It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, October 07, 2021
Wave Energy Converter Doubles Power Generation in Lab Tests
Researchers in Australia and China have developed a prototype technology that they believe can double the power harvested from ocean waves. In laboratory tests they report that they have been successful at increasing the power drawn from the ocean with a design that is simpler and less cost-intensive to deploy. If successful in a full-scale model test, the researchers believe that their technology could be the key to the commercialization of power generation from ocean waves.
“Our prototype technology overcomes some of the key challenges that have been holding back the wave energy industry from large-scale development,” said lead researcher Professor Xu Wang at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. “With further development, we hope this technology could be the foundation for a thriving new renewable energy industry delivering massive environmental and economic benefits.
According to Professor Wang and his collaborators from Beihang University in China, the challenges of developing technologies that can be efficient extracting the natural power and withstanding the harsh environment have “kept wave energy stuck at the experimental stage.”
Most of the concepts being explored for wave energy generation use a buoy-type device that harvests energy by moving up and down with the waves, but need to be synchronized with the wave movement. This involves a series of sensors, actuators, and control processors.
The RMIT prototype naturally floats up and down without the need for sensors. It uses counter-rotating dual turbine wheels. Two turbine wheels are stacked and rotate in opposite directions. They are connected to a generator through a shaft and belt-pulley driven transmission system. The generator is inside a buoy above the water to keep it out of corrosive seawater.
“We know it works in our labs, so the next steps are to scale this technology and test it in a tank or real-life ocean conditions,” said Wang. During the lab tests, the RMIT-created wave energy convertor was twice as efficient at harvesting power as any similar technology developed to date.
According to RMIT, wave energy could play a significant role in renewable power generation. They reported that it has been estimated that each year power from coastal waves around the world is equivalent to annual global electricity production.
Australian Dockworkers Accused of Threatening Christmas With Strike
Labor action will center on the Patrick terminal in Melbourne (Patrick)
Australia’s major ports are bracing for the impact of a dockworkers’ strike against the country’s largest terminal operator. The labor action comes as the ports continue to struggle to maintain their operations in the face of continuing COVID-19 related restrictions. As Australians prepare for the busy summer season and the upcoming Christmas holidays, fears of supply chain disruptions and shortages are rising, claims the labor union has been quick to dismiss.
The Maritime Union of Australia announced that after 18 months of negotiations with Patrick Terminals, they will begin a rolling labor action against the operators, which handles over 40 percent of all the container freight coming into Australia. “Wharfies are expected to walk off the job of 12 hours every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday,” said the MUA. The focus is the port of Melbourne, but it will also include other actions in Sydney, Fremantle, and Brisbane.
A spokesperson for Patrick called the actions “bewildering,” saying that they have been bargaining with the union for over 19 months and provided “a very generous pay increase, guaranteed no redundancies, and provided a commitment to preserving jobs.”
Patrick CEO Michael Jovicic said, “The MUA is clearly embarking on a major pre-Christmas industrial campaign. It seems that the union is trying to starve the Melbourne public of Christmas presents after all that Victorians have gone through over the past 18 months – it is truly mind-boggling.”
The MUA was quick to counter, saying that the company is engaging in “exaggerated PR spin,” firmly declaring that rolling strikes throughout October “won’t ruin Christmas.” The union accuses the terminal operator of “corporate tactics to deny a modest pay raise and remove previously agreed conditions on secure jobs.” The union says it declined an offer to continue the previous contract due to changes that would impact job security for its members.
“That Christmas shelves won’t be stocked in time, that’s a complete fabrication,” said MUA Assistant National Secretary Jamie Newlyn. “There’s plenty of capacity on the Australian waterfront with other container terminal operators to make sure that our stores will be full of stock and the kids will get their Christmas presents. We’re trying to limit impact on the public by just quarantining the action to Patrick, where the dispute lies.”
Patrick Terminals, however, says that the rolling strikes will have a far greater impact as they will spread to neighboring operations and other ports around the country. Retailing associations are fearful of the impact on smaller stores, with Patrick saying the strike was most likely to impact imported electronics, furniture, sporting gear, and building materials in the lead-up to Christmas.
Talks between the union and terminal operator reportedly collapsed last Friday, September 24, after the union rejected an offer of 2.5 percent wage increases for four years. The union began serving notice of the planned labor actions over the weekend.
Earlier in 2021, the Maritime Union of Australia reached separate deals in February with DP World and in June with Hutchison Ports for its terminals in Sydney and Brisbane. The MUA and Patrick have been locked in a protracted dispute. The union staged a labor action in September 2020 against the Patrick terminal at Port Botany in Sydney. Before the union was ordered back to work, an estimated 100,000 containers were reportedly backed up in the port.
Greenpeace Blocks Europe’s Largest Oil Refinery in Port of Rotterdam
Greenpeace blocked Shell's refinery in the Port of Rotterdam (photo courtesy Marten van Dijl / Greenpeace)
Protestors from the environmental group Greenpeace blocked the waterways around Europe’s largest oil refinery located in the Port of Rotterdam earlier today. Targeting Shell’s Pernis refinery, the activists sought to call attention to the launch of a new effort seeking to ban advertisements and sponsorships both by oil companies as well as ferry, car companies, and airlines using fossil fuels.
“We’re blocking Europe’s largest oil refinery with the very same ads that the fossil fuel industry use to deceive the public about their responsibility for climate breakdown,” said Silvia Pastorelli of Greenpeace. “Fossil fuel companies, car companies, and airlines have refused to change their polluting business, but use ads and sponsorships to present themselves as the solution to the climate crisis they caused. We’re asking the public to make their voices heard and demand an EU ban on fossil fuel ads.”
Greenpeace’s 100-foot sailing ship the Beluga II dropped anchor at 9:00 am this morning at the entrance to Shell’s refinery. Activists in kayaks, canoes, and inflatable boats formed a second blockade on the water. Another group built a barrier on the water with fossil fuel ads attached to 22 huge floating cubes. Additionally, nine people climbed up an oil storage tank and attached ads next to Shell’s logo.
Photos courtesy of Marten van Dijl / Greenpeace
The effort was undertaken to call attention to an effort to ban advertisements or sponsorships in the European Union by companies selling fossil fuels, vehicles running on fossil fuels, and flights or ferries that run on fossil fuels. The activists are seeking enough signatures from the public to demand action from the European Commission.
Greenpeace Netherlands reported that it found that an average of 63 percent of fossil fuel companies’ advertisements were using the practice known as greenwashing, whereby they are accusing the companies of misleading consumers by failing to accurately reflect the companies’ business and promoting false solutions as clean energy alternatives. Assessing over 3,000 ads published on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube between December 2019 and April 2021, Greenpeace says only 16 percent of the advertisements analyzed from Shell, Total Energies, Preem, Eni, Repsol, and Fortum, were explicitly for fossil fuel products, although this is the majority business of all six companies.
The protest remained peaceful and was broken up by the police after a few hours. The Port of Rotterdam said that it had no impact on operations while Shell expressed concerns about the safety concerns due to the blockade and people climbing on the facility.
Ro-Ro Takes on Water and Partially Sinks, Killing One and Injuring Six
Ivan listing agains the dock settled to the bottom (photos courtesy Directorate for Civil Protection)
Algerian civil authorities came to the aid of the crew aboard a Mediterranean ro-ro after the vessel took on water, causing it to partially sink in the port of Algiers. One person was reported dead, while six other crew were taken to a local hospital with minor injuries.
Maltese shipping company Glenhallen confirmed the reports telling the Italian media that during loading the vessel tilted causing it to take on water while moored in the port. Algerian authorities are investigating the loading of the vessel and the ballasting to identify the cause of the accident.
The 25-year-old ro-ro Ivan had arrived in Algiers from Malta as part of its normal operations linking the ports along with stops in Italy and Libya. The vessel was making bi-weekly visits to the ports.
The Directorate for Civil Protection said that it responded to the vessel around 1 a.m. local time on September 29, finding the vessel partially submerged and listing to starboard, resting on the bottom and the dock. Seventeen crew members were rescued, with six Philippine nationals suffering from minor injuries taken to a local hospital.
Witnesses told the authorities that they believed one person had fallen into the water and was missing. Nine divers and a lifeboat were mobilized for the search operation. Media reports indicate that the person died overnight.
The 8,191 gross ton vessel had been operating since 2019 under charter to Glenhallen, managed by Italy’s K Ships. In January 2021, Glenhallen announced that it had entered into a new bareboat charter and purchase agreement with the Spanish owners Suardiaz for the ro-ro.
Ivan had been sailing since 2019 for Glenhallen Shipping (Glenhallen file photo)
China Begins to Crack Down on Ecologically-Harmful Aquaculture Farms
Efforts to restore a protected wetland area in Hainan previously damaged by aquaculture could provide lessons in sustainable development for the rest of China.
Until recently, the bare plots in the foreground were aquaculture farms. The irrigation channels through the tidal flats remain (Sun Nuo / China Dialogue Ocean)
The Huiwen wetlands stretch nine miles along the northeast coast of Hainan, from Bamen bay next to the city of Wenchang down to Fengjia bay. (The name, used locally, comes from the nearby town of Huiwen.) Varying in width from one half to two and a half miles, the wetlands include large areas of tidal flats and mangrove swamp, which are protected at the provincial level by the Qinglan Mangrove Reserve. They are rich in biodiversity, home to several species of mangrove and over 340 types of mangrove mollusc. And over the winter, they host huge flocks of migratory birds, including endangered species such as Nordmann’s greenshank.
For years, the Qinglan reserve was also home to numerous aquaculture farms, mainly growing a species of sea snail called Babylonia lutosa. But in June this year, all 84 of the farms were removed for falling foul of China’s “ecological redline” rules against aquaculture in natural reserves.
The management of Huiwen’s environment has been a focus since 2017, when the Central Supervision Office of Ecological and Environmental Protection criticized the unregulated development of aquaculture in Hainan. The farms within the Qinglan Mangrove Reserve were specifically mentioned for damaging “shelterbelts” that protect against coastal erosion and storm surges. The following year, the Hainan Department of Agriculture’s plan for shallow waters and tidal flats gave new urgency to bringing aquaculture and effluent management up to government standards. This will be supported by the 14th Five Year Plan for the marine environment – due to be released later this year – of which the Ministry of Ecology and Environment’s “Beautiful Bays” campaign is a key part.
Standards are particularly high for the stretch of tropical coast where the Qinglan Mangrove Reserve lies, as Hainan is a demonstration province for China’s “blue ecological civilization”. Beyond simply removing fish and snail ponds to restore the wetlands, the local government is also keen to find a new balance between conservation and aquaculture. The farmers will be relocated to plots in designated areas or new “aquacultural buildings” where wastewater is handled centrally. Elsewhere, artificial wetlands are being created to filter effluent from the farms. Babylonia lutosa sea snail in a new aquaculture park in Huiwen
A textbook tropical coastline
As well as mangrove swamps, the Huiwen wetlands also boast coral reefs and seagrass meadows. This variety of coastal ecologies makes Huiwen rare, with some describing it as a “textbook tropical coast”. In 2016, it was designated one of the “10 coastal wetlands most worthy of attention” by the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, as well as by other bodies. shellfish in Qinglan Mangrove Reserve
But this coastline also suits aquaculture, which needs clean water and stable temperatures. The Hainan Aquaculture Institute built the town of Huiwen’s first aquaculture farm back in 1989, producing shrimp larvae. That prompted other similar operations to start up within the town’s administrative area (which covers about half of the Huiwen wetlands), and it soon became famous for shrimp breeding. At one point, the monetary value of shrimp larvae bred in the town accounted for 30% of China’s total.
Huiwen town’s aquaculture farmers typically use most of their land to build ponds. The roofs help shade the animals inside from the tropical sun. (Image: Sun Nuo / China Dialogue Ocean)
Farmers didn’t, and still don’t, need a huge amount of money to get in on the action. While the farms within the Qinglan Mangrove Reserve have been removed, aquaculture sheds and ponds still line many roads in Huiwen town, often taking over both the front and back yards of people’s homes.
Huiwen town’s aquaculture is now well established, involving a thousand local households farming over 10,000 mu (1,650 acres). The need to draw and discharge water means that all these operations remain close to the sea. Tidal flats, shallow waters and harbours have all been put to use, with farmers growing not just shrimp and the Babylonia lutosa snail but also grouper and other fish.
Aquaculture vs the environment
All this development has put pressure on water quality and the environment. The farmers lay long pipes out into the sea, drawing in cool water, ideally from a depth of about 30 feet. Similar pipes are used to pump waste back into the ocean.
A mass of pipes stretches across Huiwen’s tidal flats to pump seawater into nearby aquaculture farms (Image: Sun Nuo / China Dialogue Ocean)
Unlike brightly coloured industrial effluent, the outflow from aquaculture operations doesn’t look polluted. In Yandun, an aquacultural village within Huiwen town’s borders, the wastewater is actually crystal clear. Juvenile fish that have escaped with the water swim unperturbed among the river reeds.
But this water contains large amounts of nitrogen and phosphorous that can cause eutrophication, an excess of nutrients. The effluent, discharged directly into the sea or arriving via Huiwen’s two rivers, means coastal water quality is not always up to standard.
Worse, the Qinglan reserve farmers dug channels for their water pipes across tidal flats, in the process damaging areas of seagrass. A paradise for bottom-dwellers, seagrass meadows provide food and habitats for numerous coastal species. But large expanses of the Huiwen wetland’s meadows – once home to half of Hainan’s seagrass species – have already disappeared. Now there are only scattered patches, usually of a single type of the grass.
Wastewater pollution from the aquaculture farms creates problems for the farmers too. Given the density of farms in Huiwen town, once wastewater is discharged, it’s understandable that other farms end up pumping some of the pollution back into their own ponds. If the wastewater contained pathogens, disease can spread quickly.
A local farmer explained that they “raise two to three crops of shrimp larvae a year, but disease can cause the loss of several consecutive batches”. The cost of electricity for pumping water alone can be up to 10,000 yuan ($1,500) a month. So if disease strikes, losses soon mount.
Wastewater from densely packed aquaculture farms in Yandun village is discharged directly into the local river (Image: Sun Nuo / China Dialogue Ocean)
‘Modernizing’ local aquaculture
With the criticism it meted out in 2017, the Central Supervision Office of Ecological and Environmental Protection also ordered changes. The clean-up started in ecological redline areas where development is, officially, strictly banned. Work to remove aquaculture and restore mangrove swamps got underway across the province.
Since 2019, almost 10,000 mu (1,650 acres) of aquaculture has been removed across the administrative area of Wenchang city, including the 84 aquaculture operations in the Qinglan Mangrove Reserve.
Although the aquaculture farms have now been removed from the Qinglan reserve, the farmers are still living in the houses they built there. The barren plots where their ponds used to be have been planted with sea hibiscus saplings. (Image: Sun Nuo / China Dialogue Ocean)
The removal of the snail farms in the reserve left barren patches of earth between the mangroves and the tidal flats. In an effort to speed the area’s recovery, the local government has planted sea hibiscus saplings. These trees are known as a “semi-mangrove” species because they can survive close to the ocean and are resistant to salt and waterlogging.
Although left without their farms, the farmers have not been abandoned. Some of them will be relocated by the government to a nearby “modern aquaculture park," still under construction and specially designed for the purpose. Their ponds will be housed in three-storey buildings, filled from a centralized pumping system.
The farming of larvae and juvenile fish requires the cleanest water, with constant pumping in and out. Wastewater is fed into a treatment pond outside the building, where it goes through several stages of filtration, which means it will easily meet Hainan’s aquaculture effluent discharge standards. The plan is to try using the processed water to farm adult shrimp and shellfish, which can cope with lower levels of purity.
But the new aquaculture park has one big problem: expense. It currently houses only four tenants, all in its demonstration building. They are farming a variety of species – including seaweeds – to experiment with this new system of “vertical” indoor aquaculture.
Meanwhile, in nearby Yandun, the farmers are trying another method to handle the effluent from their 320 aquaculture operations. Artificial wetlands are being engineered next to the river, into which wastewater is currently pumped. They will be planted with seagrape and Gracilaria seaweeds, which are good at removing things like nitrogen and phosphorous. This will be coupled with the chemical removal of pollutants. Once complete, it’s hoped the wetlands will be able to fully filter the 250 million gallons of effluent the farms produce every day, and ensure the water leaving the village meets government standards.
These efforts, and others in the wider Wencheng area, mean new hope for the protection and restoration of Huiwen’s precious wetlands. They also show how hard China is working to find sustainable ways to develop – ways that can accommodate both nature and human activity.
This August saw the completion of a five-year process to divide China’s shallow waters and tidal flats into areas where aquaculture is banned, restricted or permitted. The upcoming 14th Five Year Plan for the marine environment is likely to set new quality requirements for both water and seafood products. As such, it’s hoped that in the next five years we will see further improvements in both the sustainability of aquaculture and the coastal environments on which it relies.
Zhang Chun is a senior researcher at China Dialogue.
Chen Mingzhi is communications director with the ChinaBlue Sustainability Institute.
This article appears courtesy of China Dialogue Ocean and may be found in its original form here.
The opinions expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of The Maritime Executive.
NGO Shipbreaking Platform is reporting that seven workers lost their lives in five separate incidents over the past two months at the shipbreaking yards in Bangladesh. The group, which is leading the global campaign to improve the safety and environmental performance of the ship recycling industry, said the recent quarter was the worst in terms of the number of accidents in Bangladeshi shipbreaking history.
In the middle of September, the group reported that five workers were killed and three severely injured in seven separate accidents on the infamous shipbreaking beach of Chattogram, Bangladesh in August. Since then, two additional workers were also killed in two further accidents. The fatalities were caused by explosions, falls from height, falling steel plates, and exposure to toxic fumes.
In the most recent accidents, a 26-year-old fell to his death while working aboard a crude oil tanker the Oro Singa that was recently beached. NGO Shipbreaking is also highlighting that the vessel had around 400 tons of sludge on board that needed to be removed before recycling.
Ten days after that accident, a 36-year-old working at a different scrap facility on the beach was hit by a falling steel plate. He had been working on the scrapping of another crude oil tanker, the Medan.
The other accidents reported in August included falling debris hitting workers, severe burn injuries, two workers dying after inhaling toxic fumes, and an explosion of an oxygen cylinder that killed another worker. The group reports that at least one of the accidents happened during an illegal night shift at one of the yards.
"Bangladeshi authorities need to face their responsibility to protect their citizens’ rights and ensure the effective enforcement of the law,” said Sara Rita da Costa, Project Officer for NGO Shipbreaking Platform. “Business profits can no longer be privileged at the expense of human lives. Urgent action has to be taken against the industry at both?national and international level to stop the incessant breach of basic human rights and environmental laws on the beach?of Chattogram."
The sequence of accidents in Chattogram, which increases the yearly death toll dramatically said NGO Shipbreaking not only shows a lack of responsibility by shipping companies as they continue to sell their end-of-life vessels to be broken under knowingly dangerous conditions but also a lack of action by the Bangladeshi government to regulate the industry.?
NGO Shipbreaking reports that twelve accidents, causing nine deaths and twelve injures, have been registered at one yard alone, SN Corporation, since 2009. In 2021, two workers died and five suffered severe burns at the yard. The 26-year-old also recently fell to his death at the SN yard.
The NGO continues to call on local governments to take action as well as the international community and shipowners to work only with approved recycling facilities to improve the safety in one of the most dangerous segments of the shipping industry.
ICS Presents CO2 Plans Saying Governments and IMO Must Act
In the lead-up to the UN’s climate conference and the IMO’s next round of meetings on the industry’s efforts to decarbonize, organizations continue to put forth positions. The International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) is the latest submitting plans to the IMO detailing what the shipping organizations say are the urgent measures that governments must take to help the industry achieve net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050.
Saying that it has analyzed and deliberated the issues with senior industry executives, the trade group asserts that a net-zero target by 2050 will only be plausible if governments take the necessary actions to achieve the goal. The ICS’s plans repeat the proposal the group has been advocating for with a compulsory R&D fund to develop zero-carbon technologies and the development of a carbon levy for shipping to expedite the transition to more expensive zero-carbon fuels.
“A net-zero carbon ambition is achievable by 2050. But only provided governments take the unglamorous but urgent decisions needed to manage this process within a global regulatory framework,” said Esben Poulsson, Chairman of ICS. “Talk is cheap, and action is difficult. So, our net-zero offering sets out the how as well as the what for decarbonizing shipping by 2050. We’re saying to governments that if they really want to reach net-zero, they need to move from empty commitments to tangible action.”
Given the typical 25-year life of new oceangoing ships, if the industry is to meet an ambitious net-zero target, thousands of zero-emission ships will need to be in the water by 2030, the ICS says in its proposal. They believe that is critical for the IMO to adopt those urgent measures required to accelerate an increase in technology readiness levels.
A key step the ICS proposes is for governments to approve the establishment of the $5 billion IMO Maritime Research Fund. Groups from within the shipping industry have been advocating for the R&D fund and in June at its last meeting the IMO’s committee agreed to review the concept. According to the ICS, the fund is required to provide the funding needed to accelerate the development of zero-emission ships. It would be funded by mandatory R&D contributions from shipowners globally, via a $2.00 levy, which the organizations say should be put in place by 2023. However, some regulators and industry observers have said that the fund would disadvantage small operators.
To expedite the transition to net-zero, ICS has also made a comprehensive proposal setting out the architecture for a broader carbon levy applicable to shipping, which will be considered by IMO Member States at a meeting in mid-October. According to the ICS, their proposal would help close the price gap between zero-carbon and conventional fuels and could be used to provide the billions of dollars needed to deploy essential new bunkering infrastructure required in ports worldwide.
“If a net-zero target is to be more than a political gesture, governments need to recognize the magnitude of the challenge of phasing-out CO2 emissions from large oceangoing ships,” said Guy Platten, Secretary General of the ICS. “Only these proposed measures can tackle the innovation and knowledge gap, and challenges of a global equitable transition, that shipping’s decarbonization presents.”
The ICS’s proposals however will be competing for attention with various others including the EU’s efforts at adding the shipping industry to its carbon trading scheme. Pacific islands, including the Marshall Islands, Solomons, Fiji that are among the worst impacted by rising sea levels, demanded the IMO adopt a harsher $100 per ton fee on emissions. Other proposals are also likely to be presented before the upcoming hotly debated sessions.
COWABUNGA DUDE
Surfers sidelined as California races to clean up oil spill
Issued on: 07/10/2021 -
The normally thronged Huntington Beach is all but empty after an oil spill closed a long section of coast
Patrick T. FALLON AFP
Huntington Beach (United States) (AFP)
Beaches normally thronged with the bronzed torsos of surfers are deserted as California races to clean up a huge oil spill.
Up to 131,000 gallons of crude could have leaked into the Pacific Ocean on the west coast of the United States when a pipeline ruptured at the weekend.
Authorities are investigating whether a ship's anchor could have ripped open the pipe, dragging it more than 100 feet (30 meters) along the seafloor.
A 15-mile (24-kilometer) stretch of coast has been closed to the public -- including some prime surfing spots that are usually packed with boarders.
"It's weird to see no surfing out there for miles. It's very strange," said Shawna Sakal, manager of a surf store just yards from Huntington Beach pier.
"There's always people surfing, they're doing it year-round. The ocean is full of surfers, especially on the north and south side of the pier."
Huntington Beach revolves around surfing. Equipment rental and sales stores jostle for space with surf schools.
Cargo ships are anchored off the coast waiting for a berth at Los Angeles or Long Beach ports
Frederic J. BROWN AFP
But almost all of them are now shuttered.
For the tight-knit community of surfers, that's tough.
"We have a bunch of friends that just surf, so sometimes we don't even text each other," said 18-year-old Jake McNerney. "We'll just see each other out there." - Logjam -
More than 300 personnel are involved in the emergency response to the spill, which has been traced to a pipeline near Long Beach.
Clean up crews outnumber surfers at Huntington Beach
Patrick T. FALLON AFP
Dozens of container ships are anchored off the harbor there -- one of the world's busiest container ports -- waiting for a berth in a pandemic-sparked shipping logjam.
The Los Angeles Times cited a federal investigator as saying a misplaced anchor from one of these ships was the most likely cause of the pipeline's rupture.
Officials said almost 5,000 gallons of crude have been recovered so far, and more than a dozen birds covered in oil have been rescued.
Clean-up crews in protective gear could be seen on Newport Beach, further down the coastline, with weather patterns pushing oil south. - School -
Powder blue skies and warm sunshine offered perfect beach weather on Wednesday, but stores and restaurants that rely on visitors were empty.
Oil platforms dot the coastline of California
Frederic J. BROWN AFP
"Probably 50 percent of our business we probably lost so far," said Sakal, whose father has been selling the surfboards he makes in their family-run store for five decades. October is prime surfing time.
"It's the best for surfers, and it's best for people that live here. The weather's really nice during this time," said Sakal.
"It gets hot in the inland areas, so they all come to the beach on the weekends, but they can't come to the beach now because of the oil spill."
The disaster has also put a hole in the curriculum of one local school, where surf skills count as a credit towards graduation.
"We had just begun our competitive season the week before the spill," says Lisa Battig of Fountain Valley School, located just minutes from the beach.
"All five teams also operate as classes and students receive PE (physical education) credit.
The waters of Southern California are teeming with wildlife, including birds, fish, whales and dolphins
Frederic J. BROWN AFP
"We will be staying out of our local waters until we receive the all clear from the agencies."
In the meantime, students will be practicing on land, she says, and traveling out of the area to surf at the weekend.
But they will be doing their part to help speed along the clean-up.
"When and if it is safe and reasonable, the students will also get involved with clean-up," she said.
Many of the same tools and technologies have been deployed to deal with these environmental catastrophes over the past 20 years, but now, two teams of scientists say their reusable sponges can sop up oil at the surface and underwater — in some cases holding more than 30 times their weight — without doing additional harm to the marine environment.
It's the kind of innovation they say could make oil spill cleanups, like the situation currently playing out off Huntington Beach, not only more efficient but also more effective. An estimated 126,000 gallons of heavy crude leaked from a ruptured pipeline into the Pacific Ocean early Saturday, setting off frantic efforts to prevent the oil from washing up onto the area's beaches and into its protected marshlands.
"I think a lot of folks don't realize that when there is an oil spill, in almost all cases, most of the oil is never cleaned up by humans," said Seth Darling, director of the Center for Molecular Engineering at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Illinois. "We clean up some, and the rest Mother Nature eventually cleans up, though not quickly, and it wreaks havoc on the local environment all that time."
Darling and his colleagues at Argonne developed a tool called the Oleo Sponge, which is made by altering the same type of foam that is commonly used in seat cushions and mattresses to make it "oleophilic," which means it can draw in oil without also soaking up water.
At Northwestern University, a team of scientists developed a similar absorbent called the OHM sponge that uses a specially designed magnetic coating to selectively soak up oil in water.
"Oil and water don't mix well, but when they do, it's very difficult to remove," said Vinayak Dravid, a professor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern, who led the research. "We wanted something that could not only suck up oil but could do it very quickly."
In lab tests, Dravid and his colleagues showed that the OHM sponge could absorb more than 30 times its weight in oil and can be reused more than 40 times without losing its effectiveness.
With both the Oleo Sponge and the OHM sponge, the recovered oil can be used again, which also means less overall waste after spills.
Both Darling and Dravid said their sponges were designed to fill a gap in available technologies to clean up oil spills, offering officials a new way to respond to major incidents like the Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010, when an estimated 210 million gallons of oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico. While satellite technologies to map and model oil spills have improved greatly since the Deepwater Horizon spill, the processes for cleanup crews on the water and on beaches have remained mostly stagnant.
"Deepwater Horizon should have driven a lot of innovation but didn't," said John Pardue, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Louisiana State University, who conducted research and ran an advisory program for a land trust in Louisiana in the aftermath of the 2010 spill.
He said it's because resources are typically devoted to studying the spill sites, as well as the effect of leaked oil on the environment and plants and animals in the region, while funding for developing new cleanup tools is usually limited.
"There's been upgrades in modeling how spills move and how oil affects fish and animals in the deep ocean and marshes, but in terms of response work, there were a few things that have been tried but nothing that rose to the level of something that will be used moving forward," Pardue said.
Scientists like Darling and Dravid are hoping to change that.
At present, cleanup crews typically use booms to contain oil spills and prevent them from spreading. The oil can then be skimmed off the surface, but this method is less effective in choppy waters, and waves can push oil deeper into the ocean, where it's much harder to clean.
Another method for removing oil at the water’s surface is to burn it, but there are obvious drawbacks with employing that strategy.
“It does remove a lot of oil from the water, but of course that turns a water pollution problem into an air pollution problem,” Darling said.
Local officials can also spray oil slicks with dispersants, which break oil into smaller droplets that mix more easily with water. The idea is to remove the oil through biodegradation, in which bacteria and other microorganisms naturally feed on the oil and essentially remove it from the environment.
With the Oleo Sponge, Darling said it's a new type of absorbent that can sop up spills at the surface and when oil has seeped deeper into the water column. And since the sponges can be reused, they are a "greener" alternative to the tools currently available.
In 2017, the researchers tested the sponges in a giant seawater tank in New Jersey and demonstrated that they could collect diesel and crude oil both below and on the water's surface. The scientists also tested the Oleo Sponge at a natural oil seep off the California coast, near Santa Barbara, to assess how it works in real-world environments.
Darling said the Coast Guard and private companies have expressed interest in the Oleo Sponge. The goal now, he said, is to find a partner to handle manufacturing the sponges at large scales.
With the OHM sponge, Dravid said he expects the technology to be commercially available soon. He added that his team has already sent samples to colleagues in California to help with recovery efforts at and around Huntington Beach.
In addition to cleanup efforts on the water, Dravid and his colleagues are exploring how the OHM sponge can be modified to soak up oil that washes up on beaches or to assist with cleaning up other types of hazardous contamination.
Dravid said he's eager for his research to have an impact, but it comes with a bittersweet cost.
"It's odd because on the one hand, we're excited for the opportunity to show how this technology can make a difference," he said. "But with oil spills, we're always sad for the environmental side of things."
Broken SoCal Oil Pipeline Moved 100 Feet From Charted Position
On Tuesday, the U.S. Coast Guard said that dive and ROV investigations have confirmed unusual signs of damage to the oil pipeline that spilled 125,000 gallons of crude off the coast of Orange County, California last weekend.
According to the unified response command, a section of pipeline of about 4,000 feet in length has shifted position by about 100 feet. One segment has a 13-inch split - the likely source of the oil release - and officials said that the damage is not consistent with "normal wear and tear" on the pipeline. Divers have confirmed that the breach is no longer spilling oil, and the pipeline operator has applied suction to both ends of the 17.7-mile line in an attempt to keep any remaining crude inside.
The cause of the accident is still under investigation. On Monday, USCG Capt. Rebecca Ore - the commander of Coast Guard Sector LA/Long Beach - said that the pipeline may have been damaged by a ship's anchor, among other possibilities.
"These ships are anchored and many are awaiting entry into the San Pedro Bay Port complex - the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach - and . . . it is possible that they would transit over a pipeline," said Capt. Ore.
The command also responded to questions about the response timeline. The USCG's National Response Center was notified of an offshore spill on Friday evening, but the Coast Guard did not initiate a spill response effort until Saturday morning. In an explanation, the unified command said that the early reports could not be confirmed until Saturday due to restricted visibility, and the spill was spotted as soon as the fog lifted.
As of Tuesday morning, response crews have recovered neary 5,000 gallons of oil, cleaned six miles of shoreline and deployed almost two miles of containment boom. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency to free up federal funds for the spill response, and he is due to visit the scene on Tuesday.
"The state is moving to cut red tape and mobilize all available resources to protect public health and the environment," said Gov. Newsom. "As California continues to lead the nation in phasing out fossil fuels and combating the climate crisis, this incident serves as a reminder of the enormous cost fossil fuels have on our communities and the environment."
