The Outlaw Ocean: Continued
Photo Courtesy of the New York Times
Here are two new installments of Ian Urbina’s “The Outlaw Ocean” series. In this series on lawlessness on the high seas, Urbina reveals that crime and violence in international waters often goes unpunished. ImmigrationProf has blogged on previous installments.
The most recent piece is in this week’s Sunday Review which covers a distinct conundrum: what should countries do with thousands of offshore oil and gas drilling rigs built during a boom in the 1980s that will soon reach retirement age and require decommissioning? Among the ideas being considered: sinking, removing or repurposing them in a variety of ways including offshore
super-max prisons, scuba hotels, marine science schools, fish farm hubs, wind, solar or tidal power stations.
The second piece was also recently in the Sunday Review. It explained that on the high seas — which cover more than 40 percent of the planet’s surface — there is no legal framework for creating
protected areas. Even if they wanted to, countries have no formal process for setting aside protected marine parks in international waters. Over the next two years, the United Nations intends to change that.
There is also an interesting side element, here, about proposals to create prisons at sea.
KJ