The European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) has a drone programme underway that they call snifferssniffers, which measure emissions from ships crossing European waters on site and also in port. Drones fly up to the plume, the dark, toxic trail of gases from burning fuel, fly through it and take samples that are analysed by gas sensors, mainly for sulphur and nitrogen oxides, which they carry on board. Drones can take off from ships or land in all kinds of conditions: rough seas – there are plenty of videos on YouTube with impressive takeoffs or landings—, cold, heat, high humidity and, in the absence of a vulnerable human pilot, in extreme environments such as the toxic trail.
“Normally, ships are inspected when they arrive at port and you can check what type of fuel they have been using. The problem is that they have multiple tanks with multiple fuels, so in port it is still difficult to find out what their behaviour has been on the high seas. With a drone you can catch them in the act,” says Leendert Bal, head of the AESM’s Safety, Security and Surveillance department at this time. video.
To measure emissions on maritime routes, the AESM uses medium-sized helicopters, weighing around 200 kilos, and light quadcopters, weighing around 15 kilos, for ports. It also has eleven light quadcopters that are standby aboard ships in its oil spill response fleet. The helicopters can stay aloft for about six hours—a human pilot would tire much sooner—but their range is limited to about 40 km from control stations by the need to fly low to stay close to the ships’ plume and by the shadow cast on the signal by the curvature of the Earth. The quadcopters stay aloft for about 50 minutes. 30 minutes after the measurements are taken, the helicopters are able to fly 100 km (39 mi) from the control stations. sniffersthe information exchange system Thetis The European Union receives an emissions report that helps port inspectors select the ships to inspect.
So far this year, these drones have made more than 200 gas measurements in three deployments: the English Channel, in a joint operation between France and Belgium, in the Baltic Sea, on board the German Federal Police patrol boat Potsdam, and in the Port of Barcelona, under the control of the Directorate General of the Merchant Navy. They can also be equipped with other instruments and used for other tasks, for example, electro-optical cameras to obtain photographic evidence of a ship’s activity or detect spills; and thermal infrared cameras to analyse the shape of the plume, follow the evolution of fires, locate people in danger during the day or night… The drones on board the patrol boat Potsdam, for example, combined emissions monitoring with surveillance tasks. The programme has a total budget of around four million euros per year.
The issue of maritime pollution is a growing problem. 80% of the world’s freight transport takes place by sea, which generates 13% of annual emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx), 12% of sulfur oxides (SOx) and 3% of greenhouse gases, as well as suspended particles. According to A study by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), would have been responsible for some 265,000 premature deaths worldwide in 2020. This number represents 0.5% of global mortality, which may seem small, but global demand for maritime trade is expected to grow by 40% by 2050.
Natalie Mueller, an environmental epidemiologist at ISGlobal and author of the study, explains that European coastal areas appear to be the most affected in the world, “although they are also the most studied, due to their proximity to busy maritime routes such as the Strait of Gibraltar, the Baltic Sea or the North Sea.” In addition, around 40% of Europeans live less than 50 kilometres from one of the seas that surround us.
Emissions regulations are stricter for sulphur due to its high toxicity. The European Union and the International Maritime Organisation limit its content in marine fuels to 0.5%, and to 0.1% in the so-called ECAs, emission control zones. “Although our drone programme does not directly confirm non-compliance with the sulphur directive, it helps port authorities to select the ships to be inspected and to carry out the necessary laboratory tests for possible sanctions,” explains the AESM.
The main limitation to the use of drones is precisely flying. There are still no certified drones in Europe and in order to take off they need specific permits granted by the European Aviation Safety Agency for each operation. In most cases, permits are granted with important limitations such as having to segregate the airspace, that is, drones cannot fly alongside other aircraft and part of it must be blocked, something like putting an imaginary cage in the sky.
For the AESM, “the EASA regulations have been successfully and effectively applied in our operations over the last two years, except for the need to segregate airspace. This could be avoided with detection and avoidance systems, but unfortunately these are not currently available for drones.” In addition, the regulations only cover European waters. From twelve nautical miles from the coast, one enters international waters where the Convention on International Civil Aviation, dating from 1944, applies and, logically, is not designed for a technology that did not exist at the time. “For non-certified civil drones, this poses additional problems,” they conclude.
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