A major part of Sea Alarm’s work is assisting coastal governments, NGOs and other agencies in preparedness for an oiled wildlife response. Regular meetings, trainings and exercises of response plans ensure on-going readiness to respond to wildlife threatened by oil spills.
Sea Alarm recently has started work on a five year contract with Rijkswaterstaat, the Netherlands, to assist with the coordination, development and management of an exercise programme on oiled wildlife response and preparedness in the Netherlands.
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.
Sea Alarm was invited by Aramco Overseas to attend the RA ATUM 7 oil spill exercise in Alexandria, Egypt on 1-3 November. The large scale event was a combination of a table top and a field exercise, to practise a tier-3 oil spill response on the basis of the Egyptian national oil spill plan. Sea Alarm participated in the two day table top exercise and was positioned in the national environmental group of the Planning Section.
Saskia Sessions was invited to the recent ENSACO workshop that took place on 13-14 April in Helsinki, Finland. She was requested to lecture on integrated oiled wildlife response and planning and moderate a Sea Alarm table top exercise on wildlife response planning processes.
Sea Alarm has been invited to assist the Belgian authorities to set up and run an exercise to test the Belgian Oiled Bird Response Plan and in particular the role of the Wildlife Rescue Centre Ostend (WRCO). It is the second time that the plan will be tested and the second time that Sea Alarm will be involved in the design of the exercise.
Sea Alarm will continue to assist the Netherlands in 2010 with maintaining their national preparedness for oiled wildlife incidents. An important activity scheduled for this year is a tabletop exercise to test the function of the key roles in the plan’s crisis committee, which is responsible for setting up and running the temporary oiled wildlife rehabilitation centre during an incident.
Sea Alarm and WWF Finland organised an international workshop on oiled wildlife response planning for countries bordering the Baltic Sea. The workshop took place in Tallinn on 5 October 2009, back to back with the Effects of Oil on Wildlife Conference which allowed participants to take advantage of both events. The Estonian Ministry of Environment hosted the workshop, which was attended by 20 participants, including 16 delegates from 6 Baltic Sea Countries. The main objective of the workshop was to familiarise participants with the elements of an oiled wildlife response and the various steps of a planning process.
A training exercise is being planned to test the preparedness of Sea Alarm"s Global Response Network. Scheduled to take place in early January 2009, various responders will be called to enquire about their availability, actual mobilisation time and the length…
The oiled wildlife response equipment that is stockpiled at the Oil Spill Response‘s warehouse in Southampton (UK) was recently inspected by leading European responders, including Sea Alarm.
Leading environmental groups and rehabilitation centres in Portugal have joined forces to be better prepared for an oil spill incident. Cooperation between these organisations was first explored at a meeting that was held immediately following the RIOS workshop in April. Since then, two further meetings, in June and October, have taken place. Sea Alarm moderated all three meetings.
On 28 March 2008 a national oiled wildlife response table-top exercise took place in Ostend, Belgium. The exercise was organised by the Governor”s Office with the assistance of the Coastal Coordination Point and Sea Alarm.online roulette