Word: derelict
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...harbor or shoreline in the country, and you'll find derelict and abandoned vessels," says Doug Helton, acting director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Marine Debris Program. NOAA data suggest there are at least 10,000 abandoned ships and obstructions peppering the U.S. coast, but experts predict there are far more. Helton says 3,000 to 4,000 abandoned vessels were scattered around the coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 alone...
Sunken vessels can also trail deadly debris. Fishing boats, for example, which are stocked with nets and traps, often continue to "ghost fish" after the ship itself has been abandoned. The biggest man-made threat to the endangered monk seal of Hawaii is entanglement in derelict fishing gear, according to Keith Criddle, a marine-policy professor at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. Off North Carolina's coast, ghost crab pots continue to trap and kill diamondback terrapin turtles. In a 2004 report titled An Ocean Blueprint for the 21st Century, the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy found that...
...course, there are governmental policies in place prohibiting ship abandonment: state laws fine and sometimes jail owners of derelict vessels. The problem is, there's a strong financial disincentive against retrieving and recycling sunken vessels. Dismantling a 40-ft. yacht costs an owner on average $5,000 to $10,000, but the costs can run to 100 times that amount. "You can't just crush it up into a cube," says Helton. Meanwhile, state fines for abandonment run a lot lower, as little as $100. Definitions of vessel, abandonment and ownership also vary among states, which means that ship owners...
Legislation is slowly beginning to change. Since 2003, Washington State's vessel-removal program has led a crackdown on derelict boats, using ramped-up boat-registration fees as funding for the program, which has so far cleared 188 boats. "It gave us financial capability, plus the legal hammer if we needed to use it," says Doug Sutherland, the state's commissioner of public lands. Other state officials have expressed interest in Washington's model. In September, the California legislature passed a bill to increase fines for owners of derelict vessels. And last year, the U.S. House of Representatives passed...
...Yugoslav naval base at Tivat on the coast of Montenegro is a derelict place. Colossal jetties stretch out from an abandoned work yard piled with crumbling concrete, twisted metal rods and broken glass. In one corner, a Cold War-era submarine, its giant propeller exposed to the summer winds, is being slowly dismantled by a local crew in flip-flops. The berths are fouled with paint chips and rusted metal, and until a recent scavenging operation, explosives lay on the seabed...