Big Ships Dump Oil Into the Ocean

  • Ships dump 88 million gallons of oil into the ocean illegally each year - that's eight times the amount of the Exxon Valdez oil spill (Photo source: Vmenkov at Wikimedia Commons)

Each year, ships intentionally dump millions of gallons of oil into the oceans. Rebecca Williams reports everything from cruise ships to cargo ships to oil tankers have been caught:

Transcript

Each year, ships intentionally dump millions of gallons of oil into the oceans. Rebecca Williams reports everything from cruise ships to cargo ships to oil tankers have been caught:

Ships have all kinds of mechanical parts that use oil.

The ships are supposed to collect the waste oil and separate it out, but it turns out a lot of ships just dump it overboard.

Stacey Mitchell is chief of the environmental crimes section at the Department of Justice. She says some estimates are all this oil adds up to about 88 million gallons a year.

That’s eight times the amount of oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez. And those are just the ships they catch.

“As we do more and more of these enforcements the crews on board these vessels who are trying to defeat our purposes are getting craftier and are coming up with new ways to commit this crime and new ways to conceal it.”

Mitchell says it takes time and costs money to separate the oil the way you’re supposed to, and so they might think the chance of getting caught might be worth the risk. Though if you are caught, the fines can be in the millions of dollars.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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