Ship Operations - Identification of Cargo Oil

The MEPC agreed to consider under its work program, upon receipt of full scale testing results to determine its effectiveness, a method to identify the ship responsible for an oil pollution incident. Two “tagging” systems were noted: (1) DNA fragments bound to microbeads and (2) non-radioactive isotopes with molecular binding pairs. In leading this effort, the United Kingdom indicated that an additional 3 to 5 years is needed for administrative and technological requirements to be developed.