the company that sells the spirits and they own the company that makes Absolut Vodka , and they have no way of controlling the quantity of booze being privately imported. They also recently lost a case to stop people from importing on the net. If they reduced the tax a bit it would mean that they would make more money from the increased sales volume, but then the anti-alcohol lobby would be bleating about increased consumption, the statistics show an increase as it is, if you counted all the black market alcohol, private imports etc. the stats would be horrible, better to keep the status quo. Never mind about all the waste of petrol and the effect on the environment with all the Volvos shunting back and forth to Germany.
So much for environmentally friendly and logical Sweden.
Reading a great book about polar explorers from the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th, probably not a book to be reading when on a ship because of the amount of shipwrecks and all the disasters that happen to the various explorers, great read all the same.
I was working at a chart agents in Sweden a few years ago and had to organise charts for the Icebreaker Odens expedition to the North Pole, seen below doing icebreaking in the Gulf of Bothnia last year. The charts were Canadian and US charts, but the area around the pole doesn’t really have a detailed sea chart, theres no point, or there is the North Pole, but apart from that it’s just ice. So they use a plotting chart. Oden’s and a US icebreaker called Healy’s expedition is well documented on a few sites like…..HOTRAX05 and ARCTIC EXPLORERS and SCIENCE DAILY and there are tons more. Oden was the first non nuke ice breaker to reach the pole. It is also a sign of the decrease in ice thickness at the pole that such an expedition was possible.
The speakers of the bridge stereo are blasting out the sound of Bon Jovi’s “Slippery When Wet” album from the 80’s. The voice of New Jersey native Jon Bon Jovi is appealing to us and in the dark it reminds me of those sweaty discos back in Wexford 20 years ago.
The adrenaline shock from the Satellite alarm gets me right back to the present, with the siren breaking the music like a nuclear attack warning, every time the bastard goes off I think WW3 has been declared. This time it is merely a Navigation warning for the Straits of Gib., fat lot of good it is to us up here in the North Sea, not one of my favourite places to be.
We are crossing at the time of writing an area near the Fergus Oil Field, on a border area shared by the UK, Norway, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands, the rigs go from being called Ardmore, Angus, Flora and Fife to Valhalla, Svend, Valdemar and Rolf.
Meanwhile out on the main deck our cargo fan is belting away at 200 bar pressure driving out the vapours of the last cargo Naphtha and replacing them with cool, clean, fresh North Sea air, the ship is airlocked down with a carbon filter on the intakes keeping out the nasty smell of Naphtha, it doesn’t stop the vapours from finding a way in and every so often there is a smell of brimstone mixed with pig slurry, a real pleasant waft to get across the olfactory membrane.
The Naphtha is used as a cracking additive in the petrochemicals industry and is really nice stuff, it has the skull and crossbones symbol, is highly flammable and dangerous for the environment. It may cause genetic mutation, cancer and other sicknesses. It says no smoking here on the checklist, although smoking would be the healthy option when given the choice between the two.
The sampling guy had a breathing mask and filter but the hose connecting guys did not. We had them onboard also for our crew naturally but the epsilon minuses connecting the hoses were either unaware of the dangers or too thick to realise the dangers , or maybe they had spare lungs at home.
Next cargo, Naphtha again….Nice.
There is plenty talk about carbon neutrality and carbon footprints, I think I’d have to plant a forest the size of New Jersey to get to carbon zero, maybe New Jersey would benefit from forestation?
Recent Comments