Welcome back to the Clean Sailors podcast. Let's talk about sea, marine, sailing and
keep it clean. I'm your host Holly, founder of Clean Sailors and a sailor myself with
a passion for the health of our mighty oceans. Through conversations with experts, innovators
and activists, all working towards improving the health of our seas, we're showcasing the
people and projects, changing the way things are done. Now we know since the 1950s, GRP
and FRP hulls, glass and fiber reinforced plastics became the go-to for boat building.
These materials were revolutionary, not just for maintenance, cost and performance, but
also increasing the accessibility of boats to a much wider audience. Fast forward several
decades however, and these materials, meaning thousands and thousands of boats, are at end
of life with no formal recycling opportunities anywhere in the world. So what currently happens
to boats when they die and what impact are they having on the environment? I'm joined
by Dr. Karina Chokhan, principal lecturer in ecotoxicology marine biology at the University
of Brighton. Thank you for joining me Karina to help dissect this topic.
Thank you for having me.
I'm really excited by this because as we mentioned earlier, we often believe that sailing is
quite a low impact. Sport, pleasure, pastime, because we use the power of the wind, but
obviously we are increasingly aware of the material substances that we use on our boats
to preserve our boats that are obviously having a significantly detrimental impact on our
environment. You've obviously been exploring fibreglass and sort of glass reinforced fibre
for a while from an environmental perspective. How did you first get into this specific subject
and what have you been finding?
This is a really nice question because I really like to talk about the start of this research,
the starting point of this research. I often say that, you know, like a lot of other discoveries
if you want, everything happened by accident. Years ago, probably about six, seven years
ago, I was working in Chichester Harbour in collaboration with Chichester Harbour Conservancy
because the Conservancy and the community in the harbour were very worried about the
plastic pollution. At that time, they had a lot of measures in place to reduce the macroplastic,
you know, all the recycling beams set up around the harbour, around the pathways, but they
wanted to know a little bit more about the microplastic. So a team from Brighton University
spent about myself included, spent a whole summer in Chichester Harbour collecting water,
collecting sediment and also collecting oysters and mussels for analysis in the laboratory
and to identify microplastics basically. Well, we were really, really amazed by the
particles that we discovered in oysters and in mussels. There were those tiny, tiny shards,
very, very dense, very brittle, very glass looking like under the microscope and we had
no idea where they were potentially coming from. I'm not a boater, I never had a boat,
I never heard of GRP before at that moment in my life. And so we started all this detective
work, you know, to understand what is it. It's something that the oysters will produce,
you know, pretty much like the pearls, but then it was present in mussels as well. And
so slowly by, and there was nothing, no research that was published at that time, you know,
for us to have a reference for that material. So we had to do a little bit more chemistry,
analysis and then spectrometry as well. And we discovered that it's glass. It is E type
glass, huge quantity accumulated in both types of organisms. And then we discovered that
actually we collected those organisms from in front of some very active boatyards in
December, January. So when the boatyards were at maximum activity, and so slowly by slowly
we realized that yes, this is a GRP product. So this is the fiberglass that is coming from
the GRP is coming from all the activities that are happening in the boatyard at that
particular time. And then everything started from there. That was the moment when we realized,
wow, this is yet another contaminant in the environment that we have no idea about. It's
still a very, very little research about the presence of this contaminant in the environment,
I have to say. This is something that we definitely need to address.
So just to recap, you were finding not just sort of everyday microplastics in the water
and in the flesh of these organisms, effectively oysters and pearls, you were actually finding
like hair like shards of glass within them. So that was obviously could only be from GRP
sort of FRP holds. It was very interesting because in the way we were lucky because we
collected the organisms from in front of a boatyard. And so what we found in the oysters
and mussels were very tiny fragments, identical in width. So they were all tubular, transparent
and almost identical in size. So they were like 100 microns, 50 to 100 microns. So this
is a tenth of your hair diameter. And that took us well later on talking to boaters to
work within the boatyard and so on. We realized that those specific particles that were ingested
by our organism must have come from a sort of procedure, maybe sanding, something that
created those almost identical particles that have been available in the environment. So
it was easy in a way to put two and two together. In front of the boatyard, the shards were
almost identical. The oysters were there at that moment in time. The boatyard was very
active because it was December, January when the boats are going through the mentoring.
So everything aligned perfectly. Obviously later on we had pieces of GRP, old, new and
so on. And we analyzed those again chemically and spectrophotometer. And we proved that the
same fingerprint, chemical fingerprint and spectrometric photoclack fingerprint is in
those pieces as to the ones that we found in the organism, just to prove the provenance
obviously. And as I said, I'm not a boater. I didn't know anything about boats at that
time. All I was interested in was the impact on my organism on oysters and mussels. And
so I started with 100 micron shards and then a little bit like you uncover piece by piece
of a big jigsaw. I ended up on looking at big boats, abandoned boats and end of life
boats. And I realized that yes, the problem is it's really big.
I hear you. I guess that in some ways it would follow that any scraping or grinding or repair
of hulls without obviously adequate capture of all the material that's coming off would
potentially whether airborne or otherwise drift into adjacent water, which you found
within oysters. Not okay. I appreciate because it is a contaminant and it is toxic and it
is a pollutant. But it would follow that if the immediacy of boatyard, oysters in the
water almost adjacent to it, that there may be some markers in there. But this is a much
bigger problem, isn't it? And I know that you've just alluded to that kind of that you're
always scratching at the surface of something. And this is really a big issue because of
the number of boats that we have on our planet. And secondarily, the number that are now almost
reaching end of life. And I think I'd love to sort of dive into this further because
we're talking hundreds of thousands coming up end of life every year now. We're talking
about 35 40 million plus registered leisure boats on the planet and that's registered
with hundreds of thousands of those coming up for end of life every year. So not just
my little one boatyard and the oysters outside of it. But what does this actually mean in
terms of size and scale for our marine environment?
It can be potentially devastating. Myself and my colleagues, we're looking at the natural
degradation of the material, you know, only boats sitting on the water or even worse in
some sort of intertidal area where they will be exposed to, you know, natural degradation
from the salt water, different temperatures, solar impact as well. But also in intertidal,
you'd have boats that sit on the sediment, they are a little bit scraped against the
sediment. So and this is just a natural degradation. And it's astonishing how much plastic paint
fiberglass on top of all the additional chemicals can be leaked from just the weathering of the
boat. And to add to this, we have now a really powerful scientific paper that was published
by a group from Germany to show that 80% of microplastics that are present in the North
Sea are probably associated with the boating industry. So forget the Sainsbury bag or the
whatever steel water bottle. It's the degradation, the natural degradation of the boat hull
and the anti fouling paint, the normal paint, the resin from the GRP and then going into
the fiberglass that actually leaks into the water and contributes to this microplastic
pollution. What scares me the most is the fact that we have this powder, the GRP powder,
that is a combination of resin and fiberglass, two very, very different components in terms
of their chemical characteristics, but also their behavior in the water. The powder looks
pretty much like flour or baking soda or whatever, it's just powder. So when you sprinkle that
powder in the water, you realize that you have a sequence, a component of that powder
that is going to stay on top of the water and that is the resin. And then you're going
to have the other component that is going to drop down on the sediment and that is the
fiberglass. So suddenly you have two components that are going to have a maximum impact on
both areas of an estuary, of a marine, of a lake or whatever. You have the plastic that
is going to float on top, accessible for whatever aquatic organism are at that level, accessible
even for birds or for insects that are coming to feed on top of the water. And then you
will have the glass that is going to drop down on the sediment and that's going to be
available for any bottom dwellers or any beavers, any benthic organisms. So it's like maximum
impact, minimum effort with maximum impact and that is quite scary. And that also thinking
about the behavior of those two components later on, you can think of the plastic being
drifted away by waves and by tides and so on by currents. But then you have the fiberglass
that is probably going to sink in the sediment. But also, and this is something that we recently
found, fiberglass that is able to almost like impale soft material. We found pieces of algae,
for example, a small snail, pieces of other organic material that look like pink cushions
because they had about, you know, tens and tens of fiberglass impaled into it. And it's
a, I suspect it's a combination of currents and the contact between that soft organism
or piece of organic material with those very very sharp shards and that's going to have
this effect. And then you have this piece of organic material, we have a picture of a very
tiny snail, glassy, that looks like a pink cushion. You have those organics just circulating
in the water and they are food for something. They are food for a fish, they are food for
a different organism, bigger organism. And that's how you have the transfer in the traffic
chain and also the transport from the area of contamination to various other areas.
I guess that's the point. There's no such thing as a way. So if it's been drifting
from one area, it's going to end up somewhere else. It's fascinating. I mean, no one can
see me except for you. I'm wincing. I've been wincing since really we started this conversation
because, you know, arguably it is a very uncomfortable one. It's uncomfortable obviously as a sailor
and as a boat owner, but also almost as a human who relies on the ocean as much as anybody
else does. But I think what I hadn't appreciated was that the whole body of water, the water
column effectively was polluted by this substance in that, as you mentioned, the resin sort
of powder sits up top and then you slightly dense the particulate matter settling down
towards sort of the seabed. Largely that may not be too much of an issue unless you're
in shallows or you've got bottom dredging going on and the whole thing is just getting
to it. And I know the Oldenburg study, it was the University of Oldenburg, I think it was,
who produced that research around the North Sea, the German by because we looked at that
with regards to antifal in particular. And you're right, it was 80, 80% of microplastics
in the water up there were attributed to shipping and boating. And at the time, we were kind
of still understanding that that was mostly to do with antifal. But what your research
has been able to show is that boats are always shedding. This isn't just an end of life issue
whereby I dump my boat on a beach somewhere because I can't afford or nor do I want to
take care of it, but it's bashing away, it starts to break down all the pieces that are
in the environment. We're talking about any boat on the water is shedding microfibres and
also glass fibers, right? Yes, it's the normal weathering of the material. And as I said,
it's a combination of solar radiation, various temperatures and mechanical impact of waves
and jetty, your next jetty or yes, it's the normal weathering basically. Yes. So we're
talking going back to that really high figure, which I think the IMO has kind of reported
on calculating roughly how many boats we've got on our planet registered. We know it's
at least about 40 million, right? And they're the registered ones. So each of those boats,
our boats shedding and then each of our boats aging ultimately to a point where they become
end of life vessels and ultimately at the moment have no formal recycling opportunities.
Basically, that's kind of it. Indeed. I can see that you're very disturbed. I totally
appreciate that we have to remember that this has been a design flaw from the very beginning.
The manufacturer should have a stewardship of the material, you know, when you create
something, you have to think about what's going to happen to that thing at the very
end of life, you know, how about what's going to happen? Yes, in 2030, 40 years, what do
we do with it? And especially because we're talking about huge, huge products, it's not
just a needle or, you know, it's a boat. What's going to happen with that boat at the very
end of life? So this I find absolutely amazing that the industry is booming and the production
is growing every year with the same material or very little modification. Yes, the resins
can be quite different now and that ultimately it's still an non recyclable material that
is used to build tens of meters of boats in the end. I'm amazed because I'm thinking,
right, if the same thing would happen with the cars, for example, when you when the car
gets old and there's nothing to do with it, if we would abandon the cars on the street
or in parks or whatever, that's it, it's all nothing to do with it. What would have happened?
But with the boats, nobody says anything. They are abandoned in cricks and in estuaries
and more in your face or less in your face places. And it's still like business as usual.
I have a very dear friend in Canada who runs a charity. It's called said boat societies.
And he gets a grant from the Canadian government. He's around Vancouver. He has to apply for
a grant from the Canadian government to retrieve abandoned boats. For this, he has to first
do a survey of the area and roughly write a report to say how many boats where they
are. But most importantly, he has to prove that the boats are leaking oil or they are
obstructing navigational pathways. Because otherwise he doesn't get any money. The government
doesn't care about any other boats that are sunk or half broken or, you know, just abandoned
on the beach or wherever. If they're not leaking oil or they're not obstructing any pathway.
And he can see, you know, because he's local and he can see the boats degrading under his
eyes yet another piece here and another piece here and the fibres being exposed and birds
coming and picking up various bits because obviously you'll have some growth on those
wrecks. But without this scientific proof, he can't do anything because that's what
the government is throwing back. We know for sure that the oil leakage is going to contaminate
the environment and we know that oil can be carcinogenic and la la la. If there is any
obstruction, obviously there is a very great danger for any other passing boat and so on.
But other than that, that's it. I think this is where I'm coming from. I can offer and
I am trying to offer this very basic impact, which is not basic. It's actually very complicated
and it's very painful. And that's why from the very beginning I started to use the term
of asbestos like when I'm talking about the fibreglass because at least that's going to
ring some very loud bells. And it's not, I mean, I'm not just throwing words over there,
you know, it's actually my scientific opinion is that yes, they are asbestos like particles.
You have the fibreglass that can't be degraded in any other chemical component. It's a glass
and it will always be a glass. It won't be dissolved or anything in the natural environment.
It has a very, very small diameter, about 20 microns, which is extremely small. And so
once it enters a tissue, a soft organic tissue, it's like a splinter. Okay, you can extract
the splinter from your fingers, but if it gets into your lungs, and that's why asbestos
was considered and is still considered so dangerous because once inside the organ is,
you can't excrete it, it's not coming out, it's going to be embedded in trajea, in lungs,
in other organs. And then the organ is obviously going to react to have an inflammation and
that's going to get more and more serious. And it's the same mechanism in any other organ
is once it's in, it's going to stay in, it's not going to come out. And that's quite tragic.
It is. And you said I was looking disturbed and honestly, I am. I think it almost shed
such a different light on it. And I think the two things are I appreciate your comment
around when we've produced things that we ought to be thinking about what does this
look like in 10, 20, 30, 40 years. And I appreciate in the 1950s, the advent of GRP FRP certainly
at scale. I'm not sure necessarily we had this sort of technology, the mindset. Obviously
the scale was incredibly different. I mean, now we're talking 40 million plus boats, because
pretty much, you know, I'd say like 80% of those produced over the last years are still
around today, right? It's just compounding, it's continuing. So in some ways, I'm slightly
forgiving of us not having that mindset, because I think I don't think anyone would have foreseen
this becoming so prevalent. There being so many such a large portion of the world's demographic
having the accessibility and the income even to partake in leisure boating in particular.
And I appreciate the science, you know, from the 1950s today, as you will know more than
anybody has sort of come on exceptional leaps and bounds. So we now know what we know as
damaging as it is. And just going back to your point around the sort of content of these
substances once they get into organisms, we have obviously seen this, there's a lot of
research out now, as you well know, that these kind of elements and compounds within any
kind of organic matter can change, you know, feeding activity, impact hormone levels and
reproductive systems and reduce the population sizes. And as you said, there's a food chain
going on here too. So any insect that's feeding on the water, picking up any of this resin
dust is then being eaten by birds is then being eaten by something else. And it kind
of is ongoing. And it's not insignificant what you mentioned about these particles being
sort of asbestos like, because we know that microplastics obviously have a massive impact
on us anyway. But these fiberglass particles are slightly more serious to the extent that
as you said, they're shards, and they are they get stuck. So, you know, there's cancer
related, there's chronic lung diseases, there's heart and respiratory diseases as a as a result
of it. Honestly, none of it sounds particularly positive, aside from the fact that we now
know this, now we understand it, and we've got the research and brilliant brains such
as yourself showing us because I think that's another major cause of inaction has been,
I don't think we've yet mass understood or mass appreciated the impact of using these
kind of materials on our marine environment. And certainly within the same marine and the
boatbuilding industry, your research in the long history and trajectory of that is relatively
new. That's absolutely true. And when you think about the impact of those particles,
and especially fiberglass, the potential impact that they can have on the organism, you have
to remember that we kind of know about how dangerous they are on human health, for example,
on human body, because we have all those rules and regulations for the boat workers and also
in the factories, you know, fiberglass factories, so we know very well, masks, all the PPE protection
and how strict they should be and so on. So we're very aware of that. Well, exactly the
same thing happens in the marine environment. We have those shards that are present over
there, they can impale the organism, so they can have all those fiberglass or, you know,
like tiny javelins basically embedded in their outside skin or carapace or whatever they
have. But it's also the problem of, you know, ingesting those and then not being able to
get rid of them. We had a lot of experimentation with microplastics and I think one good outcome
of a lot of laboratory studies was that most of the organism were able to ingest the microplastics
and then excrete almost 60, 70, 80% of them, you know. I had students, the student projects
that came up with this percentage, you know, muscles exposed for 24 hours and then depurated
for another 24 hours and they managed to get rid of the plastic. A lot of it, not everything,
but a lot of it. It's not the same with the fiberglass. We had muscles that we collected
from Chichester Harbour, we kept in the lab for about 10 days and then when we dissected
the muscles, the fiberglass was still there. And it's logical. Yes, once they entered it,
they're not coming out. I said a little bit earlier that we're yet to establish the true
size of the contamination and I'm really worried that thinking about how the fiberglass can
interact with the soft organism and I'm thinking about worms here, you know, sea worms or just
earthworms. Any soft organism, because until now, yes, I was talking about muscles and
oysters, but any soft organism that is present in the sediment. And here I'm thinking again
about Chichester Harbour where I started all this research and the fact that natural England,
for example, downgraded the habitats in Chichester Harbour about two, three years ago to unfavorable,
the fact that they lose salt marshes at the rate of two acres a year just because the
sediment has become too anoxic. It's just that black foul smelling sediment that is so easily
washed away by the tides and by the ways and that's how they lose land basically over there.
And I'm thinking that the nailing the coffin could be this fact that this fiberglass accumulated
in the sediment having such a drastic impact on soft organism like the worms that are so important
to create spaces in the sediment to allow the nutrients to allow the oxygen to penetrate into
the sediment and then to allow also the sea grass, the weeds, the sea weeds and the salt marsh to
develop. That can be quite a dramatic picture. And I'm not saying this just hypothetically,
we had about two years ago, we ran an international project and Chichester Harbour,
a Conservancy was one of the partners and we commissioned a study with the Natural History
Museum, a study to survey the biodiversity in the sediment in several locations in Chichester
Harbour. So we had a specialist from the Natural History Museum collecting samples of the sediment
and we were looking especially at B-valves at Moros. He came back completely, completely amazed
to say that there is nothing, there is no life in the samples that we provided and it's all that
black anoxic sediment with some very old shells or broken shells that show that yes, there was life
at some point, but there isn't anymore. That's how I started to picture this idea that we have a chemical
contamination, you know, sewage and all other substances that are present in the mortar in
Chichester Harbour. But we definitely have to look at this particular contamination and especially
the fibreglass and see how that might have had a massive role in wiping out a lot of organies
from the sediment. Wow, it's hard to know what to say at times. I think it really isn't a pretty
picture and it's actually quite fascinating. Obviously, I grew up sailing in Chichester waters
and around the Solent so I know it very well and obviously know that this is the absolute hotbed
of boating activity in the UK if not certainly probably the second largest in Europe.
So as a proxy for the opportunities and damage caused by the boating in the shipping industry,
this is probably as good as it gets as a sort of test bed as an environment. So what you're
saying obviously is the impact of this sort of the byproducts of boating and obviously abandon
boats also are almost sucking the life out of incredibly important ecosystems. So you mentioned
sort of the salt marshes and so mudflat. I know exactly the type of mud and sediment you're talking
about because I've been stuck in it once on my knees and it is horrific stuff, devoid of everything.
It smells like something, I mean you wouldn't wish it on anybody but it is very anoxic as you
mentioned. So like you said the importance of having sort of those soft species like worms to
aerate it the same as you would having you know worms great in your garden to keep the
moving through the sea without that obviously you then can't, there is no ecosystem there
really because nothing can grow without having that oxygen provided. So it is an incredibly
stark description Karina about the impact that this is sort of having. Locally I'm sitting in the
solent having this conversation with you right now but appreciating then so we know that this is
an issue, we know that it's an issue for every boat that's in existence today because all of them
are constantly shedding and we also know that hundreds of thousands a year are becoming disused
effectively. Traditionally they are still dumped for landowners to deal with or they're scuttled so
they're you know someone sticks a drill through the hull and that's and sinks on and I read something
really interesting in some of your research around even the impacts of natural disasters so the
hurricane season I think at least 30 to 60 thousand boats each year or every time there's this major
hurricane normally on the other side of the Atlantic in the Caribbean results in obviously
scuttling tens of thousands of boats too so we're constantly using the ocean and the sea as
literally the dumping ground these old boats a bit out of sight out of mind you know bury the
thing put it in the water we forget about it believing that somehow that dilution of the
pollution is still the solution which I hope to died out in the 70s as a mentality but clearly
not so we know that this is an issue right we also know that there are no formal recycling
facilities anywhere in the world really to deal with this issue we also know that legislation
international legislation doesn't yet appear to be covering topics such as end of life so I
know they talk a lot around obviously discharging grey water and black water you've got to be certain
sort of distances offshore you can't discharge plastic or litter into the sea you'll know that
but obviously this topic isn't yet covered by any formal legislation in terms of a pollutant
so what from your perspective do you see as being the clear steps forward for the industry and the
legislature around dealing with this opportunity I appreciate that's a massive question but where
do you feel is the most obvious place to start well I think first of all we have to acknowledge that
GRP is a hazardous material and I had a discussion with some specialists in the environmental agency
and we all agree that that's the first step you know and they they actually gave me a really nice
example and they said that you know the catalytic convector in cars that one contains heavy metals
and some asbestos and so on so that is considered hazardous and that's one of the reasons why
why you can't abandon your car on the road and the government had put into place this massive
well I suspect it happens in a lot of countries this scheme where you can take your car to the
recycling and you get 200 pounds but the main reason is that parts of the car are considered
hazardous and so you will expose yourself and the others to a sort of contamination well this
is something that has to be acknowledged for the GRP as well it is hazardous and years ago I was
talking to a colleague in the United States who again he got a grant from the government to get
abandoned boats smash them to pieces mix them with cement and use them to make pavements or roads
because nobody wanted to go into buildings again it was an untarget territory so they didn't want
to put that cement into buildings that they thought yeah roads and pavements are okay but then
because of my research they actually stopped that scheme because by smashing that the GRP they
created so much dust and so much contamination that would go freely into the water that it was
saving something to actually destroy something else so they stopped that so it's that idea of
having the GRP declared hazardous and then none of the boats can go to the landfill anymore because
that's yet another problem you know that we all say that by I don't know 2050 is it the last
governmental pledge that we're going to reduce our input to landfill to 60% or something if you take
three boats over there you go over the limit and declare the material hazardous and then that's going
to fuel the research into recycling fuel the research into what to do with the material so we
compared it to landfills so we have to do something about it and that's going to start a bigger
conversation. Do you think having the legislation lead on this topic in particular is going to
provide the most profound paradigm shift effectively in the way that we manage this material? Yes
definitely. I make a comparison here with cars and with petrol as well you know it was only until
we realised that the air quality is absolutely pulling that the oil reserves are going down as
well that the entire revolution into you know electric cars and so on started until then it
there were just discussions. I think it's the same here we have to realise that we have a huge
contamination of the coastal environment especially and there is absolutely nothing we can do about
the abandoned boats other than smash them and take them to their landfill but that landfill is limited
and especially for island countries like ours you know that's going to push the government into
yes doing something this is a hazardous material it can't be approved to to go to landfill together
with with all the other rubbish and so something needs to be done. I guess also that does help with
the formalisation through the more formal routes such as landfill but if I want to scuttle my boats
when it's too old and unhappy to use anymore I still could without very little repercussion
unless anyone knew that it was my boat and that's something which certainly in the UK I understand
within the boating community specifically there is a bit of reluctance to move towards boat
registration because the big difference between the car industry and owning a car as you rightly
mentioned versus boats whilst they're very very similar as an analogy it's perfect the difference
is you know who a car belongs to there's a centralized register because they are as you said
made up of a variety of materials some of which are incredibly hazardous so we know someone dumps
a car who effectively it belongs to when you have the same with a boat unless you're obviously a
customer registered with a marina or a harbor authority or you're on the you know the ship's
register being over a certain size then we don't have a very a very good control of who owns what
and where it is I know in Europe we're looking at progressing that kind of route and centralising
that information because arguably that's actually an incredibly important way in starting to ensure
that our profession recreation passion pleasure pastime becomes much more ocean minded and arguably
a lot fairer if we partake in anything that we should be contributing to minimising the
environmental impact of it and that process ought to arguably be quite transparent yeah no
absolutely absolutely they they should go hand in hand you know as you said knowing exactly who
owns the boat will actually ensure that that boat is not going to be abandoned because it is a
hazardous material and so you knowingly by leaving your boat I don't know whatever you're
actually if you know impacting the environment but also human health anybody who's enjoying that area
so yes they should go hand in hand but I know that this is a very sensitive topic you know the
registration and yes the ownership the whole ownership I don't know what to say about that
I hear you there almost is nothing to say except that it seems to be a slightly British preserve
currently looking at other models and having other conversations through Europe that we seem to be
incredibly reluctant I'm not sure if it's us believing that it's somewhat impeding our freedom
or part of the kind of nanny state mentality where we're being watched and kind of monitored
but arguably when we're talking about substances which you pointed out are asbestos like and at
the moment it's very ad lib as to what to do with them all at the end of life and otherwise it seems
like the most common sense objective practical approach to solving this as an opportunity as
much as it's an issue I think what's really exciting I know that it's difficult at times to
have this conversation because of how potent it is and frankly as you said it is pretty disturbing
but I think that's obviously important part of the process in terms of making change if we don't
know about something then we can't make those changes or indeed find solutions or innovations
but I have to say there are some incredibly positive forward thinking processes and initiatives
already underway we're looking you and I are talking expressly around the end of life opportunity
which remains one but we know certainly France in particular is leading on initiatives with
newly built boats for a couple of years now as you're aware there's been conversations with
governments around if I produce a product or basically any kind of thing that could be a
pollutant I'm therefore responsible for looking after it when it comes to end of life so this
product producer responsibility is still being formulated specifically for people who create
things like plastic bottles once their end of life it's my responsibility as a producer to take
them back again and do something about it and the French seem to be taking this on board and putting
it into action quite significantly through their initiative which you'll be able to explain better
than I probably can around new boats right if you can afford to buy a new boat then you are
subject to an eco tax effectively which helps to improve the circularity of that boat coming back
to the producer when it's or at least paying for the disposal of it at end of life is that right
yes that's absolutely right and it's a tax that you pay per square meter when you buy an absolutely
new boat and that is going to be transferred for the life of the boat and that tax is going to
ultimately collect into a big pot of money that is going to go towards the recycling of that boat
in any way shape or form that might be I don't know 20 years time that it's a small change that
hopefully is going to make a big difference I know that in the first year when they run this scheme
I think they managed to collect the money for recycling about 4 000 boats out of 100 000
that's a drop in the ocean but you know it's a start said I'm a little bit skeptical that
until people realise that there is a threat a possible threat you know life and death or
cancer the steps are not going to be too big you know I can understand that and I can only thank
you wholeheartedly for actually just doing the research because I think that is always the
fundamental linchpin of starting any major conversations making any major change otherwise
it's hearsay and intuition and even how correct they may be in themselves having the data and the
research as you have done and are doing provides such a solid foundation for us to have more
meaningful conversations across the industry as sailors and different communities and otherwise
so whilst I appreciate that currently it may seem that solutions are limited we can do a lot of
things when we put our minds to it and like you said sometimes unfortunately it takes a shock
it takes us to realise the impact the significant impact on our own human health before we make
that change but Corina I do believe and see by everything that you're doing that this is a
fundamental time and a pivotal moment in our industry to start taking this very seriously
also from a legislation perspective thank you I hope so as I said I'm just an ecotoxicologist
I didn't know anything about the both and I'm suddenly I know a lot about the both I think it's
the only way that it could happen because you're incredibly objective in it you're looking at it
purely from the science perspective and when you hear an accomplished doctor say that they're just
an ecotoxicologist I mean my goodness what a clever clever brain you are really that's an
understatement Corina your one final takeaway for the marine industry and also for sailors
what would it be in summary we should start with this idea that there should be a stewardship for
the material but because we have this legacy we shouldn't necessarily moan about where we should
actually do something about it it would be a good idea for the industry and the boat owners to get a
little bit more involved with the environment to think a little bit more about the environment and to
have more connection and keep up to date with the latest discoveries and the latest research and to
understand very very well what's happening under the water just because it's not a plastic bag that
is floating on the water doesn't mean that the water is actually clean and the sediment is clean so
a little bit more involvement and the boating industry is quite powerful and it's quite a
vitreous well so helping with the research would be a really good point a good brownie point for
the industry actually. So really connecting science with the industry itself yes the huge opportunity
if we don't understand something then we have limited capacity or drive desire to help protect it.
Yes I was really touched by the way you started this conversation by saying that you and a lot of
your friends and your community you think that you're a green community because you say it's so
much more than that it's so much much more than that it would be a good point to have a little
bit more interaction and I understand that it's absolutely important for us as scientists to open
up a little bit more until many years ago we were just you know stuck in our ways yes this is the
research yes we publish it on journals that only my colleague in not even a new Sheffield would read
or something like that and but now we understand that actually we need to translate our research so
that it has enough to show that it has an applicability and it's important for everyday life not
necessarily for only a scientific journal. It's a very very potent point particularly on issues
such as this doesn't fit with any one party and what I was kind of alluding to when you're saying
that it's frustrating and a bit disheartening not to know what the solutions are you almost don't
need to find them you do the research bit you show what's actually happening and what it really looks
like and it's for all of you know a whole plethora of other brilliant brains in different industries
project managers innovators inventors whatever else to help bring that about because obviously the
marine industry but certainly boat building is a myriad of roles and skills so it really has to
be such a collective effort to make such a sustainable long lasting and profound change
but Karina just to say I'm unsettled in a positive sense and then feeling incredibly motivated by
our conversation the sort of image of these sort of sea snails impaled with our microfiber
fiberglass particles doesn't sit comfortably and actually nor should it because it's clear that our
industry has a massive opportunity and as you rightly pointed out our marine industry is affluent
you know it's leisure sailing and boating is a real luxury for most so we are a demographic
largely globally of people who are relatively well educated who have a degree of disposable
income who appreciates in-depth the pleasure that time on the water brings to us and therefore
we should be certainly naturally placed ambassadors for helping to protect it and again really grateful
for the research that you're doing and for sharing it and spending this time with me to
hopefully bring it to an increasingly wider audience and making increasingly larger change.
Dr Karina Chakhan principal lecturer in eco toxicology marine biology at the University
of Brighton thank you very much for your time thank you so much
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