Chinese shipping industry is not the only one causing environmental incidents

China’s shipping industry is primarily made up of the state-owned and run COSCO (China Ocean Shipping Company), and it is this company to whom the Shen Neng 1 belongs. The Shen Neng 1 is not the only COSCO ship to be involved in a notable maritime accident.

The Great Barrier Reef incident can be added to a list that already contains incident in San Francisco and Norway. In 2007, the COSCO Busan collided with the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge, ripping a hole in the ship that resulted in 58,000 gallons of oil being spilt in the bay, and in 2009, the Full City, operated but not owned by COSCO, lost engine power during a storm and ran aground in Norway, resulting in an oil spill.

Both incidents caused extensive damage to local infrastructure, local livelihoods and most importantly, the environment, wiping out entire ecosystems that will never recover. One only needs to see the sad, terrible sight of an oil covered bird trying vainly to take flight to know the devastation that oil wreaks on the ocean’s life forms.

What should be remembered though, is that the shipping industry in general is a deceitful, corner-cutting, environmentally unfriendly one, filled with cheapskates who will take huge risks in the hope of huge rewards, using loopholes in the law, or sometimes breaking it all together.

There are very few shipping companies in the world without a blemish on their record, a lot of this has to do with the fact that it is unsafe in general. Moving a piece of machinery that weighs over 100,000 tons through the water at over 20 miles an hour carries with it inherent dangers, add to this the fact that managers want to make money, and put pressure on their crews to make money, and the effects are obvious.

From the days of Titanic to now, shipping companies will only do what is legally necessary; they will not act with any morality. We see this in the dumping of sewerage and waste by cruise ships in the Inside Passage in Alaska, the huge fight that oil companies put up when the idea of double-bottomed hulls was first floated.

It is not just COSCO playing a dirty game then, they all are. China’s shipping company is just doing what others do. Since 2001 there have been over 22 oil spills in locations all over the world, involving almost as many shipping lines and oil and gas companies. Since the 1950’s, over 400,000 tons of oil has split into the world’s oceans.

Not until the penalties for failure to ensure the safety of the crew, the ship and the environment are made prohibitive, will we see a real effort by shipping lines to prevent their ships coming ashore.

Add to this the fact that China’s shipping industry, like the shipping industry the world over, is suffering from the effects of a decline in international trade, and one sees that the conditions for even more corner-cutting are potent.

Shipping lines across the world are tightening their belts, some of these measures involve highly publicized cost-cutting procedures like “super-slow steaming”, a practice introduced by Maersk Line to 200 of its ships, reducing operating costs, such as fuel, by 7%. But other measures will be very quiet ones, like reducing crew compliments to reduce overhead costs.

When fewer officers are onboard a ship, the work of those remaining increases tenfold. This was the case in the Shen Neng 1 incident, as well as ship accidents the world over, the vast majority are caused through human error, which is enhanced by exhaustion of the crew, who then make small mistakes with big consequences.

It was recently reported by China news media that the first officer of the Shen Neng 1, who was on watch at the time of the grounding, had not slept properly for over 36 hours, and was mentally exhausted at the time of plotting the ship’s course.

The penalties for breaking the law need to be greater for shipping lines, the penalty for any given company of one incident needs to outweigh the economic benefit of cutting an illegal corner throughout their fleet, otherwise ships will continue running aground, causing empty outrage every year (picture courtesy Michael Macor – The Chronicle).