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)
Tuesday, September 07, 2021
'MAYBE' TECH
Uniper and Port of Rotterdam Move Ahead With Green Hydrogen Plant
The recently-built coal fired powerplant at Uniper's Maasvlakte site (Uniper)
The energy company Uniper has signed an MOU with the Port of Rotterdam Authority for developing the production of green hydrogen at Uniper's current location at Maasvlakte. The project builds on the findings of a feasibility study announced in February, and it aligns with regional infrastructure planning to meet the demands of Rotterdam's booming petrochemical industry.
Uniper says that the MOU marks a major milestone in the development of the hydrogen value chain in the Rijnmond region. No less than half of all Dutch hydrogen projects that qualify as Important Projects of Common European Interest (IPCEI) are developed in Rotterdam, and the Uniper project is on the Dutch IPCEI shortlist as well.
The feasibility study shows that the Uniper location on Maasvlakte is ideal for large-scale production of green hydrogen using power generated by offshore wind farms. The plant will be connected to the future HyTransport.RTM hydrogen pipeline, which will link to the rest of the port, the national hydrogen infrastructure and the Delta Corridor pipeline bundle. The latter will deliver hydrogen to chemical plant clusters in Moerdijk, Geleen and North Rhine-Westphalia.
Uniper's Maasvlakte site is currently home to a modern coal fired power plant, which just opened in 2016. The Dutch Coal Prohibition Act will force the plant to close by January 1, 2030, far before the end of its expected commercial life, and Uniper says that a conversion of the facility to a different fuel is not realistic. The company has been seeking compensation from the Dutch government for the loss of its investment in the plant, and it has filed a lawsuit to challenge the Act's legitimacy. Over the longer term, it says that it is planning to green its business and achieve carbon neutrality by 2035.
“The industry has to go through a massive change in making its business processes more sustainable,” said Allard Castelein, CEO of the Port of Rotterdam Authority. “Hydrogen will play a central role in this process. We are working with partners towards the introduction of a large-scale hydrogen network across the port complex, making Rotterdam an international hub for hydrogen production and import and for the transit of hydrogen to other countries in Northwestern Europe."
Industrial hydrogen is primarily produced from natural gas, resulting in CO2 emissions that amount to 19 million tonnes per year in the Netherlands. Industry in the Rotterdam area consumes about 40 percent of the nation's total hydrogen output, so the transition from grey hydrogen to green hydrogen in Rotterdam's petchem industry could be a significant step towards carbon neutrality.
The plant's initial target is for 100MW of electrolysis capacity, with a future capacity increase to 500MW. After a nine-month engineering and design study, the project will be bid out for an EPC contractor. Uniper plans to seek financial support from government agencies and from other partners in the hydrogen value chain, with an aim to make a final investment decision next year.
“There is a host of opportunities, not only for Uniper but also for other players in the chain. Together we can use sustainable hydrogen to reduce CO2 levels in Rotterdam significantly," said Axel Wietfeld, CEO of Uniper Hydrogen.
HMM and Unions Reach Agreement After Tense Negotiations
Demonstrations had begun aboard HMM ships in port before the agreement (HMM file photo)
The management of HMM and its unions reached an agreement Thursday mid-day, September 2, in Korea after tense negotiations to avert a crippling strike against Korea’s largest shipping line. The talks dragged on for 77 days including threats of mass resignations by seafarers and on Wednesday saw protests and solidarity actions.
After nearly nine hours of talks on Wednesday, the two sides remained far apart despite efforts by the government and the state-run Korea Development Bank, HMM’s largest debt investor, to find a settlement. Experts warned that strike could be devastating to the Korean economy as HMM accounts for the majority of Korea’s overseas trade and imports. There were also fears of wider repercussions for global container shipping which already faces backlogs and congestion.
In mid-August after three rounds of negotiations, including mediation by the National Labor Relations Commission, the seafarer’s union and the company remained at an impasse. The union said all of its members were prepared to submit their resignations to HMM. The situation became more complicated on August 30, when the union representing the shoreside employees also voted to strike. Reports indicate that as many as 755 unionized office employees were prepared to also walk off the job.
The talks lasted for nearly 18 hours on Wednesday and Thursday led by the CEO of HMM before the agreement was reached. Terms include an approximate eight percent wage increase retroactive to the first of the year as well as 650 percent productivity and incentive bonuses paid within the year. Both the crew and office workers will also get an average nearly three percent cost of living increase. Both sides also agreed to form a committee to restore wage competitiveness and prepare a performance-based pay system.
As the talks dragged on, Haewon union members staged a “placard and picket demonstration” aboard the HMM vessels Hyundai Brave and HMM Rotterdam. Further, on Wednesday night, the National Shipping Labor Union Council and other Korean shipping lines also staged a solidarity demonstration. Korean ships docked in the Pusan port all sounded their horns in unison to support Haewon. The union also announced that it would conduct an eight-hour demonstration on Thursday morning aboard the HMM Gdansko, timed to coincide with the resumption of the talks.
Union leaders said they were not satisfied with the terms but decided to proceed not to cause hardship for the Korean public. They noted the growing concern across Korea. HMM officials apologized to the Korean public. "With this wage negotiation as an opportunity, labor and management will work together to complete the reconstruction of the shipping industry,” HMM said in its announcement of the agreement.
American Seafoods Company Fights Giant Jones Act Penalties
The Bahamas-flagged reefer Wellington Star arrives at Bayside, Canada on a voyage from Alaska, 2019. A terminal manager told local media that 90 percent of the discharged cargo is usually delivered to the U.S. (Kloosterboer)
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has stirred up a storm in the Alaska pollock fishery by issuing Jones Act penalty notices totaling about S350 million. Ac cording to a lawsuit filed by an affiliate of catcher-processor giant American Seafoods Company (ASC), the fines could raise the price of pollock and even lead to shortages in the eastern U.S., the region affected by the enforcement action.
Through the operations of its Alaska Reefer Management affiliate, American Seafoods routinely delivers Alaskan fish to customers on the U.S. Eastern Seaboard using chartered foreign-flag vessels. These ships are loaded in Dutch Harbor, then transit through the Panama Canal and around the East Coast to the port of Bayside, Canada. At Bayside, the cargo is offloaded into truck trailers for delivery to the Eastern United States. About 90 percent of the fish offloaded at Bayside is delivered to markets in the U.S., manager Manny Estrada told the St. Croix Courier in 2018.
A typical voyage from Dutch Harbor to Bayside: the trackline of the reefer Wellington Star in September 2019 (Pole Star)
If the trucks carrying this fish drove directly into Maine, the whole arrangement would be prohibited by the Jones Act, which bans the use of foreign vessels to transport goods between U.S. points. However, the Jones Act contains an obscure historical exception for cargo that makes part of its transit on a registered Canadian rail line, known as the "third proviso."
To meet the terms of this little-known exemption, each truckload of fish at the Bayside terminal is driven up a ramp and onto the sole train of the "Bayside Canadian Railway" - a 100-foot stretch of track with two rail cars and no destination (left, courtesy Kloosterboer). A small shunt engine pulls the train to the far end, nearer to the office of the Bayside Port Corporation, then pushes it back to the ramp again. Having completed this Canadian rail journey, the truck drives back down the ramp, out to Route 127 and across the border to make its delivery in the Eastern United States.
Videos of the rail line have been removed from the terminal operator's social media site, but a 3D street-level view may be found here.
While the train and track may be small, the railway is properly certified and registered as a Canadian rail line with the U.S. Surface Transportation Board, noted attorneys for American Reefer Management (ARM) and terminal operator Kloosterboer International Forwarding (KIF). The arrangement has been in place and running for 20 years, and it has always been duly noted on customs paperwork, according to the filing.
CBP has previously ruled that similar arrangements using short-distance Canadian rail transport are acceptable. However, in mid-August, the agency began issuing multi-million-dollar penalties to Bayside's operators and users for unspecified Jones Act violations. The 170-plus notices include nearly $25 million in fines for KIF and an additional $325 million in fines for other participants, including ASC subsidiaries.
Five shipowners who served the route have received penalty notices totaling $65 million, and they have notified ARM that they hold it responsible, according to the filing. Two importers and nine trucking companies whose vehicles passed over the Bayside Canadian Railway may also be on the hook for $95 million.
According to the suit, the total size of the fines is more than twice the annual value of all the frozen Alaskan seafood that passes over the Bayside facility's docks. ARM and KIF say that the fines and the threat of further regulatory action have shut down the shipping route, and that some truckers will not pick up the product that is already in storage at Bayside for fear of further penalties.
"This unjustifiable agency overreach is crippling and threatens to destroy plaintiffs’ businesses, along with an entire supply chain transporting frozen seafood from Alaska to the eastern United States through Bayside," attorneys for ARM and KIF said. "Moreover, the penalty notices are threatening hundreds of jobs in Alaska and throughout the U.S. in the frozen seafood shipping industry, and unless they are withdrawn, will likely result in higher prices and shortages of frozen seafood across the eastern United States."
CBP has declined to comment about the details of the case, citing ongoing litigation.
American Seafoods started as a Norwegian-owned operator in 1988, and it became majority-U.S.-owned after the passage of the American Fisheries Act in 1998. It uses six U.S-built, foreign-modified catcher processor vessels in in its U.S. fishing operations.
Cargotec Takes Decarbonization One Step Further With Fossil-Free Steel
Machinery supplier Cargotec announced Tuesday that it has reached an agreement with SSAB to introduce fossil-free steel in the cargo handling industry. The two firms will start looking at how to incorporate SSAB’s fossil-free steel into Cargotec’s cargo handling equipment.
The move has the potential to reduce the carbon footprint of Cargotec's customers, and for the cargo transport sector, it advances the shared project of decarbonization one step further - beyond just the transition to zero-carbon fuels.
“I am proud that we are paving the way in the cargo handling industry through commitment to using fossil-free steel and have this unique opportunity to work with a forerunner in fossil-free steel development. This is an important step towards our vision of becoming a leader in sustainable cargo flow,” said Mika Vehviläinen, CEO of Cargotec.
Steel and steel components are the main contributors for the CO2 footprint of Cargotec’s value chain upstream emissions, which account for over a third of the firm's total lifecycle emissions. total emissions (including emissions from its own operations, emissions from its supply chain and emissions from the use of its products). Fossil-free steel has a significantly lower environmental impact and contributes towards a carbon neutral value chain.
SSAB's HYBRIT fossil-free iron production system replaces coking coal with clean hydrogen and electricity. It produces sponge iron, a raw intermediate product that can be incorporated into the melt at any steel mill. When fossil-free iron is used to feed a steel mill powered by renewable energy, the result is fossil-free steel. A demonstration-scale plant is scheduled for its first operations in 2025-6, and the company wants to convert completely to the new process by 2045. According to SSAB, the technology's importance will only increase in the future as steel demand is projected to rise. Early adopters include Volvo Group and Mercedes-Benz, which are working on incorporating fossil-free steel into vehicle components.
IN THE KNOW Video Podcast 33: Bo Cerup-Simonsen on Decarbonization
In this episode of The Maritime Executive's video podcast, editor-in-chief Tony Munoz spoke with Bo Cerup-Simonsen, the CEO of the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping, about the industry's green transition and the need to collaborate on decarbonization.
The shift to new fuels will be an industry-wide effort, and it will require commitment from OEMs, shipowners, charterers, bunker suppliers and ports. The Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center's mission is to bring shipping stakeholders together to "facilitate the kind of work and collaboration that no individual company can do, no matter how large that company is," Cerup-Simonsen says.
With Maersk Line's recent order for methanol-powered container ships, new signs of movement at IMO, and a solid pipeline of research sponsored by the Center's partners, Cerup-Simonsen is optimistic about the industry's prospects for achieving its climate goals. There is a lot to do - like bringing down the cost of green fuel, improving ship efficiency, and getting the right carbon regulations in place - but the work is under way. "First movers are really going to be critically important here," he says. "The fact that we're seeing companies start to invest and move forward . . . is very strongly indicating that we have industry leaders that are going to move ahead."
For all the details, watch the video of their conversation below.
The opinions expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of The Maritime Executive.
Australia’s New Antarctic Research Vessel Delivered
Nuyina departing the Netherlands for her first voyage to Australia (Damen)
The world’s newest and one of the most advanced Antarctic research vessels completed construction and commenced her delivery run from Northern Europe to Australia last week. The new ASRV (Antarctic Supply Research Vessel) Nuyina, (a Tasmanian Aboriginal word for southern lights) sailed from Damen Vlissingen in the Netherlands for a seven-week voyage to Hobart, Tasmania, where she will be commissioned.
Along with other new research vessels, including the UK’s Sir David Attenborough, the Nuyina joins an elite class of next generation vessels. Her mission will include the resupply of Antarctic stations and research campaigns, scientific research, icebreaking, transport, disaster relief, evacuation, and patrol duties.
“It’s a monumental occasion,” added Gerry O’Doherty, Master of ASRV Nuyina. “It’s been custom designed and built for the Australian Antarctic Program and it’s really special. It’s day one of a thirty or possibly forty-year lifespan! We're going to be able to do so much with it, and I just want to wish all those scientists and crew who will be working on it all the best for the future. Everyone involved in this project can take great pride in their contribution to the development of a vessel that has set a new world benchmark in polar science capability.”
Measuring 525 feet in length, and displacing 24,000 tons, the Nuyina represents a A$1.9 billion (US$1.4 billion) commitment to the country’s ongoing Antarctic research. She replaces an older vessel that was retired before the 2021 research season. The new vessel has a range of 16,000 nautical miles operating at 12 knots and an ice-breaking capability of 1.65 meters at 3 knots.
The vessel is designed to accommodate a crew of 32 plus up to 116 on the research team and will carry a doctor on missions lasting up to 90 days. The design incorporates innovative systems to reduce the environmental impact of the ASRV Nuyina. On board research facilities include science laboratories and offices, a wet well and ultra-pure seawater systems, plus meteorological and air chemistry labs. Accommodations for the crew and researchers also include a dining area, lounges, a theater, a fitness center, and yoga and medical suites.
According to Damen Shipyards Group, which was responsible for the vessel’s construction, the project was a multi-national effort involving the Australian Antarctic Division, the vessel operator Serco, Danish concept designers Knud E. Hansen, Damen’s engineering and detailed design teams in the Netherlands, and the construction team at Damen Shipyards Galati in Romania. In total, over 120 Dutch companies were involved in the project as well as a range of Australian companies.
Pacesetters of WWII: The First Female Physicians in the U.S. Navy
In 1917, at the height of World War I, the American Women’s Hospital Service (AWHS) began advocating for changes to allow female physicians to receive military commissions after they were excluded from service in the reserves of the armed forces. In 1939, the possibility that another war might engulf their country prompted female physicians to rally again for the right to serve. In December 1941, the director of the American Medical Women’s Association (AMWA) sent resolutions to President Franklin D. Roosevelt asking that female physicians be admitted on an equal basis with men in the Medical Reserve Corps of the Army and Navy.
On 30 July 1942, President Roosevelt formally authorized the creation of the Women’s Reserve of the U.S. Naval Reserve, known as the WAVES (Women Appointed for Volunteer Emergency Service). Women were allowed to join their own branch of the reserves; however, there were restrictions. For example, they were restricted to duty within the continental United States. The establishment of the WAVES allowed female physicians to be assigned to the care of the women who served, but these commissions were within an auxiliary force rather than as part of the service.
In 1942 and 1943, Dr. Emily D. Barringer, president of the AMWA, served as the chair on a special committee to lobby Congress specifically for the appointment of female physicians and surgeons to the Medical Corps of the Army and the Navy. In April 1943, the Sparkman Johnson Act was passed to allow women to receive temporary commissions in the Navy, Army, and Public Health Service. During the remaining years of World War II, fifty-seven women received temporary commissions in the U.S. Naval Medical Corps.
Lieutenant (j.g.) Cornelia J. Gaskill, Lieutenant (j.g.) Achsa M. Bean, and Lieutenant Commander Hulda E. Thelander were the first three women to receive their commissions in the U.S. Navy.
Lieutenant (j.g.) Cornelia Jane Gaskill
Dr. Cornelia Jane Gaskill received her commission as a Lieutenant (j.g.) in the Women’s Reserve on 1 September 1942. She was a 1937 graduate of Cornell University School of Medicine.
In same month that she applied to the Women’s Reserve, she married to First Lieutenant William H. Sternberg in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Despite the restrictions on married women serving in the Women’s Reserve, she remained on active duty because her husband was a military physician in the U.S. Army Medical Corps rather than the U.S. Navy.
Upon accepting her commission in the auxiliary service, Lieutenant Gaskill left her practice in New York City to begin her training. In January 1943, Lieutenant Gaskill began her indoctrination course at Naval Medical Center in Bethesda.
As a specialist in gynecology and obstetrics, she was based with a group of reserve officer candidates at Mount Holyoke College, where she served as the physician for all 350 girls in training at the college. She left the service in 1944 following her assignment to the school, and after the war, she joined the faculty at Tulane Medical School in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Lieutenant Commander Achsa Mabel Bean
Achsa M. Bean graduated from the University of Maine in 1922 and attended medical school at the University of Rochester. She was one of three women in her class when she graduated in 1936. Prior to the start of World War II, she was hired at Vassar College.
When war broke out, she volunteered for the American Red Cross at the age of 42, responding to a request from the British Emergency Medical Service. In February 1942, she left for England with her friend, Barbara Stimson, to serve overseas. Her service in England and her full commission as a major in the Royal Army Medical Corps were cited in 1943 by Dr. Emily Barringer in her advocacy for the appointment of female physicians and surgeons in the armed forces of the United States.
When Dr. Bean returned to the United States in the fall of 1942, she wrote of her satisfaction with her experience in England and her contributions to the war effort overseas. In a letter to Dr. Esther Lovejoy, past president of the Medical Women’s International Association and director of the American Women's Hospital Service (AWHS), expressing appreciation for her experience overseas and her hope that she could be of service to her own country.
In an interview with the Vassar College newspaper, she said she joined because “I couldn’t stand us – that is, America as a whole, because we were so untouched by the war, and complained so much.” After her experiences in London, she refused to stand on the sidelines, and she spoke often of an increased sense of social responsibility.
After being granted a commission as a major in the Royal Army Medical Corps while serving in England, Dr. Bean refused to accept anything less than a commission as an officer. She wrote of her experience overseas as proof that female physicians were capable of standing side-by-side with their male counterparts. Upon accepting an internship at the National Naval Medical Center in 1943, the newly appointed Lieutenant (j.g.) Bean was careful to distinguish that she had “not joined the WAVES,” but she had received a “lieutenantship in the United States Naval Reserve.”
Dr. Bean was aware that women were not yet allowed to enroll in the Naval Medical Corps, but she was hopeful that the change was coming when she reported for duty at Bethesda on 14 February 1943. She was initially put in charge of the dispensary at the Women’s Naval Training School, Hunter College, in the Bronx, New York City. In an interview with the Poughkeepsie Journal, Lieutenant Bean was excited to serve her country, but hopeful that legislation would soon be passed to allow women to serve overseas. In 1944, she was promoted to lieutenant commander and sent to Pearl Harbor to serve as senior medical officer of the Women’s Naval Reserve for the 14th Naval District.
After her discharge in December 1945, Dr. Bean returned to her position as a professor of hygiene at Vassar College. She often gave talks on campus to increase student awareness of the toll that the war had taken on people all over the world. She was a strong advocate for the American Red Cross, often writing articles for the campus newspaper about the importance of this organization to show student awareness for global health concerns. In June 1946, she became the Vassar College physician. She continued to travel often to observe different clinics and hospital operations in New York and overseas, and share her own experiences until her retirement.
Commander Hulda Evelyn Thelander
Hulda E. Thelander was born to Swedish immigrants in Little Falls, Minnesota. She graduated from University of Minnesota with her undergraduate degree and completed her medical training at the same institution. She worked as a medical missionary to China from 1926 to 1927 before returning to the United States. After her return, she established her practice at the Children’s Hospital in San Francisco before the outbreak of World War II.
When Dr. Thelander was commissioned on 29 March 1944 as a lieutenant commander, she was the first female physician to receive a commission with a rank higher than lieutenant. Although her specialty was pediatrics, her experience in contagious diseases and her medical degree were in demand.
Dr. Thelander was assigned to report for service with the U.S. Marine Corps in San Francisco on 29 March 1944. In an interview many years later at the University of California, she said that "it was a strange feeling to don a uniform and walk down the streets of your home town and be saluted . . . I rather liked my uniform." Lieutenant Commander Thelander gave lectures to the women assigned to the Marines in the bases on the West Coast about what she called the “Birds, Bees, and Wolves” in an effort to prevent further increases in pregnant women in service. After the end of the war, she was honorably discharged in 5 December 1945.
After the war, Dr. Thelander continued to serve in the reserves as a consultant to female veterans until her retirement in 1953. She went back to a successful career as a pediatrician and became an authority on birth defects. In 1951, she became Chief of Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital in San Francisco. She taught at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and Stanford Medical School.
She continued to expand her understanding of the field of medicine and her education as an advocate for women’s rights. In 1952, she joined another female doctor, Dr. Helen B. Weyrauch, in a study of 230 female physicians, both married and unmarried, to assess their contributions to the field. They found that women who were married had two jobs, and their primary job was not their role as a physician.
Among the awards she received for her tireless efforts, Dr. Thelander was honored with the International Humanitarian Award for her work with children with debilitating disorders. In 1968, she received an honorary doctorate of law degree (L.L.D) from the University of California at Berkeley. Before her retirement from her civilian career, she served as the director for the Child Development Center, Children’s Hospital of San Francisco.
Kati A. Engel is an editor and writer with NHHC's Communication and Outreach Division.
This article appears courtesy of NHHC and is reproduced here in an abbreviated form. The original may be found here.
Part II: Fish Farming is Feeding the World, But at What Cost?
In September 2019, Gambian lawmakers gathered in the stately but neglected hall of the National Assembly for an annual meeting, where James Gomez, minister of the country’s fisheries and water resources, insisted that “Gambian fisheries are thriving. ” Industrial fishing boats and plants represent the largest employer of Gambians in the country, including hundreds of deckhands, factory workers, truck drivers, and industry regulators. When a lawmaker asked him about the criticisms of the three fish-meal plants, including their voracious consumption of bonga, Gomez refused to engage. “Boats are not taking more than a sustainable amount,” he said, adding that Gambian waters even have enough fish to sustain two more plants.
Under the best circumstances, estimating the health of a nation’s fish stock is a murky science. Marine researchers like to say that counting fish is like counting trees, except they’re mostly invisible—below the surface—and constantly moving. Ad Corten, a Dutch fishing biologist, told me that the task is even tougher in a place like West Africa, where countries lack the funding to properly analyze their stocks. The only reliable assessments of fish stocks in the area have focussed on Mauritania, Corten said, and they show a sharp decline driven by the fish-meal industry. “Gambia is the worst of them all,” he said, noting that the fisheries ministry barely tracks how many fish are caught by licensed ships, much less the unlicensed ones. As fish stocks have been depleted, many wealthier nations have increased their marine policing, often by stepping up port inspections, imposing steep fines for violations, and using satellites to spot illicit activity at sea. They also have required industrial boats to carry mandatory observers and to install monitoring devices onboard. But Gambia, like many poorer countries, has historically lacked the political will, technical skill, and financial capacity to exert its authority offshore.
Still, though it has no police boats of its own, Gambia is trying to better protect its waters. In August 2019, I joined a secret patrol that the fisheries agency was conducting with the help of an international ocean conservation group called Sea Shepherd, which had brought—as surreptitiously as it could—a one-hundred-and-eighty-four-foot ship called the Sam Simon into the area. It’s equipped with extra fuel capacity, to allow for long patrols, and a doubly reinforced steel hull for ramming into other boats.
In Gambia, the nine miles of water closest to the shore have been reserved for local fishermen, but on any given day dozens of foreign trawlers are visible from the beach. Sea Shepherd’s mission was to find and board trespassers, or other vessels engaged in prohibited behaviors, such as shark finning or netting juvenile fish. In the past few years, the group has worked with African governments in Gabon, Liberia, Tanzania, Benin, and Namibia to conduct similar patrols. Some fisheries experts have criticized these collaborations as publicity stunts, but they have led to the arrest of more than fifty illegal fishing ships.
Barely a dozen local government officials had been informed about the Sea Shepherd mission. To avoid being spotted by fishermen, the group brought in several small speed boats at night and used them to spirit a dozen heavily armed Gambian Navy and fisheries officers out to the Sam Simon. We were joined on the patrol by two gruff private-security contractors from Israel, who were training the Gambian officers in military procedures for boarding ships. While we waited on the moonlit deck, one of the Gambian guards, dressed in a crisp blue-and-white camouflage uniform, showed me a music video on his phone by one of Gambia’s best-known rappers, ST Brikama Boyo. He translated the lyrics of a song, called “Fuwareyaa,” which means “poverty”: “People like us don’t have meat and the Chinese have taken our sea from us in Gunjur and now we don’t have fish.”
Three hours after we embarked, the foreign ships had all but vanished, in what appeared to be a coördinated flight from the forbidden waters. Sensing that word about the operation had gotten out, the Sam Simon’s captain changed plans. Instead of focussing on the smaller unlicensed ships close to land that were mostly from neighboring African countries, he would conduct surprise at-sea inspections of the fifty-five industrial ships that were licensed to be in Gambian waters. It was a bold move: marine officers would be boarding larger, well-financed ships, many of them with political connections in China and Gambia.
Less than an hour later, we pulled alongside the Lu Lao Yuan Yu 010, a hundred-and-thirty-four-foot electric-blue trawler streaked with rust, operated by a Chinese company called Qingdao Tangfeng Ocean Fishery, a company that supplies all three of Gambia’s fish-meal plants. A team of eight Gambian officers from the Sam Simon boarded the ship, AK-47s slung over their shoulders. One officer was so nervous that he forgot the bullhorn he was assigned to carry. Another officer’s sunglasses fell into the sea as he leaped onto the deck.
Copyright Fabio Nascimento / The Outlaw Ocean Project
Onboard the Lu Lao Yuan Yu 010 were seven Chinese officers and a crew of four Gambians and thirty-five Senegalese. The Gambian marine officers soon began grilling the ship’s captain, a short man named Shenzhong Qui who wore a shirt smeared with fish guts. Below deck, ten African crew members in yellow gloves and stained smocks stood shoulder to shoulder on either side of a conveyor belt, sorting bonga, mackerel, and whitefish into pans. Nearby, the floor-to-ceiling rows of freezers were barely cold. Roaches scurried up the walls and across the floor, where some fish had been stepped on and squashed.
I spoke to one of the workers who told me his name was Lamin Jarju and agreed to step away from the line to talk. Though no one could hear us above the deafening ca-thunk, ca-thunk of the conveyor, he lowered his voice before explaining that the ship had been fishing within the nine-mile zone until the captain received a radioed warning from nearby ships that a policing effort was under way.
When I asked Jarju why he was willing to reveal the ship’s violation, he said, “Follow me.” He led me up two levels to the roof of the wheel room, where the captain works. He showed me a large nest of crumpled newspapers, clothing, and blankets, where, he said, several crew members had been sleeping for the past several weeks, ever since the captain hired more workers than the ship could accommodate. “They treat us like dogs,” Jarju said.
When I returned to the deck, an argument was escalating. A Gambian Navy lieutenant named Modou Jallow had discovered that the ship’s fishing log book was blank. All captains are required to maintain log books and keep detailed diaries that document where they go, how long they work, what gear they use, and what they catch. The lieutenant had issued an arrest order for the infraction and was yelling in Chinese at Captain Qui, who was incandescent with rage. “No one keeps that!” he shouted.
He was not wrong. Paperwork violations are common, especially on fishing boats working along the coast of West Africa, where countries don’t always provide clear guidance about their rules. Fishing-boat captains tend to view log books as tools of bribe-seeking bureaucrats or as statistical cudgels of conservationists bent on closing fishing grounds.
But the lack of proper logs makes it almost impossible to determine how quickly Gambia’s waters are being depleted. Scientists rely on biological surveys, scientific modelling and mandatory reports from fish dealers on shore to assess fish stocks. And they use log books to determine fishing locations, depths, dates, gear descriptions, and “fishing effort”—how long nets or lines are in the water relative to the quantity of fish caught.
Jallow ordered the fishing Captain to steer his ship back to port, and the argument moved from the upper deck down to the engine room, where the Captain claimed he needed a few hours to fix a pipe—enough time, the Sam Simon crew suspected, for the Captain to contact his bosses in China and ask them to call in a favor with high-level Gambian officials. Jallow, sensing a stalling tactic, smacked the Captain in the face. “You will make the fix in an hour!” Jallow shouted, grabbing the Captain by the throat. “And I will watch you do it.” Twenty minutes later, the Lu Lao Yuan Yu 010 was en route to shore.
Over the next several weeks, the Sam Simon inspected fourteen foreign ships, most of them Chinese and licensed to fish in Gambian waters, and arrested thirteen of them. Under arrest, ships are typically detained in port for several weeks and fined anywhere from five thousand to fifty thousand dollars. All but one vessel was charged with lacking a proper fishing-log book, and many were also fined for improper living conditions and for violating a law that stipulates Gambians must comprise twenty per cent of shipping crews on industrial vessels in national waters. On one Chinese-owned vessel, there weren’t enough boots for the deckhands, and one Senegalese worker was pricked by a catfish whisker while wearing flip flops. His swollen foot, oozing from the puncture wound, looked like a rotting eggplant. On another ship, eight workers slept in a space meant for two, a four-foot-tall steel-sided compartment directly above the engine room and dangerously hot. When high waves crashed onboard, the water flooded the makeshift cabin, where, the workers said, an electrical power strip had twice almost electrocuted them.
Back in Banjul, one rainy afternoon I sought out Manneh, the local Gambian journalist and environmental advocate. We met in the white-tiled lobby of the Laico Atlantic hotel, decorated with fake potted plants and thick yellow drapes. Pachelbel’s Canon played in an endless loop in the background, accompanied by the plinking of water dripping from the ceiling into half a dozen buckets. Manneh had recently returned to Gambia after a year in Cyprus, where he had fled after his father and brother had been arrested for political activism against Yahya Jammeh, a brutal autocrat who was eventually forced from power in 2017. Manneh, who told me that he hoped to become President one day, offered to take me to the Golden Lead factory.
Copyright Fabio Nascimento / The Outlaw Ocean Project
The next day, Manneh returned in a Toyota Corolla he had hired for the difficult drive. Most of the road from the hotel to Golden Lead was dirt, which recent rains had turned into a treacherous slalom course of deep and almost impassable craters. The trip was about thirty miles, and took nearly two hours. Over the din of a missing muffler, he prepared me for the visit. “Cameras away,” he cautioned. “No saying anything critical about fish meal.” Just a week before my arrival that some of the same fishermen who had pulled up the plant’s wastewater pipe had apparently switched sides, attacking a team of European researchers who had come to photograph the facility, pelting them with rocks and rotten fish. Though they opposed the dumping and resented the export of their fish, some locals did not want foreign media publicizing Gambia’s problems.
We finally pulled up at the entrance of the plant, five hundred yards from the beach, behind a ten-foot wall of white corrugated metal. An acrid stench, like burning orange peels and rotting meat, assaulted us as soon as we got out of the car. Between the factory and the beach was a muddy patch of land, studded with palm trees and strewn with litter, where fishermen were repairing their boats in thatched-roof huts. The day’s catch lay on a set of folding tables, where women were cleaning, smoking, and drying it for sale. One of the women wore a hijab dripping wet from the surf. When I asked her about the catch, she shot me a dour look and tipped her basket toward me. It was barely half-full. “We can’t compete,” she said. Pointing at the factory, she added, “It all goes there.”
The Golden Lead plant consists of several football-field-size concrete buildings, and sixteen silos, where dried fish meal and chemicals were stored. Fish meal is relatively simple to make, and the process is highly mechanized, which means that plants the size of Golden Lead need only about a dozen men on the floor at any given time. Video footage clandestinely taken by a fishmeal worker inside Golden Lead reveals the plant is cavernous, dusty, hot, and dark. Sweating profusely, several men shovel shiny heaps of bonga into a steel funnel. A conveyor belt carries the fish into a vat, where a giant churning screw grinds it into a gooey paste, and then into a long cylindrical oven, where oil is extracted from the goo. The remaining substance is pulverized into a fine powder and dumped onto the floor in the middle of the warehouse, where it accumulates into a ten-foot-tall golden mound. After the powder cools, workers shovel it into fifty-kilogram plastic sacks stacked floor to ceiling. A shipping container holds four hundred bags, and the men fill roughly twenty to forty containers a day.
Near the entrance of Golden Lead, a dozen or so young men hustled from shore to plant with baskets on their heads, brimming with bonga. Nearby, standing under several gangly palm trees, a forty-two-year-old fisherman named Ebrima Jallow explained that the women pay more for a single basket, but Golden Lead buys in bulk and often pays for twenty baskets in advance—in cash. “The women can’t do that,” he said.
A few hundred yards away, Dawda Jack Jabang, the fifty-seven-year-old owner of the Treehouse Lodge, a deserted beachfront hotel and restaurant, stood in a side courtyard staring at the breaking waves. “I spent two good years working on this place,” he told me. “And overnight Golden Lead destroyed my life.” Hotel bookings have plummeted, and the plant’s odor at times is so noxious that patrons leave his restaurant before finishing their meal.
Golden Lead has hurt more than helped the local economy, Jabang said. But what about all of those young men hauling their baskets of fish to the factory? Jabang waved the question away dismissively: “This is not the employment we want. They’re turning us into donkeys and monkeys.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the tenuousness of this employment landscape, as well as its corruption. In May, many of the migrant workers on fishing crews returned home to celebrate Eid just as borders were closing down. With workers unable to return to Gambia and new lockdown measures in place, Golden Lead and other plants suspended operation.
Or they were supposed to. Manneh obtained secret recordings in which Bamba Banja, of the Ministry of Fisheries, discussed bribes in exchange for allowing factories to operate during the lockdown. In October, Banja took a leave of absence after a police investigation found that, between 2018 and 2020, he had accepted ten thousand dollars in bribes from Chinese fisherman and companies, including Golden Lead.
On the day that I visited Golden Lead, I made my way down to the sprawling beach. I found Golden Lead’s new wastewater pipe, which was about 12 inches in diameter, already rusted, corroded and only slightly visible above the mounds of sand. The Chinese flag was gone. Kneeling down, I felt liquid flowing through it. Within minutes, a Gambian guard appeared and ordered me to leave the area.
The next day I headed to the country’s only international airport, located an hour away from the capital, Banjul, to catch my flight home. My luggage was light now that I’d thrown away the putrid-smelling clothes from my trip to the fish-meal plant. At one point during the drive, as we negotiated pothole after pothole, my taxi driver vented his frustration. “This,” he said, gesturing ahead of us, “is the road the fishmeal plant promised to pave.”
At the airport, I discovered my flight had been delayed by a flock of buzzards and gulls blocking the only runway. Several years earlier, the Gambian government had built a landfill close by, and scavenger birds descended in droves. While I waited among a dozen German and Australian tourists, I called Mustapha Manneh. I reached him at home, in the town of Kartong, seven miles from Gunjur.
Manneh told me he was standing in his front yard, looking out on a litter-strewn highway that connects the JXYG factory, a Chinese fish-meal plant, to Gambia’s largest port, in Banjul. In the few minutes we had been talking, he said, he had watched ten tractor-trailer trucks rattle by, kicking up thick clouds of dust as they went, each hauling a forty-foot-long shipping container full of fish meal. From Banjul, those containers would depart for Asia, Europe, and the United States.
“Every day,” Manneh said, “it’s more.”
Ian Urbina is the director of The Outlaw Ocean Project, a non-profit journalism organization based in Washington DC that focuses on environmental and human rights concerns at sea globally.
This article appears here courtesy of The Outlaw Ocean Project. Part I of this story may be found here.
To meet the terms of this little-known exemption, each truckload of fish at the Bayside terminal is driven up a ramp and onto the sole train of the "Bayside Canadian Railway" - a 100-foot stretch of track with two rail cars and no destination (left, courtesy Kloosterboer). A small shunt engine pulls the train to the far end, nearer to the office of the Bayside Port Corporation, then pushes it back to the ramp again. Having completed this Canadian rail journey, the truck drives back down the ramp, out to Route 127 and across the border to make its delivery in the Eastern United States.
Dr. Cornelia Jane Gaskill received her commission as a Lieutenant (j.g.) in the Women’s Reserve on 1 September 1942. She was a 1937 graduate of Cornell University School of Medicine. 
Achsa M. Bean graduated from the University of Maine in 1922 and attended medical school at the University of Rochester. She was one of three women in her class when she graduated in 1936. Prior to the start of World War II, she was hired at Vassar College. 
Hulda E. Thelander was born to Swedish immigrants in Little Falls, Minnesota. She graduated from University of Minnesota with her undergraduate degree and completed her medical training at the same institution. She worked as a medical missionary to China from 1926 to 1927 before returning to the United States. After her return, she established her practice at the Children’s Hospital in San Francisco before the outbreak of World War II.
