Op-Ed: Professional salvors keep marine trade flowing

James Herbert

By James Herbert, Secretary General, International Salvage Union

The drive for transparency should be at the heart of all industry. Ensuring that stakeholders know about, and understand, your work and views builds trust and confidence. But it can be argued that the shipping industry—so vital for world trade, but less visible to the wider public—has not had to attend to transparency to the same degree as, for example, the energy industry. To meet its commitment to openness, the International Salvage Union (ISU)—the global trade association representing the interests of professional salvors—publishes an Annual Review describing its activities and reporting on the performance of the salvage industry.

The spotlight of public scrutiny now shines on shipping more and more. But it is only in the last few years that the letters “ESG” have become mainstream for shipping and owners and managers have started to publish reports. Much of the focus relates to requirements for carbon emissions reduction in motive power. But the traditional concern in the operation of maritime trade has been pollution and potential damage to the marine environment following vessel casualty and that has not gone away.

The reduction in incidents involving oil spills is well documented and it is indeed rare to see major disasters. But the threat remains and has shifted to other trades including containerships which carry a huge variety of potentially hazardous and polluting products. It includes plastic nurdles—tiny pellets—which, if spilled to the ocean, are both devastating and extremely hard to deal with including in beach clean-up operations.

And containerships are difficult to deal with as casualties. In the largest classes the sheer scale is overwhelming, and the challenge for salvors is great. The recently published 2023 ISU Annual Review sets out the results of the association’s annual pollution prevention survey. It shows that ISU members – professional, commercial salvors from around the world – provided services to boxships carrying nearly half a million tonnes of cargo.

The same survey also identifies the threat from bunker fuel, with our members handling casualties with nearly 100,000 tonnes of bunkers which included a number of cases where the individual vessel had more than 2000 tonnes of fuel on board. The case of the wrecked Capesize bulker Wakashio is a clear demonstration of the very real risk—she spilled about 1,000 tonnes of fuel when she grounded off Mauritius in 2020 causing an environmental disaster. The intervention of salvors prevented the rest of the fuel—at least another 2,000 tonnes—from spilling.

In most situations it is only the professional salvors that stand between a casualty and an environmental catastrophe. Typically our members provide services each year to vessels carrying more than one and a half million tonnes of potential pollutants. In an era where, rightly, one tonne of bunkers over the side is unacceptable this is a huge contribution to environmental protection, to say nothing of the huge costs and reputational damage that might otherwise be incurred.

And this reinforces the key priority of the ISU which is to ensure that the industry remains adequately funded. The ISU position is that salvage awards under Article 13 of the Salvage Convention (based on the success of the operation, the values preserved and with additional encouragement) must remain the cornerstone of the industry to fund the investment in people, training and equipment that is needed to continue to provide professional services around the world. At the same time we recognize that our members are free to contract how they wish and many services are provided, for example, under variants of BIMCO wreck contracts, towage contracts and on commercial terms.

We know that our key stakeholders—shipowners, property and liability insurers—recognize the importance of the salvage industry because they say so publicly and all of us agree that the salvage industry needs to be sustainable economically. When there are tensions around the cost of salvage we ask that, when considering awards, owners and insurers celebrate the value preserved by our services and do not focus on the cost.

In concluding, I think we can be very proud of our industry and the services that it provides and I never find it difficult to make the case for the professional salvor.

James Herbert is Secretary General of the International Salvage Union, the organisation serving as the global voice of the marine salvage industry with a membership of some 55 marine salvage companies from more than 30 countries.