This Monday, an ad hoc diplomatic conference will begin in Hong Kong that aims to make the ship breaking industry safer for its workers and for the environment by considering for adoption the International Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships.  During the five day meeting, countries are expected to agree on measures that require new ships to limit the amounts of hazardous materials they’re built with and require older ships to be broken down in yards that meet certain environmental standards. [Continue Reading →]

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Photo by Edward Burtynsky

The Economic Times of India bring us news of the world’s most infamous ship breakers;

The hands that used to work on mammoth ocean liners and crude carriers and generated revenues worth Rs 80,000 crore till 2008 in one of the largest ship-breaking yards, have deserted it. Alang Ship Breaking Yard, on Gujarat’s Bhavnagar coast, which until 2004 could boast of being one of the biggest employers of migrant labour, has lost its men to other clusters as it lost business to Bangladesh. Over a period of four years, numbers have dwindled from 40,000 to about 5,000 migrant labourers.
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Ever since Alang breached its first vessel — MV Kota Tenjong — in 1983, it drew migrant labourers from Mumbai, Orissa, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh. Alang beached 4,539 ships between 1983 and 2008 and handled tonnage to the tune of 3,19,89400 LDT (light displacement tonnage).

Between 1996 and 2004, whenever large supertankers, container ships or passenger carriers were beached at Alang, it used to resemble a honeycomb with hundreds of manual labourers buzzing around the ships; dismantling them, salvaging what they could and reducing the rest to scrap. During its prime in 1998-99, Alang handled a record 361 ships with 30,37,882 LDT.

“We had close to 40,000 labourers during those days when business was profitable. Now, we are left with hardly 5,000 of them,” says vice-president of the Ship Recycling Industries Association (SRIA) at Alang, Vippin Aggarwal. Close to 95% of the labourers at Alang have been migrants, he points out. Continue Reading…

Not mentioned in the article are newly imposed environmental guidelines set by India’s Supreme Court and scrap metal prices that make ship breaking profitable in places like the UK and US.

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Today is Blog Action Day and the topic of discussion throughout the blogoshpere is the environment. There are many issues and environmental news stories worth addressing like alternative energy ideas, ship emissions, global warming, or hot topic of the month; the Hawaii Superferry. Considering we get to choose the topic of most interest to us… we bring you this video of the S/S Norway. It’s a look at her glorious past and sad future upon the beaches of Alang, the notoriously dangerous and environmentally unsound shipbreaking port in eastern India.

The director of this documentary tells us;

This is a trailer of the documentary I am making about the last of the great 1000 foot ocean liners, The S/S Norway / S/S France. This ship has a story unlike any other. Built as a transatlantic liner and later being converted into a cruise ship the S/S Norway now rests on the beach in Alang, India. Here it is waiting to be dismantled. This unique footage from on board the ship in Alang will only be shown in this documentary. The documentary will be finished in 2007.

To see the troubling images of the ship’s destruction you’ll have to wait for the documentary but here’s a quick look at what we expect to see;

For more amazing but troubling images from Alang please visit our post; Edward Burtynsky – Shipbreaking Images

IF your looking for more environmental posts from this blog please CLICK HERE

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Edward Burtynsky makes a wish: that his images — stunning landscapes that document humanity’s impact on the world — help persuade millions to join a global conversation on sustainability. A Canadian by birth Burtynsky’s most famous photographs are sweeping views of scarred or altered landscapes of foreign countries. He was invited to China to photograph the construction of the Three Gorges Dam project. The grand, inspiring beauty of these images is often in tension with the troubled environments they depict.

Of interest to mariners are the following online galleries of his work:

Ships – Container Ports
Ships – Ship Breaking
Oil – Oil Refineries
China – Three Gorges Dam
China – Shipyards
China – Coal and Steel
China – Urban Renewal

To find out more about his work click HERE to see the video of his 2005 presentation to TED.

Update: Also see Andrew Bell’s Shipbreaking Gallery

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CBSnews.com tells us:

(CBS) This segment was originally broadcast on Nov. 5, 2006. It was updated on Aug. 29, 2007.

Now and then 60 Minutes take viewers to places they’ve never been to before. They are exotic places, the stuff of dreams. This is a story about one of those places. But as Bob Simon reports, the ship breaking beaches of Bangladesh belong more in a nightmare.

We all know how ships are born, how majestic vessels are nudged into the ocean with a bottle of champagne. But few of us know how they die. And hundreds of ships meet their death every year. From five-star ocean liners, to grubby freighters, literally dumped with all their steel, their asbestos, their toxins on the beaches of some the poorest countries in the world, countries like Bangladesh.

You can’t really believe how bad it is here, until you see it. Read More…

Many thanks to Fred Fry for the video link.

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