Aaron Brakel from the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council is Kay Brown’s guest to address the the complex and urgent issue of ocean pollution caused by ship emissions, especially from the use of scrubbers on large vessels. They explore how this technology, intended to reduce sulfur emissions, inadvertently dumps toxic pollutants into marine ecosystems and affects human health. The conversation highlights ongoing legislative efforts and actions individuals can take to advocate for cleaner shipping practices.

Key Takeaways:

• Heavy fuel oil and scrubber discharge pollute oceans with toxins like heavy metals and PAHs, which damage marine life and contaminate seafood.
• Ships burn heavy fuel oil due to historical international regulations, leading to an increase in the use of scrubbers, which bypass sulfur limits but transfer toxins into the water.
• Scrubber water use is immense—up to 3,600 tons per hour—equivalent to 1.5 Olympic swimming pools, harming aquatic ecosystems.
• Toxic pollutants from scrubbers persist and bioaccumulate, impacting organisms from the smallest plankton to humans consuming seafood.
• International regulations via the IMO have limited local and national control, but more than 45 countries have implemented bans or regulations on scrubber discharges.
• The use of scrubbers and heavy fuel oil contributes additional black carbon, accelerating melting sea ice and climate change.
• Heavy fuel oil spills are particularly hazardous because they are persistent, sink, and are difficult to clean, especially in cold Arctic waters.
• Advocates suggest banning scrubber discharges or mandating cleaner fuels to protect marine environments and public health; grassroots action and policy change are crucial.

Resources & Links:

• Southeast Alaska Conservation Council (SEAC)
• Amazon: "Our Water" by Bob Saunier
• IMO Regulations Overview
• California Cleaner Fuel Legislation
• Washington State Clean Fuel Policy

Connect with AARON Brakel:

• SEAC - Twitter
• SEAC - Website

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Hello and welcome to Hotspots.

Ships are polluting the oceans with extremely damaging toxins that are having effects throughout the food chain even at very low concentrations.

A growing body of scientific evidence shows that these toxic poisons are doing great harm to the marine environment and increasing human health risks.

I'll be discussing that today with my guest Erin Brakel, who's an expert on ocean pollution issues.

Welcome to Hotspots, Erin.

Thank you, Kay.

Good to be here.

Erin is the clean water campaigner for the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council.

Growing up in Juneau, Alaska, Aaron had a front row seat to the rapid expansion of the cruise industry and the impact of increasing numbers of large ships.

Visiting his hometown and the Inside Passage.

Aaron began learning about heavy fuel oil and its impacts after hearing concerns from the tribes and regulators about exhaust gas scrubbers and the health of Alaska waters.

So that's what we're going to be talking about today.

This technology known as scrubbers that are set on ships and what they do is they take sulfur and toxic pollution out of the exhaust gas from heavy fuel oil burning and put that in the water, take it out of the air and dump it in the water.

Today we'll be discussing how this situation came about and what can be done about it.

And spoiler alert, there is a simple solution which is burning cleaner fuels.

Erin, tell me a little bit about what's at stake here and why should people care about this issue?

You know, what's at risk is the ability to gather and harvest healthy food, to know that what you're eating is safe to eat.

The risk of bioconcentration, bioaccumulation impacts at the lowest levels of the food chain and the actual killing of, of the things that are in the water by some of these open loop scrubbers.

So how do scrubbers work exactly?

Yeah, so an exhaust gas scrubber is a kind of a loophole cheaper and dirtier heavy fuel oil.

And what happens is that they run the exhaust from the heavy fuel oil in through a big like stainless steel chamber.

They can be 15ft across, 20, 30ft high.

And there's multiple layers in those chambers where they have these rows of nozzles spraying seawater through the exhaust.

And what they're trying to do is get sulfur out of that exhaust.

And what happens is when they do that, not only do they get the acidic sulfur, but they collect all of the toxins that are in this dirty heavy fuel and then that's just dumped right overboard.

So how much water is affected?

You know, I was talking to a regulator recently and they said that on one of these large cruise ships that a single generator, of which they can have two or three running at any time, can use up to 3,600 tons of water per hour.

That's like an Olympic swimming pool and.

A half these waters get sucked in.

And everything that's in those waters is killed in this process.

Yeah, I grew up here in southeast Alaska and we're just very deeply connected to the marine waters.

We go out on the beaches, we go out in small boats, we get our food, our fish, our shellfish, you know, our clams, our crabs.

Everything comes from the water.

We eat healthy foods that grow on the shores.

And to think that the living water is being taken up and subjected to this bombardment of this absolutely hot acidic exhaust that's filled with tremendous amounts of toxic pollutants.

There's no reason to believe that anything that goes into a scrubber chamber that's in the water, which is not some kind of chemical solution designed to help companies save on their fuel bills.

This is our habitat doing what it should be with all the things in it that should be in there.

And there's no reason to believe that anything survives a trip through a scrubber chamber.

And that's what led to a huge increase in this.

These scrubbers on all kinds of ships, but particularly cruise ships.

Yeah, great question of the cruise ships that were here last year, it's really the large ships about, I think we had about 45 cruise ships.

30 Of them used heavy fuel oil and exhaust scrubbers, you know, as they came in through Alaska waters.

About, I think it's 18 had the open loop scrubbers in which that whole process of taking seawater is used continuously while the ship's engines are running with heavy fuel oil.

And so we had, last year we had over 600 voyages.

So every week there's 30 of these large cruise ships using dirty heavy fuel oil and exhaust scrubbers traveling through our waters every week.

So some of the toxics, I'll just mention, the specific ones that are part of this discharge include heavy metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons known as PAHs, nitrates, nitrites, sulfates and particulate matter.

And the presence of the heavy metals and the PAHs in scrubber discharge is particularly concerning because it can persist in the marine environment and accumulate within marine species.

So humans get exposed to this discharge when they eat contaminated seafood and drink water that would be contaminated and just by contact with the water in the ocean when they're out fishing or doing recreational activities.

And how, Erin, is all of this being addressed?

Who has the authority to regulate this pollution?

So the scrubber, the reason scrubbers came about, of course, was that they were trying to limit the amount of sulfur and acid rain and particulate in the, in the environment.

So the international community got together at the International Maritime Organization level and they came up with that regulation.

We don't currently have state regulations regarding scrubbers.

And a new law coming in will make it a little difficult for states to be able to regulate discharges.

But the discharges are really an outcome of using this dirty fuel.

And so what we look at in Alaska is say, hey, wait a minute, there's all of these different problems.

Scrubber's just one of them from using this dirty heavy fuel oil.

And why don't we just require cleaner fuel while they're here in Alaska?

In fact, there's already a cleaner fuel requirement all the way out to 24 miles from shore.

And around the world, more than 45 countries have already adopted scrubber bans or regulations because the imo, the International Maritime Org has not gotten consensus to be able to address it at the global level.

So in the meantime, just different countries and states are taking action recognizing how harmful these discharges are.

And one of the things about scrubbers, they let ships keep, keep using heavy fuel oil and that also produces more black carbon than the alternatives, which would be cleaner fuels.

And of course black carbon is accelerating the melting of sea ice and of glaciers and of other land based snow and ice and speeding up warming by absorbing more heat there and causing other feedback loops and ultimately leading to sea level rise.

So it's a really serious problem these scrubbers are calling causing in our environment.

Talk about that for a little bit.

So the reason why scrubbers exist is because of this heavy fuel oil.

And heavy fuel oil is considered persistent oil when spilled.

And instead of more rapidly dispersing and evaporating like lighter distillate fuels do, heavy fuel oil persists.

Maybe people will remember the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the images of habitat and wildlife that were affected by this crude oil, which is also a persistent oil.

So they act in similar ways on the environment.

They smother, and then they can submerge and reappear.

They just don't tend to disperse.

They linger in a long time, and it can be very difficult or even impossible to clean up.

And there are particularly concerns in colder waters because that's even less likely to disperse.

And of course, then when you get up into areas like the Arctic Ocean, you're dealing with the extreme difficulties of spill response for a spill that won't disperse.

Also, the heavy fuel will tend to emulsify and expand, so it can increase in volume rather than dispersing and evaporating.

It just can multiply four or five times in volume.

These spills can actually sink because they're similar to the weight of the water.

Sometimes they will sink below the surface of the water and travel long distances, and then they can reappear on shores and then be washed back up.

So we really don't want the heavy fuel oil in our nearshore environment.

And there is some legislation pending now in the Alaska legislature that would address that.

So we will see if we can get some action on it.

What can we do about it as individual citizens?

Are there specific concrete actions people can take to help make a difference about this?

So if you're in Washington state, there's a bill in front of the legislature.

Representative Deb, Contact your legislators.

But people in their own port communities can reach out to the port authority and ask what's happening in their community.

Because even though it's difficult for local regions to regulate, a port tariff is a contract, and it's a requirement that all of the shipping abide by while they're in the port, and no discharge requirements can be in port tariffs, as they are in many communities in southeast Alaska.

And what is your organization, seac, doing to work on this problem?

Yeah, Southeast Alaska Conservation Council is very focused on this concern.

We've been connecting with local communities, tribes throughout the region and have been raising the issue.

We've been doing a lot to educate the public.

Honestly, it's really helpful for people to.

To learn about this, because once they hear about what's happening with these scrubbers and what's going into our water, people immediately want change.

And so we're happy that our local legislators here have introduced two separate bills in the Alaska legislature.

One in the Senate and one in the House.

And so we're working to educate and help see that those bills move forward.

Thank you so much, Erin, for chatting with me about this important problem which is protecting the health and the cleanliness of our oceans, which provide seafood for the world.

And, you know, it's really distressing that the United States has done so little to address this.

Even in the before times.

The bureaucracy under our former President Biden declined to regulate scrubbers, which was disappointing.

There's been a lot of industry pressure to maintain the status quo and continue burning heavy fuel oil.

And I guess if they don't give it to ships, they won't have anything else to do with it.

So they seem.

The oil industry seems quite intent on maintaining these markets and their influence is affecting our agencies as well as Congress and our state legislatures.

So given the significance of the environmental and human health harms and risks, scrubber use should be quickly phased out instead of being allowed to continue growing as there are hundreds of new orders for ship that for new ship bills with scrubbers in years.

So we either need a ban on the discharge of scrubber wastewater, which the federal government could do, or we need to mandate the use of cleaner distillate fuels, which individual states can and are doing.

And this situation will change when enough of us demand that it do so.

Be informed, speak up, speak out, and see you next time on hotspots.