In early November 2011, Sea Alarm facilitated a one day volunteer awareness event in Limerick, Ireland, in cooperation with the Shannon Port Authority and the Irish Seal Sanctuary. The event aimed at providing background information to a group of 25 selected volunteers from the Shannon Estuary area who had expressed an interest in assisting with a future oiled wildlife incident.
Sea Alarm had several opportunities in 2011 to meet face to face with oil industry members of Oil Spill Response () at its shareholder meetings in June and December. Sea Alarm had a small exhibition stand at both of OSRL”s Shareholder meetings, which took place in San Francisco in June and in Southampton in December.
Sea Alarm has made important steps in 2011 towards developing better preparedness for Arctic oiled wildlife incidents. Saskia Sessions was invited to make a presentation at the October meeting of the Arctic Council’s Emergency Prevention, Preparedness and Response Working Group (EPPR).
ITOPF is one of Sea Alarm’s key partners and the two organisations have been cooperating for over a decade now, both when responding to oil spills and also in some wildlife preparedness activities. A presentation day was held at ITOPF’s offices in London in October, to strengthen this relationship and bring some of ITOPF’s newer staff up to speed with Sea Alarm’s work.
Hugo Nijkamp and Saskia Sessions travelled to the RSPCA’s Headquarters in West Sussex, UK for a meeting in November last year.
Sea Alarm achieved two firsts last year: attending a regional conference of the Global Initiative for West and Central Africa (GI WACAF) and teaming up with SANCCOB to make a joint presentation on oiled wildlife preparedness and response at this event.
Sea Alarm has seen a growing recognition in 2011 by the oil industry of the need to take oiled wildlife response seriously and to devote it the same attention as traditional oil spill response.
Sea Alarm has prepared guidelines for Black Sea Countries on oiled wildlife impact assessment. These guidelines were provided at the request of the Black Sea Commission Permanent Secretariat in the framework of the EU-funded MONINFO project.
Hugo Nijkamp was invited to act as the chair of a one day seminar in Poland where the first results of the Brisk project were presented.
ITOPF has launched a new new oil spill response R&D initiative, funded by the world’s shipowners and their 
P&I insurers. The ITOPF R&D Award will provide some £50,000 each year to encourage innovative thinking and provide realistic solutions to some of the challenges faced when responding to accidental oil and chemical spills and undertaking environmental monitoring.
Sea Alarm has entered a new phase of cooperation with Mediterranean coastal states via an MoU with the Regional Emergency Centre for the Mediterranean Sea (REMPEC). The MoU was signed on 4th May 2011 during the 10th REMPEC Focal Points meeting.
Probably the worst “worst case” scenario that you could imagine: on 16th March the bulk carrier MS Oliva ran aground off the Tristan da Cunha Islands, a UK territory dubbed one of the remotest places on earth.