Word: vessel
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...Somalia Dangerous Plunder Pirates patrolling Somalia's lawless waters hijacked a freighter carrying tanks and high-grade weaponry and demanded $20 million for its return. As U.S. warships surrounded the vessel--the 26th seized off the Somali coast this year--a pirate spokesman vowed the group would withstand the siege...
...That legislation has spelled trouble for Ali and his cohorts. Fueled by fears that the cache of weapons could make its way to al-Qaeda-linked insurgents, the U.S. sent warships to encircle the anchored vessel as an international fleet hurried to join them. In his interview with the Times, Ali seemed cheerfully fatalistic about the prospect of tangling with the world's naval superpowers: "We know you only die once." Rumors flew that three pirates had already perished during a shootout stemming from a disagreement over whether to surrender, but the pirate spokesman dismissed the claim. He said...
...course, there are governmental policies in place prohibiting ship abandonment: state laws fine and sometimes jail owners of derelict vessels. The problem is, there's a strong financial disincentive against retrieving and recycling sunken vessels. Dismantling a 40-ft. yacht costs an owner on average $5,000 to $10,000, but the costs can run to 100 times that amount. "You can't just crush it up into a cube," says Helton. Meanwhile, state fines for abandonment run a lot lower, as little as $100. Definitions of vessel, abandonment and ownership also vary among states, which means that ship owners...
Legislation is slowly beginning to change. Since 2003, Washington State's vessel-removal program has led a crackdown on derelict boats, using ramped-up boat-registration fees as funding for the program, which has so far cleared 188 boats. "It gave us financial capability, plus the legal hammer if we needed to use it," says Doug Sutherland, the state's commissioner of public lands. Other state officials have expressed interest in Washington's model. In September, the California legislature passed a bill to increase fines for owners of derelict vessels. And last year, the U.S. House of Representatives passed...
...environmental impact of undersea wreckage can't always be seen easily from the shore. Helton says it would help if owners of small fishing boats and jet skis as well as giant ore ships and oceangoing freighters could keep in mind that "when a vessel is lost, it's not gone...