On September 8, 2017, the International Convention on the Control and Management of Ballast Water and Sediments from Ships (hereinafter referred to as the “Ballast Water Convention”) officially came into effect. This shows that under the framework of the International Maritime Organization, a globally unified marine ecological protection system will be more complete, and the ecological disasters caused by the global transfer of harmful aquatic organisms through the discharge of ballast water from ships will be reduced and ultimately eliminated from the regulatory and technical levels. In the event of any violation in the operation of the vessel, States Parties shall cooperate in the detection of the violation and in the implementation of the provisions of the Ballast Water Convention, and may be punished through the laws of the State Party. The inspection of the compliance of the Convention on Ballast Water by States Parties focuses not only on certificate management, technical details such as ballast water recording, sampling, replacement and treatment, but also on stricter supervision and inspection of ships in conjunction with the MARPOL Convention. Recently, a member ship of the association was punished by the port authorities for allegedly discharging ballast water containing pollutants even though it passed the port state’s supervision and inspection without defects during berthing operations in the Port of Adabiya, Egypt.
1. Case description
Because the transportation of ship goods often presents the characteristics of one-way logistics, it is the most common operation in the daily work of ships to inject ballast water into the ballast tank of the ship during the long-distance no-load voyage of the ship to adjust the stability and draft of the ship, and maintain the submersion of the propeller and the limitation of the headroom height. After leaving the port of discharge from the previous port of discharge, the captain received a notice from the agent of Adabia Port, requiring the clearance height of the ship to enter the port not exceeding 12.3 meters to adapt to the normal loading operation of the port crane. So when the ship sailed through the waters of the Red Sea, the captain arranged to fill the ship’s No. 3 cargo hold (storm chamber) with clean ballast water to meet the requirements of port clearance. On May 20, 2021, the ship berthed at Adabia Port and failed to pass the first round of pre-loading inspection due to loose rust skin and some cargo residues in the ship’s No. 1, 2, 4 and 5 cargo holds. Judging by the photos provided by the ship, the ballast water in the third cargo hold is clean. On the same day, the captain received a notice from the local agent and discharged the ballast water in the No. 3 cargo hold to the board until 8 p.m. on May 21, when the ballast water in the third compartment was drained. On the morning of May 22, the ship was inspected by the Adabia port state and passed with zero defects. In the afternoon, the captain was notified of yellowish-brown floating contaminants found in the harbor pool where the ship was berthing, which the Harbor Master & Port Authority believed was contaminated by the harbor waters caused by the discharge of unclean ballast water from the cargo holds of the member ships.
2. Port penalties
The association immediately contacted the local general agent in Egypt to assist member ships in investigating and dealing with the ballast water pollution incident claimed by the port side. According to the captain’s statement of facts, there were five other ships in the port at that time, and during the berthing of the member ships, floating objects of unknown composition were found in the corners of the port area, and the captain also conducted an investigation on board and confirmed that no garbage was discarded into the port during the entire berthing period of the member ships. In addition, the captain also attached a report on the absence of defects in the port state supervision inspection report in the statement of facts after the pollution incident. Nevertheless, according to the feedback of local agents and general agents, the Adabia port authorities fined the ship more than one million Egyptian pounds, or more than 70,000 US dollars, on the basis that the ship found that the cargo hold was not clean enough, there were rust skins and cargo residues, and that the contaminants were found in the surrounding waters where the member ships were berthed, without sampling and analyzing the pollutants in the port and the ship’s ballast water samples separately and comparing the results. The port also claims that these penalties are only one-third of the normal pollution penalties in the Suez Canal Economic Zone, and if the ship does not recognize or cooperate with the port authorities’ penalty opinion, the pollution case will be transferred to the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA). At that time, the ship will not only face pollution penalties, but also bear the responsibility for pollution cleanup, and will investigate the criminal responsibility of the crew according to the circumstances. According to the analysis of the existing report information, the penalty decision made by the port authorities is flawed in the evidence collection and punishment procedures, but the laws and regulations it cites still exist. Pollutants, whether they come from unclean ballast water from ships or from garbage and domestic sewage discharges from ships, have the right to supervise and punish contracting parties and port states under their own laws and regulations.
3. Case analysis
The primary concern in this pollution case was the source of the contaminants in the harbour pool, and according to the captain’s statement of facts, the vessel ruled out the possibility of intentional or unintentional discharge of any pollutants into the harbour pond during berthing. Typically, a vessel engaged in international voyage under the MARPOL Convention, both the captain and the crew, has a very strong environmental awareness and is able to comply with the requirements of the Convention and the port authorities regarding environmental waters. What’s more, now the port safety patrol and camera monitoring facilities are becoming more and more complete, and the crew basically does not know the law and break the law, and discharges into the port at will. At the same time, the member ship was supervised and inspected by the port state during berthing, and the supervision and inspection of the port state covered the technical operation of the ship’s safety and pollution prevention.
Washing the cabin itself during the ship is a labor-intensive and difficult job, and it is inevitable that the corners and parts of the cargo hold will be omitted. In the ship’s inspection report, there is indeed a description of rust and cargo residue in the ship’s cargo hold, but after the crew washes the cabin, the remaining hundreds of kilograms of cargo hold impurities are mixed with 15,000 tons of ballast water in the third cabin, and then removed outboard by the ship’s ballast system. The captain also confirmed afterwards that the images of pollution around the ship captured on the surveillance video provided by his port authorities were not from member ships. The port did not conduct composition testing of pollutants and collect ship ballast water for comparison, and the ship side could not afford to spend longer time to proactively prove the sampling and analysis of pollutants in the port and ship ballast water under the comprehensive consideration of lease execution and operational benefits.
The port of Adabia is located in the northern part of the Gulf of Suez, near the mouth of the Suez Canal, with no breakwaters in the port area and a fishing boat barge nearby. In this terminal environment, floating pollutants found near the port may come from dead algae floats, or floating matters discharged by other ships, or operational residues from nearby fishing boats. The captain also mentioned in the fact statement report that the ship found unknown floating objects near the stern during berthing, but did not report it to the port authorities immediately. In other ports around the world, there are still floating objects such as oil and garbage in the port area before berthing. It is good practice for the captain to take photographs or videos in the presence of the pilot and report to the pilot and the port authorities, which not only fulfills the reporting duties stipulated in the Convention, but also clears the suspicion that the ship is suspected of polluting the port waters.
4. Summary tips
With the continuous expansion of ship production and operation, people’s awareness of marine environmental protection is becoming stronger and stronger, and the monitoring of ship pollution prevention by the International Maritime Organization and States Parties has become more and more stringent. Combined with this case, we remind member shipowners that they should further strengthen the anti-pollution training of their crew and enhance their environmental awareness. Continue to improve the professional level of the crew and implement the technical requirements of the Convention and regulations; Monitor crew compliance with the Convention, implement information exchange and reporting procedures, and report any pollution and non-compliance detected on a vessel to the flag State and/or port State authorities as soon as possible, regardless of whether the incident originates from the vessel or not, so that the shore can act together to reduce further contamination of the waters by pollutants.
