Thank you, Chair.
Good day, everyone. Thank you for this opportunity to speak with you all. I'm calling in today from the unceded territory of the Musqueam First Nation in Richmond, British Columbia.
Ocean Legacy has been cleaning shoreline and ocean environments for the last 10 years and has been working incredibly hard to develop industrial-scale best practices that work to restore ecologically and culturally sensitive coastal environments by removing shoreline marine debris, subsurface ghost gear and derelict vessels, and through derelict aquaculture gear removal.
Our team works incredibly closely with indigenous and coastal communities to develop project plans together that remove large amounts of solid waste pollution and then work to recycle and reuse as much of the recovered material as possible. We work alongside first nation communities to help restore critical traditional food-harvesting and culturally significant areas, and to help collect, collate and share important data resulting from the survey and removal work.
To date, we have removed over 30 vessels along the coast of British Columbia, and we know there is a lot more work to do to remove the countless vessels remaining. According to estimates from a 2015 study, over 1,500 derelict vessels are listed to be on the Canadian Pacific coast alone, with over 4,500 across the country. However, these are just the vessels we can see on the surface. As underwater surveys and restoration efforts continue to grow, we expect these numbers to increase exponentially.
We have seen first-hand how destructive these vessels can be, leaking oils and fuel, resins, plastics, black waters, heavy metals from bottom paint and vessel construction, polystyrenes, asbestos insulation, chemicals and other anthropogenic debris into the water. If it doesn't sink or leach into the water, it will then concentrate and wash ashore. When these materials concentrate along shorelines, they then break up into millions of tiny fragments, entering the food chain and impacting the habitat, health and safety of all species.
We have found that cleaning up these vessels can be very time-consuming and financially demanding due to the required permitting processes that are mandatory for removal, alongside the complex aquatic environments that we must then navigate once these vessels have sunk. It becomes further challenging as databases are often not up to date. Vessels are easily traded or sold, and as owners retire or pass away, often leaving vessels to become derelict, the registry is not up to date.
We need to be able to address, remove and prevent these vessels from sinking, and we must not allow them to become subsurface hazards. We have found that once vessels have sunk, ropes, nets and other debris become entangled with these structures, creating very dangerous environments for wildlife, which then becomes entangled. They often become hot spots for ghost gear, resulting in wildlife emaciation, drownings and vessel strikes.
These submerged vessels often create a high risk for subsurface vessel strikes, creating dangerous navigable waters for vessels across the coast, which are then uncharted. Hitting a submerged vessel with a vessel not only risks injury to the persons on board but also poses the risk of adding another vessel to the list of derelicts. We have personally received countless reports from commercial divers that in areas where derelict vessels lie, there are often three or more other vessels stacked in the same place, one on top of the other.
The introduction of the Wrecked, Abandoned or Hazardous Vessels Act, created in 2019, was a great start in addressing the derelict vessel program on this coast, but it is not enough, and the funds available compared to the immediate need of removal costs fall short. The funds that have been provided by the Province of British Columbia through the clean coast, clean waters initiative fund have also been an incredible resource; however, continuation of these funds has not been announced. We urgently need more physical resources allocated to this problem to continue to survey areas and to perform removal.
The government should also consider creating some concessions in terms of modifying the removal permit process when vessels are destroyed on shorelines and are actively polluting the environment. We have found dozens of vessels that are beached and ripped apart and that are actively contributing toxic pollution to environments, but then, we are not legally allowed to do anything about them without undergoing an incredibly extensive review and consultation process. This often results in the vessels having to remain in place because of constricted funding timelines for grants, which restricts the ability to undergo such administrative processes. Addressing this issue to enable cleanup crews to remove these acute sources of pollution when they are discovered during cleanup operations would be extremely beneficial.
Thank you for the consideration today and for the opportunity to speak with you all about these important matters. We look forward to continuing to work on these pressing matters together.
Thank you for your time.
