Coastal and port state obligations relating to the regulation of marine pollution, with particular reference to pollution from ships

Abstract

Regulation of marine pollution was somewhat slow to develop, both because States were not very concerned with this problem and also due to the limitations of scientific understanding of oceanic processes However, major maritime accidents that are ill-fated enough to provoke profound changes to the regulatory regime for shipping as a whole appear to occur with a certain regularity The first modern oil tanker incident to shake up the international maritime legal regime was the grounding of the Torrey Canyon off Land's End, in the United Kingdom, in 1967 This incident led to the development of several new international conventions. The stranding of the Amoco Cadiz in Brittany, France, in 1978, provoked the inclusion of some important new provisions into the United Conventions on the Law of the Sea. When the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound, Alaska in the United States of America, in 1989, it gave rise to the US Oil Pollution Act, 1990.