narrator: today on "earth focus"... spills like the bp disaster in the gulf get the headlines, but they're a fraction of the problem. the new film, "oil in our waters," exposes illegal oil dumping in the shipping industry. director micah fink explaiains. coming up on "earth focus." [indistinct radio transmissions] richard: to any authorities concerned: this is to inform you of illegal discharging of oily wawater from bilge tank,k, which happppened last december 4

and 17, 2009. the chief engineer instructed as to make a bypass flange to discharge oioily water overbrbo. we are askinhehelp to anyy authorities concerned about this, because we must protect our environment and our marine lives. sincely yours, the engine department. this is an imagege that comes fm a satellite. it shows a ship and it shows the path of oil behind that ship. aerial surveillance shows an oil slick in the wake of a ship. this is side-looking airborne radar. here's the ship. there's the oil. and lastly, that's oil streaking on the side of the ship, called

a comet streak. this is evidence of a crime. the ship is underway, so only some of it sticks to the side of the ship. the rest of that oil is in the ocean. it's with the fish, it's with the sea birds, it's with the turtles, with the dolphins, the whales. joanna: because water covers so much of the earth, people have always thought of it as endless. but in fact, anything that gets into the ocean remains there. news announcer: the coast guard estimates crude oil, at the ra of 8,000 barrels a day, could be spilling into the open sea. second newews announcer: now auauthorities s are worried abot

an environmental catastrophe. news announcer: bp oil, which leases the platform and the coast guard have at least 35 containment vessels dispatched to the area... third news announcer: more than 11 million gallons of crude oil poured into the sea when tanker "exxon valdez," bound for... joanna: most people, when they think about the environment, they worry about the big accidents and forget that anywhere from a third to half of the oil that's in the ocean didn't come from these accidents. it came from the intentional release of oil by ships. john: oil is toxic to organisms and it can be toxic in several ways. this is a gross image. you know, when you coat something wit oil like that, it's going to die. that's not what we're concecerned with. we are concerned with what happens with those lesser

concentrations that you can't see may haveve very big effectcs on deveveloping organisms. that's the coconcern thatat we e faced with. this is a a picture of pink saln embryos, and it was exposed to a high concentration of oil. and you can see the expansion of this area around the yolk sack. the toxins i in oil, as you see here, can cause many of the same kinds of defectsts in organisms as are caused by oftentimes considered to be m more serious chemicals s like those in pcbs d like dioxins. joanna: i think that as a society, we first became aware of oil pollution when there was a very large oil spill called torrey canyon. and the torrey canyon was the biggest oil spill that we'd ever had. newsreel narrator: a tragedy such as britain has never experienced before. every tide left a thick covering of oil, to which detergent was applied with all speed.

there's 50,000 tons of oil still on board, defiantly menacing the whole south coast of england, possibly even the coast of france. but now the decision was tataken. the torrey canynyon was to be bombed. for the pilots it would be not target practice but bombing for defense, t to se part of the country y from a new menace. joanna: essentially, we woke up to the fact ththat oil had a cot as well asas a benefit. wewe susuddenly realized thisis is an internationalal problem. it's a problem that we can't deal with by just dealing with one country. it has toto be an international treaty, and marpol was the response to that. richard: marpol's an international treaty whose purpose was the complete elimination of i intentional pollllution of the maree environmnment by oil and other harmrmful substances. this is a treaty that is successful in

terms of the number of countries that have signed on, but in terms of enforcemement and the level of vioiolation, much less successful.l. deliberate pollution from ships occurs every day. it''s a virtul epidemic. internrnational shippg is what makes modern commerce work in the world. so most of the corporate players, the individuals that are involved in international shipping, fly, frankly, under the radadar. the united states s clearly a world leader in enforcing marpol. james: you would think the no-b-brainer is don't dump l into the water. ununfortunatate, there are people out there that still illegally dump oil overboard. it's my job to stop it.

i've been wiwith the coast guard 17 1/2 years now. we go out and do inspections every day. captain: hello, welcome aboard. james: good morning, captain. jim kline, united states coast guard. captain: captain. man: good morning, captain. james: what we would like to do from here, captain, is we'll do an examination down in the engine spaces. captain: ok. james: we'll actually go down and do a visual inspection of the equipment and d then we'll have t them do a operational te. and that tells us whether or not they understand their equipment, they know how to use it, and if it's opererating correctltly. the inspspectors are kind of lie the work horse. we understand the equipment, we understand the process, we understand the laws. we're making sure that they're in cocompliance w with marpol.. richard: large commercial vessels have waste oil. it's part of f how theyey work. james: you can't just take that and dump it over the side. thatt has b be put ininto a holding tank that will later be sent

shoreside to a facilility. richard: any overbrboa discharge has to be through h a pollution prevention machine called an oilily war separator. james: once you get it up to speed, if you could just give me a a minute to takeke a look arod before we put in.... well, marpol says if you're gogonna dump oil, it has to run through filtering equipment which won't allow more than 15 parts per million oil ovov the side of the ship.p. richard: oil bececomes visible around 100 parts per million. if you can see oil in the water, if you can see an oil slick, you know that it's a violation of marpol.. james: they were having a hard time getting that oily water separator going. it wasn't operating the way it should. man: here we go. ok, restart it. it's hitting clear water, it's coming down. james: other than finding that their equipment was having a hard time getting started

operating correctly, we want to check the alarms and sound system so when it does fail or when it does go above 15 parts per million and it shuts d down, it gives the o operating station an alarmrm. and the alarm wasn't workrking propererly. just t toy red flags. so from there, we're gonna start getting a littlele t more involved with the process and we're gonnana lead it to the e district attorney soso tht this way we can mamake sure there'e's no c criminal activity going on. richard: if a ship is unlawfully dumping, if they're putting their oil in the ocean and that ship comes to the united states, there e are records oaoard mostt ships that are going to allow criminal investigators to piece the crime together. james: this officer's going to review your charart and sosome r brge i items. i'm gonna review the oil record book. the oil record book that they maintain onboard, it's s reallyo show where oil's going from the time they take it onboard the vessel to the time it's off. it's like followiwing the money. so we want t to follow the oilie

want to make sure e that every-- just about every ounun of that oil is accounted for. richard: obviously, nobody's writing down, "we're dumping overboard today." one of the early cases that i prosecuted was royal caribbean, one of the largest cruise ships in thehe world, cruise lines in the world. and the norwegian engineers s had a name for t ths book. they called it the inventor bok, which in norwegian meant the fafairytale book. because it was a book of lies. it wasnsn't a book of the truth. and when you come to the united states, this is a condition of port entry. you can't have a ship that doesn't have this book. so if you come here and your oil record book has been falsified, it's missssg all the overboard dumpmping, it doesn't have it in here, the e people who are responsible for that will go to jail, and the company that's responsible for that is going to pay a huge

fine. james: it's over almost 12 hours. captain: oh,h, that was the stop time. james: right. you u start at 08:35. captain: yes. james: ok. and that was your position at stop time, right. captain: yes, yes. james: essentially for us, if somebody comes across oily wawater, we e can see if they pd through that area, if it's a possibility that they dischargrged oil. every oil has a unique fingerprint. great. if we match it up, it't's prison time for somomeone. richard: it's hard to think of any other industry where there's an environmental crime that's so prevalent, so common. on ships, there's often a culture that not anything that i could possibly do would injure the ocean. but we know that it does. john: oil is widely distributed in the environment. but in the mid-water, in

the center of an ocean, you could expect the chemicals to be as low or perhaps lower than almost any other place on earth. so what's happening in this area? and this we are very interested in determining. if ships, for example, are passing over the center o of the north atlanc and should happen to discharge oil l of some kind, some of it could fall through the mid-water. so one could ask, do you fish in this mid-water regionon? can you tellll me if you've been exexposed? and lo ad behold, most of them we looked at showed us a change that would suggest they had been exposed to some chemical. so now the question is, can t there be bad effects as a result of the exposure? for many kindsds f chemicals, when they are taken into the body, the body has

a way of reacting, and that reaction is by making more of the enzyme that will metabolize those chemicals. it happens largely as a way for the organism to protect itself. this enzyme is the principle one that i is produced in responseso exposure to oil. with an enzyme like this, things move in and out. here the change would take place, and that change can be carcinogenic. the irony is that in the transformation of something like benzoapyrene, bicep 1a is referred to as a double edge sword. it cuts two ways. one is protection and the other is damage that c can resut from the metabolites produced. [birds squawking] joanna: what's really becoming clear to scientists is that there's no plalace in the world

now that is prisistine becauause we'rere putting in every daday toxins and oil and other pollutants into the water. those arare spreading throughohout the oceansns. so there's nono pristine place left anymore. richard: we hoped to have been out of this s business by now. ththe department of justice, w'e been prosecuting these caseses r about 20 years n now. and yet, year after year after year after year, we continue to get criminal cases referred to us by the coast guard. james: from my experience, the most common form of cheating is what we call a magic c pipe. ralph: a magic pipe could be a hose. itit could be a pipepe.t could be a painted pipe.

james: that will transport oil directly from m say a holding tk or a bilge right around the e oy water sepaparating eququipment, right into t the ocean. ralph: that magic item that we find, it's, uh-uh, , we got you. richard: this is what's called a magic pipe. that is a term of art that somehow has arisen in the industry. and i think the reason originally, at least i've been told, is because the oil magically disappppears. in any criminal enterprise, somebody who's breaking the law is doing math. it's a calculatioion, right. chanan'm going to get caught, cnce i'm not going to get caught. people are still making the calculation that this crime is sometimes worth it. in environmental crimes cases, we don't have to prove motive. don't have to prove why somebody

did it. but it is what e every juror and every y judge wants to knknow. ralph: from my expererience, the motivavation out therere top oil in t the water comomes fromm greed. james: it's always about money. follow the money. richard: the united states is the only country that has a whistleblower award. on a ship, it's a small space, and people know what's taking place in that space. "fabrication of pipe connected to overboard as per instruction of first engineer." the osg case began w with a foreign ferral. canada suspected that the ship p was dumping, and they were right. but in our investigation, one ship led to another ship to another ship. and 12 osg ships were found to be involved in illegal

conduct. to have a company this large, a publilicly traded company, a company headquartered in t the united statates of ame, engaged in thihis type of crimil condt was shockingng to us. once the investigation began, we interviewed crew membersrs on the ship. and one of those crew members came forward and he had tucked underneath his arm a little black notebook.e was the fitter of the ship, and he was asked to build a b bypass systemem. he was s so angry abot having to make the pipe, he recorded every time that they dumped overboard. "before we left the port of boston, around 4:00 to 5:00 pm, i started pumping out the slop from the tank in which the said action is against marpol." and he received over $400,000 in the case. this was a case that resulted in a $37 million penalty.e certainly hope we are sending a message to

mariners a and to the industry that this crime is t taken very seriously in the united states. james: if you like prison, go ahead and dump oil in the wawat. if y you don't like prison, dont do it. richard: i think what this shows is that it's a small world out there. if you're dumping on the high seas, if you're dumping in another country's waters, there are ways for us to find out. at the same time, we're prosecuting only the tip of the iceberg, only the tip. the problem is greater than we know, and we know it's a great big problem. joanna: we may think we're e most important link, but in fact, we're only one link in a very large interconnected ecosystem. if the ecosystems around us that we care about are gonna survive in this world, we have to start stopping the things that we can

stop. dumping a little bit of oil in the ocean may not seem like much to them, but when all the ships are dumping a little bit of oil, it adds up. and we need to stop that. miles: micah fink, why did you mamake a film cacalled "oioil ir waters"? micah: we're becoming more aware of the impmpacts of our polluti, totoxiwaste, plalastic, and oiln our environment, but there's realally very little informamatn ababout what actually happens wn oil l gets dumped into thehe wa. so we wanted to make this film both to raise awareness about the issue of intentional dumping, which it turns out is responsible for halflf of all

the oil that goes into the water from human sources. working from that amazing fact, we ststartedo do some researarch around it and we realized that that intentioional dumping isis both illegal and incrededibly damagig to the ecocosystem and to the e environment. miles: what is the scope of the problem? people are used to heararing about oil spills from ththe "exxon v valdez" o or abot the recent spill in the gulf of mexico that brititish petreum mn illing provokeked. you're talking about a whole differenent set of problems. how do they compmpare with thosese big spills? micah: it's a great question. i think we all get our attention awn to the big dramatic moment. explosion of an oil rig, the sinking of a giant oil tanker. but in fact, over time, if you look at the total cumulative effect of that, it's only about 20% of the oil that goes into the ocean frfrom human sources. the much larger

component is this relar, everyday, intentional dumping overboard, getting rid of oil, waste products, sludge. ships--commerciaial ships tend o burn very low-grade oil, and thatat produces this messy slud. and the question is, what do you do w with that? well, by law, you're supposed to bring it to port, you're supposed to offload it. it takes t time, it takes money, it takes energy to properly dispose of this stuff. or, if you're not trying to obey the law,ou can jusust dump it overboard, which the shippers believe save them time and money. mariners traditionally have dumped everything into the ocean. there's been the belief that the ocean's this vast, wide place that you can't really damage, that the water will just mitigate the impact of anything that's put in. but we live in a time where we're dumping so much material into the waters, whether it's pollution, whether it's waste oil, whether it's toxic waste, whether it's garbage, that the oceans have almost reached a capacity, they've reached

their capacity to absorb the stuf and now it's just always in the water. and when you look at the wildlife, when you u look at the fish, when you look at the mammals, you can almost always find signs that they've been exposed to these toxins. and that should really be concerning to everybody. mileles: all right, we're n not talking about littering here, we're talking about criminal activity, , aren't we? micah: the act of dumping oil overboard is a a crime, but more particularly, marpol requires that marariners keep track of al the oion their ships. and so another crime is presenting to an american federal agent a falsified document. and it turns out that most of the cases that happen come about as a result of that. they may not be able to identify exactly where the crime took place or when the crime took place, but through often whistleblower reports showing pictures of magic pipes, which is the term that they use for creating a pipe that puts the oil in the water, or through acactually photos of dumping, um, they're able to show that the records

are actually falsified, and that becocomes the crime e that the justice department is actually able to litigate against and bring large fines toto. i think the fifines for illegal dumping can range up to half a million dollars per incident. and we looked at one case called osg, the overseas shipping group, and it turned out that that's an american-based company that had been dumping oil all around the continental u.s. um, when the justice department went after them, they interviewed crew members and they found that 12 ships had regularly beeeen dumping as a r regular practici, and they were fined $37 million for that act of pollution. miles: whistleblblowers are e ry the key to enforcement here, aren't they? micah: in the osg case, there were a number of whistleblowers, and each of them got about $400,000. so the fines are significant and the rewards paid out to the whistleblowers are significant. you have to remember that ships are very tight, small spaces and that

while the chief engineer may not be a whistleblower, there are half a dozen crew people who are always in the engine rooms, who are seeing what's going on, and those are the ones who are paid 20,000 or $30,000 a year for their serviceses. and most f them don't want to pollute. there's no interest in harming ththe environment or i in breakg the e law, and so that's where a lot t of these cases are comog frfrom. miles: supuppose somebody's s in a sailboat or a fishing boat and they seeee somebody dumping oil, how do they report it? micah: according to the e law, u can't put more than 15 parts per million of oil in the water. oil becomes visible at 100 partsts r million. so if you seen an oily sheen, if you seen an oily papatch, that is by definition a crime. so what can you do? well, as part of this project, we also created an app for the smart phones, which you can have on your phone which lets you very easily report an oil

spill. you can take a picture, you can fill out a little app form, and you can submit it and it'll go to us, and we willass it along to the coast guard and to the national response center. i think building consciousness, bubuilding awareness, building awareness partly that it's a crime in this s country anandt ships can pay big penalties and be banned from american ports, that's huge 'cause we're an enormous market. i mean, that's one of the powers that we have as a nation is our economic power. and if we restrict you from coming here, then the shipping company will lose a lot of money, but the other part is by crereating an awarens of this issue, you create ripples of awareness. and those ripples willll go far beyond our country.y. you know,w, we now le in a very globalized world. people will see, can hear about these impacts. i mean, that's the power of the film is to actually show people how oil impacts marine life, how oil impacts the ocean. and there's a cultural shift taking place where people are becoming more aware of the impacts and are

starting to resist it, starting to say, you know what, we don't have to do ts. this is intentntional dumping, this is intentional pollution, maybe we should stoto

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