Florindo González Corral, the Spanish fishing tycoon who owned the pirate fishing vessel ‘Thunder’, has been fined 8.2 million euros in a civil case brought by the Spanish government. Thunder was an INTERPOL-wanted fishing vessel involved in more than 10 years of illegal fishing in the Southern Ocean, before its captain deliberately sank it in Gulf of Guinea.
The California Air Resources Board fined the Mediterranean Shipping Company $350,000.00 for violating air quality regulations. Namely, four MSC ships did not comply with fuel regulations. More specifically, an investigation by the ARB showed that four MSC vessels, one vessel twice, failed to comply with the OGV Fuel Regulation.
Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower fined AZ Marine Offshore Services of Singapore and its operations manager $152,000 and $61,000 respectively, after an engineer lost his life in 2016 at a shipyard. The ministry said that the company did not manage to provide appropriate safety instructions regarding vessel-to-vessel access within the shipyard.
Tidewater Barge Lines been fined $18,000 for spilling 40,000 gallons of liquid urea ammonium nitrate into the Snake and Columbia rivers. An investigation by the Washington Department of Ecology found that two of its steel tank barges were not properly maintained, causing the liquid fertilizer to spill into the rivers during three separate incidents in April 2017.
