Barrier Reef oil spill April 4, 2010

@spendius,

Not worth responding to, Spendius.

@msolga,

Quote:

150 million tons
Quote:

That's about 2,000 trips of 65,000 tons I think. Is a pilot on all of them going to cost more than what this one slip-up has cost? Assuming the cost of the war dances is not counted which it shouldn't be economically. Plus the cost of a pilot on all the other ships carring other things. Like steers and tourists. And day trippers.

0 Replies

Here's the Wikipedia entry for the Great Barrier Reef. It may be of interest for those of you not too familiar with it.

Quote:

Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest reef system[1][2] composed of over 2,900 individual reefs[3] and 900 islands stretching for over 2,600 kilometres (1,600 mi) over an area of approximately 344,400 square kilometres (133,000 sq mi).[4][5] The reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland in northeast Australia.

The Great Barrier Reef can be seen from outer space and is the world's biggest single structure made by living organisms.[6] This reef structure is composed of and built by billions of tiny organisms, known as coral polyps.[7] This reef supports a wide diversity of life, and was selected as a World Heritage Site in 1981.[1][2] CNN labeled it one of the seven natural wonders of the world.[8] The Queensland National Trust named it a state icon of Queensland. ...<cont>[9]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrier_Reef

0 Replies

@msolga,

Actually, it has been shown in recent years that environmental concerns, married to economics , ARE quite accomplosheable and are economically positive. Its much more a positive to prevent environmental disasters by investment in the means to thwart them, than it is to engage in periodic massive cleanups.

Many nations have made industries out of environmental investment and have accomplished sustainable development with environmental costs figured in . By doing so, we find that "end of the pipe" cleanups or, periodic Prudoe Bays are designed for up front, as are prevention technologies and monitoring etc. Like the California earthquake industry has spurred entire new investments in building and engineering

2 Replies

@farmerman,

Quote:

Many nations have made industries out of environmental investment and have accomplished sustainable development with environmental costs figured in .

Commonly refered to the triple bottom line.
For those that dont already understand what triple bottom line means...
Profit is not necessarily the only end outcome of a companies work. There are also envirinmental and social outcomes. Designing a companies work systems to include positive (or at least neutral) environmental and social outcomes will be of benefit to the profitibility of the company.

Applying this to the current situation for the sheng neng 1's owner could pehaps mean enough employees to cover the shifts so that sleep deprivation would not occor. Employing their own pilot(s) (or perhaps working with other shipping companies to employ pilots).

I must say i'm not in enormously in favour of pilots and would prefer to see some kind of monitored radar system similar to air traffic control.

1 Reply

@farmerman,

No argument with that, when there's a willingness by both sides to work together constructively, farmer. I can think of a number of examples where this approach has worked, too. It is when the "twain" of economic interests & environmental concerns can't or won't meet in good faith, to resolve an obvious environmental problem, that the polarized difficulties occur.
I would prefer prevention rather than after-the-event "cures" any day!

0 Replies

@dadpad,

Quote:

Applying this to the current situation for the sheng neng 1's owner could pehaps mean enough employees to cover the shifts so that sleep deprivation would not occor. Employing their own pilot(s) (or perhaps working with other shipping companies to employ pilots).

I must say i'm not in enormously in favour of pilots and would prefer to see some kind of monitored radar system similar to air traffic control.

Interesting, dp.

I'm curious about your position on the employment of pilots. Most of the information I've come across from Australian marine experts, so far, favours specially trained pilots with specialized knowledge of the unique Reef conditions, plus other monitoring.

1 Reply

@msolga,

Quote:

Interesting, dp.

Wow Olga. If somebody said that at my end of the bar I would expect most of us to laugh our locks off or fall over backwards comatose with sleep.

I can't understand why you Australians want to sell your coal to China in the first place. One day it will run out and your descendents will be justified in thinking of you lot as eaters of the seed corn like when a wayward scion of a landed family squanders the wealth of ten generations in an orgy of drinking, gambling and libertinage despite fathering a litter of children.

0 Replies

@msolga,

msolga wrote:

What would be an approximate cost of putting a navigation pilot on board a vessel like the Shen Neng I? A rough guess even? I'd appreciate it if you could give us some idea, knowing much more about such things. I'm thinking this would have been a far less expensive option compared to the (all the combined) costs as a result of this accident? I've tried Googling for an answer about costs of pilots with no success so far.

Consider for a moment the physical and economic problem of getting maritime pilots on inbound vessels several hundred miles from their destination ports and far offshore from any embarkation point, and the reciprocal problem of getting them back after their service on outbound vessels. Cargo vessels don't have helo pads and Australia has no ability to require them of the shippers serving Australian markets. That means the pilots must embark and disembark from cargo vessels by boat and often hundreds of miles off shore. That would require a fairly high ratio of pilots to the average number of inbound and outbound vessels and an extensive flotilla of pilot boats. Such organizations, particularly operating without competition and under a government mandate, usually end up taking very good care of themselves and doing so at the expensive of their customers who have no choice but to use them. The maritime pilots serving San Francisco Bay generally make about $400,000 (US) per year - its a very nice racket. The costs in this case, of course will end up being borne by the Australian exporters and consumers who sell and use the goods being transported.

Ironically governments usually exempt themselves from their own rules and Naval vessels weren't required to use pilots. I (and most other captains) used pilots for my first couple of port entries, just to learn the unique features and lore of the Bay, and dispensed with them afterwards, saving the government a great deal of money - and doing so quite without incident or mishap. This stuff isn't rocket science, and any capable mariner, once he is familiar with local conditions, simply doesn't need a pilot.

A much cheaper and more reliable solution would be to designate and clearly mark a sufficient number of safe channels to serve the various ports in question and to operate a number of tracking stations on ocean platforms to monitor the traffic through them and warn (by radio) vessels getting off track. Given the indignation and concern exhibited by you and so many other Australians over this matter it is remarkable that your government has been so long derelict in doing this. Even now, based on press reports, there appears to be a great deal of denial by the government for its own lapses and a marked willingness to blame others instead.

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

So you don't have an answer in other words.

If you plan on making the economic argument, and asserting that having a pilot is not worth it, you have to be able to demonstrate it.

How about this for approximate...

Quote:

The maritime pilots serving San Francisco Bay generally make about $400,000 (US) per year - its a very nice racket.

How many operations as a pilot per year would this equate to? Divide their annual earnings by the number of operations for us if you wouldn't be so kind.

I'm still economically interested in you answer.

T
K
O

1 Reply

@Diest TKO,

Diest, I don't "have to" do anything with respect to your, generally confused and poorly stated "questions" at all. I find you to be unusually defensive, pretentious and a bit neurotic, so your opinions don't interest me much either.

That, in my own experience repeated use of Bay pilots was not "worth it" is amply demonstrated by repeated entries and exits from the Bay in a 120,000 ton vessel over 1,100 feet in length, without mishap or incident - and without pilots.

That pilots are not likely to be the most reliable solution for the barrier reef is very likely something beyond your practical experience or understanding. If you were a more amiable or interesting person I might be willing to discuss those issues with you. Unfortunately you are neither.

That they would likely cost much more than a handful of well-marked channels and radar monitoring stations is something that you can figure out for yourself armed with a chart showing the location of ports and the distances involved and a little arithmetic.

Bay Area pilots generally work 3 days/week. A nice racket.

2 Replies

@georgeob1,

I happen to agree with you on this issue. There is zero reason to pay to ship pilots out to these tankers and such when an automated system could accomplish the same thing at much less expense.

Not only that, but the recent oil spill/bridge collision in the Bay clearly shows that a special pilot is no guarantee against environmental disaster.

My only question is: is the amount of traffic so large as to make it impractical to force it all into certain channels? I would hate to create a worse problem when trying to solve one.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

blah blah blah backstroke.

Listen dude, I'm not going to force you to do anything, including answering questions that if your claim was true, you'd be able to demonstrate with relative ease.

What good is your experience here georgey boy? I guess you think it means you can just simply say you know and that's the end of it, damn else who would request you to prove it.

What do I have to be defensive about? I'm not the one with all the relevant experience who is floundering to provide answers.

T
K
O

0 Replies

@Cycloptichorn,

A pretty good question, and I don't know the answer. A lot depends on the current and projected flow of goods from Eastern Australian ports and the likely routes through the Barrier Reef they would practically employ. I'm assuming that six or seven transit routes would suffice - a safe assumption, I think, but I have not investigated the details.

The big economic driver for pilots is the operation of getting them on and off inbound and outbound vessels hundreds of miles from their destinations. This requires lots of boats, fairly long, repeated journeys, and very likely a very high ratio of embarked time to actual pilot time (all paid) for the pilots themselves. The problem is severe enough in San Francisco where the pilots embark either from a pilot boat near the Farallone Islands 24 miles offshore or inside the Golden Gate (depending on the service requested). Just getting on and a sometimes unstable Jacob's ladder from a small pilot boat in a rough sea and climbing 30 or 40 feet up to the deck can be a feat. Two or three pilots have been killed doing this here in the Bay in the last few decades.

Interestingly the Coast Guard operates a radar monitoring station and radio net for all maritime traffic in the Bay, and does so reliably and efficiently. The collision with the Bay bridge last year involved a ship moving from an anchorage just off the west shore of Treasure Island and under the bay Bridge just West of the Yerba Buena tunnel ... in a very heavy fog. In that location the ship could not be seen well by the radar antenna located at the peak on Yerba Buena Island, and the short time lapse between lifting the anchor and hitting the nearby bridge didn't give anyone much time - not the Coast Guard, not the ship's captain and not the Bay pilot. Both equipment failure and errors in judgment on the ship were involved. Only fools believe that these can be completely eliminated.

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

The big economic driver for pilots is the operation of getting them on and off inbound and outbound vessels hundreds of miles from their destinations. This requires lots of boats, fairly long, repeated journeys, and very likely a very high ratio of embarked time to actual pilot time (all paid) for the pilots themselves.

Though the distance from the shore isn't at all similar in the German Bight, our pilots and the incoming-/outgoing traffic doesn't have such problems.

Pilots are stationed on tenders, going on board either with small pilot boats or by heli.

As far as I know, only in the Kiel Canal even navy ships have to get pilots.

(Radar monitoring on the Ems-Jade-Elbe-Way is only for those ships/boats which don't have a pilot: all below 120 m and navy ships.)

A pilot here in Germany makes nearly 6,000€/month pre-tax.
They work for four months, then are one month off.
All have to be captains (unlimited) with having commanded a ships as such for at least two years. The special training last - depending on the estuary - between 8 month and one year.

1 Reply

I would love to post my opinion on all this but knowing less than nothing about the topic (usually that doesn't prevent me from opinionating) I am a total loss for thoughts. I do, however, think whales are pretty neat.

1 Reply

@Walter Hinteler,

Pilots that Im fammiliar with are one of the biggest examples of nepotism around. Its almost like a rule of primogeniture , where sones of pilots become pilots and breaking in new pilots from outside the families is often impossibloe. At least the Delawaer pilots and C&D pilots and Chesapeake pilots seem all to have the same last names.

We have a friend who is a retired Panama Canal Pilot (apparently that post is less politics than coastal US waters). After our friend left being a captain of a large tanker, he joined up to be a pilot in the Canal. Hes since retired and teaches dead stick maneuvers at the maritime academy in Md.

0 Replies

@dyslexia,

Quote:

I do, however, think whales are pretty neat.

Do you think they are neater that bluebottles?

Is a quasi-religious sensibility at work in rating organisms on a neatness scale? As opposed to a scientific sensibility I mean.

1 Reply

@spendius,

"than" I meant. I'm always typing "that" instead of "than" when I'm sober.

Apologies all round. I hope it didn't detract from the comprehension of my post.

1 Reply

@spendius,

I'm not sure anything could detract from the comprehension of you threads.

1 Reply

Barrier Reef oil spill April 4, 2010

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know