Salvage
There now exists multiple Professional Salvage Service Providers offering "coast to coast" Salvage and Related Services as required by OPA-90. With the ASA's assistance, the required Federal review process is nearly complete. We now should be ready to take the final step and see these long awaited regulations promulgated. The ASA recently held a meeting with the vessel owning community's trade associations that resulted in the development of a compromised position with respect to the pending final rule that all parties can stand behind. We have also recently established a Quality Partnership with the U.S. Coast Guard and have held our first meeting with Rear Admiral Brian Salerno, Assistant Commandant of Policy and Planning. This agreement officially underscores ASA's role as a vital partner to the Coast Guard in its efforts to prepare for and oversee the response to any maritime disaster. This relationship will help to strengthen the communications and working environment between the Coast Guard and the marine salvage industry in order to improve vessel and personnel safety within our industry, enhance national maritime security preparedness and response, promote timely, responsible, professional salvage response to marine casualties, and enhance the protection of the environment along our nation's waterways. The goal in any marine casualty response should be to keep the oil in the ship. Salvors remain the ultimate environmentalists as we respond to casualties where pollutants are involved. The most critical time of any response is the initial stage of the event. Opportunities to stabilize a situation and mitigate the consequences of a casualty are more often than not lost with the passage of time. The extent of possible subsurface and/or internal structural damage to a vessel can only be determined by a complete survey and inspection of the vessel conducted by trained professionals. This type of survey requires the expertise of experienced professional salvors not by an owner's representative and/or oil spill responders. Salvage is not an industry where you can learn as you go. When time is of the essence, experience is not a luxury but a requirement. Beyond surveys (external, internal and diving), matters of damage stability calculations, purposeful grounding, temporary patching, pumping, that the situation might require, are all traditional areas of work performed by the professional salvage community. Salvors work to stabilize and protect stricken vessels and, in so doing, contain possible pollutants including bunkers, cargoes and other materials. The salvage industry is a bit like the insurance industry. No one may think much about us until there is a real need. But when that need comes, it is good to know that professionally trained marine salvors are ready, willing and able to protect life, the environment, and property should a maritime disaster - natural or terrorist-related -- occur. That thought should allow us all to sleep better. This is the hope of the American Salvage Association.
December, 2007 � MarineNews � 15