Robin des Bois and the OSPAR Commission. Cork, Ireland. June 26-29, 2017
OSPAR is an International Cooperation Convention dedicated to the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic, which came into effect in 1998. France, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Finland, Iceland , Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the European Union are members, as well as Luxembourg and Switzerland due to the influence that the rivers flowing through them have on the Atlantic. Robin des Bois (Robin Hood) has had observer status at the OSPAR Commission since 2005.
OSPAR loses the Arctic
Report
OSPAR comes from the fusion in 1992 of the Paris Convention for the Prevention of Marine Pollution from Land-based Sources and the Oslo Convention for the Prevention of Marine Pollution by navy and aircraft immersion operations. The latter was initiated following the shock of the oil spill from the Torrey Canyon March 18, 1967.
OSPAR is dedicated to the protection of the northeast Atlantic Ocean. It is a pilot fish. The work of its 5 committees – Biodiversity, Offshore Industry, Radioactive Substances, Environmental Impact of Human Activities, Hazardous Substances and Eutrophication – allows better understanding and combat of the many pressures on marine ecosystems from the open sea of Portugal to the Arctic Ocean. This success is notably materialized by a quality status report without concession of the OSPAR zone in 2010 (1). Seven years later, the OSPAR pilot fish is threatened of asphyxia by the Arctic countries. Robin des Bois has returned from the Biodiversity and Offshore Industry committees which gathered in Berlin and in Oslo the first two weeks of March.
Torrey Canyon – March 18, 1967: The Mother of the Black Tides
On February 19, 1967, the Torrey Canyon left the oil refinery of Al Ahmadi in Kuwait. The supertanker was heading for Milford Haven, Wales, United Kingdom after circumventing South Africa. She was transporting 120,000 tons of crude oil. Built in 1959 in the United States by Newport News Shipbuilding, she was jumboized in 1965, and lengthened from 247 to 297 meters; her initial capacity of 60,000 tons was doubled. She was the pride of oil shipping companies.
On March 18, 1967, the Torrey Canyon, due to a faulty navigation, was impaled on the reefs between the Isles of Scilly and Cornwall.
Two months later, the aftermath of the shipwreck was taking a heavy toll – 150 kilometers of polluted shores in Southeast United Kingdom. Thousands of birds covered in oil came across the English Channel and were washed up dead or dying up from Calais to the Ile d’Yeu, France. The coastline was in mourning from the peninsula of La Hague to the tip of Brittany. The Channel Islands were wearing black.
For the first time, the expression “Black Tide” was on the front page of the news.
