Leading environmental groups and rehabilitation centres in Portugal have joined forces to be better prepared for an oil spill incident. Cooperation between these organisations was first explored at a meeting that was held immediately following the RIOS workshop in April. Since then, two further meetings, in June and October, have taken place. Sea Alarm moderated all three meetings.
Bill Dwyer, the technical expert of the New Zealand Wildlife Health Centre recently visited the Sea Alarm offices as part of a fact-finding mission taking him to Switzerland, Belgium, France, Finland, and San Francisco. The purpose of Bill’s tour of several weeks was to identify outstanding features of other oiled wildlife response facilities, to assess the relative standard of preparedness in New Zealand and to pick up new ideas and insights.
Sea Alarm gave a presentation to OTSOPA Contracting Parties on its work in Europe and its cooperation with OSRL/EARL. OTSOPA is the technical working group under the Bonn Agreement, the regional cooperation on oil spill prevention, response and mutual assistance for the North Sea and the North East Atlantic.
Sea Alarm is pleased to announce that it joined the International Spill Control Organization (ISCO) in 2008.
ISCO is a non-profit-making organisation incorporated in London in 1984 that is dedicated to improving world-wide preparedness for response to oil and chemical spills.
The issue of euthanasia within a wildlife response plan was recently examined in the Netherlands. Hugo Nijkamp (Sea Alarm) accompanied the North Sea Directorate, the national authority for oil spill and oiled wildlife response, to a specialist company in Amsterdam that deals with large scale euthanasia of poultry. Devices for the euthanasia of birds by means of CO2 were examined.
The Seatrade Awards are amongst the most important and prestigious awards that can be won in the Maritime sector. Sea Alarm was honoured to be one of two runners-up in the Protection of the Marine and Atmospheric Environment category for the “highly commended contribution” it has made.
Together with Animal Welfare Sweden (Djurskyddet), Sea Alarm organized a national workshop on oiled wildlife response and planning, on 4 April 2008 in Stockholm, Sweden.
On 28 March 2008 a national oiled wildlife response table-top exercise took place in Ostend, Belgium. The exercise was organised by the Governor”s Office with the assistance of the Coastal Coordination Point and Sea Alarm.online roulette
A regional training workshop was held in Helsinki on 17-19 March 2008. Organised by WWF-Finland, SYKE, and Sea Alarm, the conference brought together 35 participants from the Baltic coastal states and Norway, and lecturers from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Belgium.
In early February 2008, the Federal State of Schleswig Holstein, was confronted with a mystery spill. This incident came too early for the local authorities who had not yet finalised their oiled wildlife response plan.