Up to 3,000 cases of oil dumped by commercial ships may be happening every year in European waters, according to a new investigation, which found the scale of illegal “bilge dumping” is likely to be far higher than publicly acknowledged.
Bilge water is a mix of liquids from the engine room of a ship along with other potentially toxic substances including lubricants, cleaning solvents and metals such as lead and arsenic, which collects at the bottom of the vessel.
Dealing with this oily wastewater – by treating it to remove pollutants or by offloading it at port – is expensive. To cut down on operational costs, some ships simply dump it directly into the ocean, where it can pose a serious threat to marine life.
A six-month investigation by Lighthouse Reports, a European non-profit newsroom, with nine publications across Europe, used satellite technology, whistleblowers’ testimonies and freedom of information requests to document hundreds of incidents of potentially illegal oil spills from ships. It found that despite the use of sophisticated satellite technology, countries were slow to act and prosecution levels were low, leading to what some experts say is a culture of impunity.
In Europe, marine oil spills are monitored by the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) through its CleanSeaNet initiative, launched in 2007, which analyses satellite images to detect potential oil discharges from ships.
When the system identifies a potential spill, it sends an alert to the relevant EU country, which can observe the slick by sending out a boat or plane or by asking a nearby vessel to inspect it – sometimes the satellite picks up algal blooms or legal discharges of vegetable or fish oil. The national authority can then feed its findings back to EMSA.
But annual CleanSeaNet data, which EMSA started publishing for the first time in 2021, reveals that feedback levels are low. In 2020, the agency recorded 7,672 detections of potential oil spills. It received feedback for only a third of these, of which 208 were confirmed to be oil slicks.
The longer the interval between an alert and an on-site check, the higher the chance of the countries reporting “nothing observed”, according to a 2021 report from EMSA and the European Environment Agency. In 2019, only 1.5% of 7,939 alerts of potential oil spills were verified by authorities within three hours.
Experts argue that slow response times, combined with limited public data provided by EMSA, reduce accountability. The agency’s report for 2020 does not disclose detection dates or provide information on the likely source of pollution.
A spokesperson for EMSA said this was to avoid revealing “sensitive information” about monitoring and investigations, “which could support polluters in evading detection”.
Even if countries identify potential illegal bilge dumping in their waters, they do not have to disclose what action is subsequently taken.
“This is a problem that’s been invisible to the public,” said John Amos, president of SkyTruth, an environmental watchdog that has been using satellite data to track illegal bilge dumping since 2011. “You can give governments all the best tools in the world but if there’s no public accountability and pressure for them to use those tools, problems will not get fixed.”
SkyTruth used EMSA data to calculate how many spills may be avoiding detection because of gaps in coverage by satellites, which are in orbit and do not constantly monitor the ocean, and the rate at which slicks dissipate.
“Taking the CleanSeaNet results at face value, and accounting for the frequency of the satellite imagery and the lifespan of a typical oil slick, SkyTruth estimates there may be nearly 3,000 oil slicks every year caused by vessels transiting EU waters,” said Amos.
Ships have developed tactics to avoid detection, according to whistleblowers’ testimony collected by Lighthouse Reports and reporting partners, including using portable pumps to discharge untreated bilge water into the ocean and dumping at night or in rough seas when it’s harder to see the oil.
One whistleblower, who worked in a ship’s engine room, described the ease of bilge dumping using a portable pump. “You can assemble this portable pump in five minutes and then detach for five minutes and hide if somebody is coming,” he said. The dumping would often happen after dark, at about 10pm, the whistleblower said.
Raising the alarm can be very difficult, according to another whistleblower, a ship’s engineer, who observed illegal bilge dumping. He said he was told by the chief engineer: “Be quiet, do not speak out. If you speak then it is very much trouble for you.” When he confronted the chief engineer, his contract was terminated, he said.
Both men asked to remain anonymous for fear of the consequences of speaking out.
Bilge dumps do not tend to receive the same attention as large industrial spills because they are smaller and less visible but experts argue the frequency with which they are happening is having a big effect on marine life. A 2016 study on short-lived oil spills found “immediate adverse biological effects” on marine life, including a decline in numbers of plankton in the sea.
Maritime oil pollution has “direct toxic effects” on the smallest marine creatures, said Kerstin Magnusson, an ecotoxicologist at the Swedish Environmental Research Institute and author of a report that linked bilge dumping to negative impacts on the feeding and reproduction of Acartia tonsa, tiny zooplankton that form a vital part of the base of the ocean food chain. This has an impact all the way up the food web, she said, adding: “It’s a network of effects and consequences.”
Penalties for illegal bilge dumping can include fines – Carnival’s Princess Cruises was fined $40m in 2016 after pleading guilty to bilge dumping along the British coast. In some cases prison sentences are given to individuals found responsible.
But enforcement is sporadic, say experts, and even when fines are imposed, they may not be high enough to deter the behaviour. “Even if an oil sample is taken after the fact and they find out which ship the oil came from, the likelihood of the polluters being fined a large amount is minimal,” said Christian Bussau, a marine biologist with Greenpeace.
“There is still a certain incentive, for cost reasons, to illegally dump oil at sea,” he said.
Maja Markovčić Kostelac, executive director of EMSA, said: “Illegal discharges of oil and other polluting substances still regularly occur in European waters, albeit the number of detections, as well as the number of prosecutions, remains low.”
She said the agency’s CleanSeaNet programme “has so far proven to be an important resource at EU level for monitoring maritime areas, providing rapid detection alerts that allow for prompt follow-up actions.”
In response to claims of a lack of transparency, a spokesperson for EMSA said: “The agency can only disclose feedback and verification data when approved by the coastal states.” They added that information on prosecutions related to illegal oil dumps was the responsibility of coastal states, not EMSA.
