Environmental Science & Engineering - www.esemag.com - January 2003
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Canada still at risk from illegal oil dumping

Despite a $125,000 fine handed down to the CSL Atlas on November 25, 2002, by the Nova Scotia Provincial Court in Halifax, Canada still is at risk from foreign ships illegally dumping oil in Canadian waters, says the World Wildlife Fund Canada.

On March 6, 2002, the M/V CSL Atlas was sighted, on route from Point Tupper, Nova Scotia, to Brunswick, Georgia, by a Department of Fisheries and Oceans surveillance flight in the act of illegally discharging an oily substance approximately 80 nautical miles south of Halifax in an area that is a home for sensitive marine wildlife. The penalty equals a financial precedent first set in a judgment against the M/V Baltic Confidence in February 2002.

"We know what the solution is: increased fines, like we have seen today, coupled with increased enforcement. This is entirely preventable," said Josh Laughren, WWF-Canada's Marine Conservation Director. "The fine shows Canada's courts are starting to look more seriously at these crimes, but what good is a fine if you can't catch the offenders? Hundreds of ships illegally dump oil bilge intentionally in Atlantic Canada waters every year. Because our surveillance is so low, less than a dozen are caught by surveillance."

Every year, illegal oil dumping in Canadian waters kills an estimated 300,000 birds, as many sea birds as were killed in the Exxon Valdez disaster. And seabirds are just an easily visible indicator of the rest of the oily carnage.

WWF is encouraged by the increased fine. But it is a fraction of the fines handed down in the US which can reach to the millions of dollars. More importantly, the US also has far greater surveillance capability.

The world's attention has been riveted by the accidental oil spill in Spain. Yet far more birds are killed every year on Canada's east coast, with very little public attention or government action.

Atlantic Canada is one of the areas most at risk from ship oil. Every day hundreds of ships sail through the Scotian Shelf and Grand Banks, two enormously rich and sensitive ecological regions. "Even a little oil dumped in the wrong place can wreak environmental havoc," said Laughren.

Four times as much oil is illegally dumped into the sea from ships each year than from all the world's oil spills combined.

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