Bulk retrieval and onshore re-containment of dumped drums
#00127
Recover dumped drums from the deep seabed and transfer them to engineered, monitored, retrievable onshore storage — removing the waste from the marine environment entirely rather than leaving it to decay in place.
Parent issue
#00121 Preventing new ocean disposal of hazardous waste
Tags
Sustainable Development Goals
Location
Description
Mechanism
Use deep-sea recovery systems — ROVs, lifting rigs, and sealed containment vessels — to raise drums from the abyssal plain and bring them ashore into managed storage engineered for the remaining hazard life. It is the interventionist end of the response spectrum, opposite "monitor in place": it ends the marine exposure pathway rather than observing it.
Where it fits
In principle the most complete resolution, and the option most people reach for first. It is the natural alternative to consider against long-term monitoring for any discrete, high-risk unit.
Operating profile and limits
Bounded by hard physical and economic constraints. The inventory is 200,000+ drums dispersed across ~14,500 km² at ~4,700 m. Drums are in advanced corrosion and many would rupture on being lifted, or even approached by recovery gear, releasing contents that are presently semi-contained in sediment — the disturbance is itself the worst-case dispersal mechanism flagged elsewhere in this issue. Deep-sea recovery at this depth and scale is extraordinarily costly, against measured activity that is so far limited. These constraints make whole-site recovery far harder to justify than selective recovery of a few specific, accessible, high-risk drums for study or targeted removal — which is where any real-world attempt would have to start.
Sub-issues
0Case studies
0