For the fifth year in a row, the air surveillance team of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS) has detected more discharges of harmful substances into the North Sea than the year before. It remains a common problem, with a small chance of being caught for violators of discharge regulations. Pollution by oil has been limited for years.
In 2022, the team performed a total of 244 flying hours over the North Sea. Nineteen cases of marine pollution from ships were observed. Seventeen of those cases concerned harmful substances other than oil. Oil discharges have fallen sharply in recent years, “compared to the other harmful substances, it is still a marginal phenomenon,” says observer Kobe Scheldeman.
In 2022, no illegal discharge of these other harmful substances was detected, but that does not mean that there were none, explains Scheldeman. “Discharges of certain substances are permitted under certain conditions. We can determine from the air that there are discharges, further investigation must then show what and how much was discharged and whether it was done correctly. This year we were unable to substantiate a case, but many illegal substances have been detected in the North Sea. So the illegal discharges certainly do happen,” says Scheldeman.
In 2022, the aircraft will also continue to monitor the number of mammals in the North Sea. A record number of seals were seen: during observation moments in March and October, there were twenty and forty respectively. The RBINS also calculated that there were about 11,000 porpoises swimming in Belgian waters in March.
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