After years of sitting in Gambier Island’s Long Bay, the 110 metre former warship, the HMCS Annapolis, has a sink date. The Artificial Reef Society of British Columbia issued a press release this week to announce that the ship will be towed to Halkett Bay on January 13, and sunk on January 17.
“We’ll use a linear shape charge designed to cut a large hole in the bottom of the ship,” explains Howard Robbins with the Artificial Reef Society. “The charge burns rapidly through the metal. Observers will hear a bang and see a whoosh of air coming out of the ship. It will take about three minutes until it’s under water.”
The purpose of sending this ship to the bottom of the ocean is to create an artificial reef. In theory, the vessel will attract planktonic life, which other marine life will feed upon and eventually come to inhabit. However, while sinking a vessel to the sea-floor counts as marine enhancement to some, it is considered marine pollution by others. The Save Halkett Bay Marine Park Society has fought plans to sink the Annapolis since the location for the proposed reef was decided in 2009, and their fight is not over yet.
Since 1989, the Artificial Reef Society has sunk four warships, one coastal freighter, a Canadian built World War II merchant marine vessel and a Boeing 737 passenger jet. Robbins points to the first vessel sunk, the GB Church Coastal Freighter in Princess Margaret Marine Park (near Sidney), as an example of what the future may hold for the Annapolis.
“It’s a mature artificial reef, and a spectacular dive adventure because of the successive generations of marine life that exist in there,” says Robbins. “Well over 150 species inhabit this reef, we even see predators there, Cabazon and Lingcod. Nature fills the void. Halkett Bay is a complex habitat and over time, the HMCS Annapolis will bring in marine life comparable to that of the GB Church.”
The Society first purchased the HMCS Annapolis from the Canadian Government in 2008. When asked why it has taken so long for plans to sink it to come to fruition, Robbins explained that polychorinated byphenals (PCBs) were discovered in the ship’s insulation, and it took more than a year to have this material removed.
Robbins dismisses the ongoing concerns of the Save Halkett Bay Society, a group of shoreline property owners on Gambier, as NIMBYism.
“The Artificial Reef Society and Environment Canada need to respect their concerns,” says Robbins. “We’ve done that. But their concerns are confusing to us because they say they have environmental concerns but on the other hand they support the sinking of this ship in another location.”
When questioned about potential contaminants in the paint on the HMCS Annapolis (a concern brought up to The Undercurrent by John Buchanan, a member of the Squamish Streamkeepers) Robbins points to the Artificial Reef Society’s track record of approval by Environment Canada.
“We have been permitted eight times in a row because what we produce is net gain underwater,” he says. “Five-hundred thousand mussels on the bottom hull of the Annapolis can’t all be wrong. This is not throwing garbage in the ocean, this is repurposing a vessel to bring marine habitat. The Society works within the framework of the law. If there are standards brought about by Federal Agencies, we meet them.”
Martin Peters, the lawyer for the Halkett Bay Society says that according to reports made by divers who’ve had the opportunity to look at the hull of the ship up close, there is only one small strip in the middle of the hull where there is any marine life growing.
“Years ago, there were tiles on that part of the ship I believe in order to make it harder for submarines to detect it,” says Peters. “But when the Annapolis was decommissioned, the tiles were removed and sent back to the US Navy. That’s the only place where there is no anti-fouling paint on the hull.”
Peters says that the Save Halkett Bay Society hired Pacific Rim Laboratory, based in Surrey, to test the paint on the boat’s anti-fouling line in December. Results of the test show that dibutylin dichloride and tributyltin chloride (TBTs) are still active in the paint. Both of these substances were used in anti-fouling paint, to prevent the growth of marine life, prior to 2008 when they were banned in Canada.
He says that while Robbins claims to be meeting Environment Canada’s standards, these standards date back to 2007 and do not take into account the regulations made afterwards.
“Unlike PCBs, there are zero parts per-million of tributyltin chloride and dibutylin dichloride that are acceptable going into the marine environment,” says Peters. “The ship was probably last painted 14 or 15 years ago, and no steps have been taken to address the new regulations. You’d have to get the ship into a dry dock and sandblast off the paint. The residue would then be considered a toxic substance, and would have to be removed and properly disposed of by Hazmat.”
The Vice President of Marine Science at the Vancouver Aquarium, Dr. Jeff Marliave, has lent his support to the sinking of the Annapolis. Last week, he told the North Shore News that much of the controversy over the project has been misplaced and that, “in all, this is a very safe place to put down a feature that will become a safe dive site.”
However, The Undercurrent, is hoping to have a further conversation with Marliave as well as the head of the Aquarium’s ocean pollution science program, Dr. Peter Ross, about the significance of the Save Halkett Bay Society’s test results on the Annapolis’s anti-fouling paint.
According to a petition filed to the Federal Court by Martin Peters on Tuesday January 6, “Leachates derived from TBTs are highly toxic for other organisms [other than barnacles] at all points of the food chain, including mammals. They are particularly dangerous because they impact development, which has led to collapse of whole populations of organisms.”
Peters’ petition aims to “Quash the Disposal at Sea Permit,” issued by Environment Canada to the Artificial Reef Society of British Columbia for the HMCS Annapolis. Environment Canada has 10 days to respond to this petition. In his last conversation with The Undercurrent, Peters said he was in the process of filing yet another petition that would require a more immediate response from Environment Canada.
