Services > Sea Alarm's oiled wildlife response services

What does Sea Alarm Foundation do?

Sea Alarm is able to assist parties that are, or getting involved in a wildlife operation in the direct aftermath of an oil spill. On request, Sea Alarm will serve them with appropriate advices in order to help establish a professional wildlife operation based on best available standards and techniques which is rationally managed in the closest relation with the operational overall oil spill response command system.

Why is this important?

1. By using the best available standards and techniques in the oiled wildlife response, a maximum result can be guaranteed in terms of human safety, animal welfare, cost efficiency, animal survival rates and scientific data collection.
2. Parties that are taking a rational, reasonable approach in their response to an oil spill, including the response to oiled wildlife, will face minimal problems in getting their expenses compensated through the existing international compensation mechanisms.

What is the experience?

Immediately after a spill there is chaos, often amplified by media and the developing public opinion. The aim is to bend chaos towards functional organisation structure and start taking the decisions necessary to make the response operation effective, ideally as part of an existing contingency plan. It takes a while before officers who play key roles in the management of the spill are able to develop some control over the situation and start taking the adequate management decisions.

Which assistance can be expected from Sea Alarm?

Sea Alarm is able to assist these officers with:

• access to adequate (international) expertise based on experiences with countless oil spill events of the past, worldwide
• the direct contacts with those parties that play an essential role in developing the adequate response to the contingency (ship owner insurance company, damage compensation funds, international governmental organisations, and international key role expert organisations)
• direct contacts with internationally operating and trustworthy oiled wildlife response experts and expert organisations

What is Sea Alarm's added value?

Sea Alarm works with an international network of the professional and reliable oiled wildlife response experts and organisations. Sea Alarm's coordinating role is accepted and supported by all members of that international network. Sea Alarm is able to:

• bring all reliable international experts and organisations under a single command chain led by the local authorities
• identify the less reliable organisations and negotiate their role, if any, together with or on behalf of the local authorities in charge
• assist with fast troubleshooting in the case of arising conflicts at any phase in the spill response

24/7 emergency response centre

As of February 2006, Sea Alarm has an operational emergency response centre available 24 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Sea Alarm's contact details (see CONTACT) can be used to call for Sea Alarm's advice or assistance. (see 24/7 response)

Strike teams

In cooperation with the OSRL/EARL, Sea Alarm is working to set up and coordinate a pool of expertise from which individual experts or strike teams can be called in to provide assistance to a local response anywhere in the world.

Funding a response

A professional oiled wildlife response needs to be funded from the beginning. At present, necessary funds are often not available at the start of the emergency, hence many costs have to be born by parties who have only private means at their disposal [NB: past experience has shown that such a system is no guarantee for the most capable parties to get involved, i.e. rich, but not necessarily competent, groups have been seen to pay their way into the response system and use their "involvement" to raise considerable amounts of money from the concerned public, eventually making a profit, without contributing significantly to the solution, or even being counterproductive to such a solution].
The lack of an immediate financial resource might deter competent responders from getting involved. A solution would be to establish international financial arrangements, a trust fund that accredited responders can access for the necessary monies so enabling them to quickly become involved in the welfare operation. As long as such a fund has not been put in existence, Sea Alarm, with the extensive international relationships would be best placed to find short term intermediate solutions for financial problems that may arise in the early days of an oiled wildlife incident. A condition for Sea Alarm's involvement would be that all involved parties (authorities, wildlife responders, ngo's) are committed to work together in a centrally coordinated professional response.