Boat owners from Southern California to Maine are abandoning their vessels on the waterfront due to bad economy. The boat owners are beginning to break up and sink, leaking oil and other pollutants. Boats have long been a barometer of consumer confidence, disposable income and the overall state of the economy. Marina and harbour officials reported a sudden increase in the past year in the number of deserted pleasure boats and working vessels.
Harbourmaster John Cruger-Hansen said that boating is a pure luxury and one of the first things to go when the economy turns south. He expects to see more abandoned boats by year’s end. He told that if it comes to the point of putting food on the table or paying the boat slip fee, it’s the boat that goes. It is informed that the abandon boats often break up and go under, or pass into the underground economy of night time scuttlers.
Sejal Choksi, programme director at San Francisco Baykeeper, an environmental organization, opined that oil, gasoline and sewage from these boat leaks into the aquatic environment. He added that boat paint often contains chromium, lead, mercury and other toxic chemicals, and as a vessel deteriorates, the coating flakes off and settles on the sea floor or river bottom, where fish swallow it.
In Georgia, Charles “Buck” Bennett, a natural-resources enforcement manager for the state, regularly finds wooden shrimp boats run aground and left to break apart in the Atlantic Ocean swells. He pointed out that presently an increasing number of powerboat and sailboat owners have been failing to pay their slip fees.
