The Washington State Department of Ecology’s Spills Program prepares for and responds to oil and hazardous substance spills. However, preventing spills from happening in the first place is the best way to protect the environment and human health, the ministry said. The Spills Prevention Section works with industry and other groups to reduce the risk of oil spills from ships, railways, pipelines and oil handling facilities.
For the spill program, knowing the number of vessels entering Washington state waters helps the department better understand the risk of oil spills in state waters and how risks change over time. time. They publish this information in an annual report known as Vessel Entries and Transits for Washington Waters (VEAT).
The year 2024 marks the 30th anniversary of VEAT reporting. They provide a unique long-term view of vessel movement trends in Washington State. The VEAT specifically tracks the transits of cargo ships, passenger ships, fishing vessels over 300 gross tonnes, tank barges, articulated tugs and barges and oil tankers.
The report counts every ship that enters and every time it enters. A ship may enter and exit several times a year. Many tank barges never leave, so significant transits in Washington state waters are recorded.
A formal ship oil spill prevention program was initiated in 1991 when the Washington State Legislature created the Office of Marine Safety (OMS) to help prevent oil spills from large ships. commercial ships.
Currently, there was no official count of the number of these large vessels operating in Washington state waters, Ecology said. But the WHO needed this data for their oil spill prevention efforts, so they coordinated with the Canadian Coast Guard’s Vessel Traffic Service (VTS) to identify ship types and count their incoming transits.
Tofino Traffic, a radar station and VTS center on the west coast of Vancouver Island, is the first point of contact for vessels requiring clearance before entering Puget Sound and has been able to provide the necessary data.
Things have changed since the early 1990s and WHO is now part of Ecology’s spill response programme. Vessels must register with Prince Rupert Traffic. Ecology now obtains the data needed for the annual report through the Marine Exchange, the Merchant Exchange, the Chamber of Shipping BC and other government and industry partners.
Beginning in 1999, Ship Inspector Lori Crews was part of a two-person team working on the annual VEAT report. Crews has since become the lead author of the report, and each January she begins pulling together data from multiple sources to build a comprehensive picture of vessel transits within the state.
At first, everything had to be counted by hand. Fortunately, computers have made counting and sorting easier.
Crews said she has enjoyed the annual process of implementing VEAT.
“I love data and I love working with spreadsheets,” she said. “It’s nice to get an annual snapshot of what’s happening on the water. I see it as an annual task that I look forward to every year, as an event. …and we occasionally do presentations from year to year for anyone who wants to see the data.
Over the years, Crews noticed changes in the numbers and explored those trends.
“Shipping follows the global economy. As things rise and fall, so do the number of ships.
Documenting these changes helps the Spills Program understand potential oil spill risks. For example, during the 2010 global economic downturn, there were fewer ships entering Washington state; tanker entry transits decreased due to oil trains delivering crude to state refineries; and the number of passenger ships fell to zero at the height of the 2020 pandemic.
“I’ve been doing this for 25 years and I’ll continue,” Crews said. “This is one of the oldest data records in the market, and it has held the same value for a long time. This paints a fascinating picture of how things have changed.
— Article and photos provided by the Washington State Department of Ecology
