ARTICLES & PUBLICATIONS

Example of a recent expert witness report I compiled.

This article examines the issue of the rights companies and their employees have during a Coast Guard
investigation.

The Coast Guard released its Arctic Strategic Outlook on April 22, 2019, which replaces the service’s 2013 Arctic Strategy. The strategic outlook “reaffirms the service’s commitment to American leadership in the region through partnership, unity of effort, and continuous innovation” through the establishment of three lines of effort

On Tuesday, December 4, 2018, the President signed into law S. 140, the “Frank LoBiondo Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2018,” which, among other things, makes changes to the law relating to the regulation of vessel incidental discharge and ballast water. These changes are set out in Title IX of the Act, which is entitled the “Vessel Incidental Discharge Act of 2018” (the Act). The important features of the Act are summarized below, and discussed in more depth in Appendices A and B.

The discovery of vast hydrocarbon reserves in the Levant Basin holds the promise of a significant economic boom to nations in the region, particularly Cyprus, Israel, and Lebanon. Yet this seeming windfall also has the potential to create, or exacerbate, tensions in the region, as the beneficiary nations wrangle over the ownership of, and concomitant ability to exploit and profit from, these gas reserves.

Arctic water operations present a unique set of challenges that range from environmental to structural to regulatory in nature. This article highlights some of these challenges, and ultimately indicates that IMC’s unique surveyor-regulatory compliance team is an ideal resource for operators looking for assistance in accessing and utilizing the U.S.’s northern waters.

The U.S. Coast Guard’s Port State Control (PSC) program is intended to ensure that foreign-flagged vessels operating in U.S. waters comply with applicable international conventions and U.S. regulations, with the ultimate goal of identifying and eliminating substandard ships from U.S. waters.

The regulatory landscape relating to ballast water management in the U.S. has materially changed now that type-approved systems are available for installation, with others soon to follow suit.

Arctic sea ice is melting, slowly but inexorably. As the ice disappears, mankind will be afforded access to regions and activities, including commercial fishing, that have been inaccessible for our entire recorded history. There is currently no regulatory body or mechanism in the high seas Arctic (also referred to as the central Arctic Ocean) to conserve and manage fish stocks, the distribution and concentration of which are poorly understood, and that might be the target of commercial fisheries. This article examines the extent and nature of ice recession in the Arctic, and its likely effect on the accessibility of central Arctic ocean fisheries to commercial exploitation.

The U.S. Coast Guard ballast water management regulations are set out in Title 33, Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 151, Subparts C and D. Whereas Subpart C applies only to the Great Lakes and the Hudson River, Subpart D applies more generally to waters of the United States; thus, this article will focus only on Subpart D.

On 13 July, the US Coast Guard issued Marine Safety Information Bulletin (MSIB) 010/16, entitled Alternate Management System (AMS) Program Update. This MSIB “provides updates on aspects of the Coast Guard’s AMS program,” and “clarifies CG-OES Policy Letter No. 13-01, revision 2, by providing details on the five-year AMS provision” in the Coast Guard’s ballast water management regulations.

The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) was created in 2004 to more effectively conserve and manage the region's tuna fishery. One of the Commission's principal enforcement tools is the high seas boarding and inspection regime, which authorizes each member state to board and inspect fishing vessels engaged in a regulated fishery to verify compliance with the Commission's conservation and management measures. This article examines the structure of the WCPFC's high seas boarding and inspection regime and analyzes its effectiveness in furthering the Commission's conservations and management mandate.

As the S.S. City of Flint, a U.S.-flagged "Hog Islander" merchant ship, cleared New York Harbor on October 3, 1939, neither her captain, Joseph Gainard, nor her crew had any reason to suspect that they were embarking on a voyage that would place them at the epicenter of a diplomatic and legal firestorm. The Remarkable Voyage of the S.S. City of Flint. American Journal of Legal History (2014) 54 (1): 73-105, doi: 10.1093/ajlh/54.1.73. Published by Oxford University Press.

A similar paradigm shift is necessary in the coming years regarding the role of unmanned maritime systems (UMS) in future combat operations. To some extent, such a conceptual shift is already underway, as the U.S. Navy, as well as many other navies throughout the world, already employ unmanned systems to perform the “dirty, dull, and dangerous” missions for which traditional manned systems may not be best suited or employed.1 The role of unmanned systems is continuing to grow, not just in terms of total number of systems being employed worldwide, but also in the level of complexity of the missions they are conducting.

The 1982 United Nations Law of the Sea Convention (UNCLOS) is, quite understandably, viewed by many as the “be all, end all” statement and source of the law of the sea. The reality, however, is that while UNCLOS provides an overall framework for legal governance of the world’s oceans and codifies such important principles as freedom of the high seas and flag-state primacy, it is by no means the single, definitive statement of the law of the sea. Other significant international conventions are widely accepted and fill some gaps in the UNCLOS framework.

Fishing fleets from many countries, faced with diminishing catches and profits, increasingly have turned their attention to the remaining healthy source in the world: the tuna fishery in the western and central Pacific Ocean (WCPO). This exists in a vast, sparsely populated region, and much of the targeted fish stock is "owned" by some of the poorest countries in the world, the recently independent Pacific island nations. Their economies depend on income from the fishery for sustenance and to allow them to maintain political independence. If left unchecked, the increasing assault on their tuna fishery will cause it to collapse as it has elsewhere in the world.