OTSOPA 2021
OTSOPA 2021 was held online on 25-27 May and was chaired by Torben Iversen (Denmark). Representatives from Belgium, Denmark, the European Union, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom, and IMO as an observer and Sea Alarm as a guest attended the meeting.
OTSOPA 2021 agreed on a mechanism to identify funding priorities within the Bonn Agreement for future project calls. Under this process an Intersessional Correspondence Group would work on an annual basis on the review of the list of research priorities.
On MARPOL Annex VI monitoring, the meeting agreed to establish 2 Working Groups (WGs) to address the strategic and operational issues (MAVI-SOWG) and the technical matters (MAVI-TWG). The Terms of Reference for both WGs were drafted to cover the recommendations from the MARPOL Annex VI Experts Workshop (MAVIEWS 21) held on 2 – 5 February. OTSOPA further agreed on the project concept proposed by Belgium to develop a common MARPOL Annex VI compliance monitoring strategy within the Bonn Agreement area (BA MAVI) towards the 2022 call.
The meeting continued the discussions on ‘Significant Acute Pollution’ under Descriptor 8 of the European Marine Strategy Framework Directive and agreed on a common approach to be presented on the next European MSFD-D8 core group meeting.
Presentations were given on relevant R&D projects and studies such as the IMAROS project (Improving response capacities and understanding the environmental impacts of new generation low sulphur MARine fuel Oil Spills) and the MANIFESTS project (MANaging risks and Impacts From Evaporating and gaseous Substances To population Safety). Sea Alarm gave an update on EUROWA-2 project which aimed to strengthen Europe’s capability to deal with wildlife sea pollution emergencies.
Interesting discussions on aerial and satellite surveillance data were held with a view to prepare more comprehensive multiannual trend analyisis in the next working cycle.
Norway invited the meeting to participate in the SuperCEPCO planned for September of 2021 to cover shipping lanes in Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish waters and which was being organised with the support from Denmark and Sweden.
And finally, lessons learnt from pollution incidents were shared at the meeting including the Eemslift Hendrika case and an accidental release of plastic pellets, both in Norway.
