Others reject a paint called toxic. A Clearwater company sells it by the gallon.
Barnacles are a billion-dollar problem for the shipping industry. They cling to the hulls of ships, and decimate fuel efficiency. The challenge is developing coatings that prevent barnacles from growing without harming other species in the marine environment.
New Nautical Coatings Inc., of Clearwater, Fla., is the only remaining American vendor of a ship paint based on a chemical widely believed to be one of the most toxic in the world.
The chemical, tributyltin, or TBT, is a tin-based compound initially heralded as a miracle cure, but later banned. According to the EPA, half a gram is enough to contaminate an Olympic-size swimming pool.
Scientists have yet to develop an environmentally friendly alternative that works as well as TBT did. “It’s like trying to make an environmentally friendly weed killer,” New Nautical CEO Erik Norrie said. “How safe can it be?”
Barnacle burden
A ship can accumulate 300 pounds of barnacle growth per square meter in six months – that’s 1,200 pounds on a boat the size of a canoe. If one-third of a ship’s hull is covered, fuel consumption can increase 50 percent.
In the days of Columbus, sailors soaked wooden ships in oil infused with chemicals like arsenic, mercury, sulfur and gunpowder. Around the turn of the 19th century, metals such as lead, copper and zinc were found to inhibit growth, and the first paints, known as anti-foulants, were created using these chemicals.
TBT was developed in the 1960s, and quickly became the industry standard. Paint containing TBT allowed ships to go as long as five years without dry-docking — twice as long as copper- and zinc-based paints.
Biologist Michael Champ estimated that in the 1980s, at the height of its popularity, 70 to 80 percent of the nearly 30,000 ships in global commerce used TBT paint.
The TBT business
In 1990, Erik Norrie’s father Jack bought New Nautical as an investment.
“Dad just thought it was a neat company with a lot of potential,” Norrie said. “You can take a dart and throw it at a map of the world. Seventy percent of Earth’s surface is water.
“We’re a boating family. We really love boats, being around boats, and having to do with boats and the boating industry. Boats are in our blood. Our family is from Scotland, originally fishermen from Aberdeen.”
But by the time the Norrie family took over the company, TBT paints had come under fire from environmentalists.
In 1986, researchers reported declines in commercial oyster farms near France, and farmers in England reported shell deformities in oyster crops. Researchers blamed TBT. The World Wildlife Fund estimated that from 1975 to 1982 the commercial oyster industry lost $150 million. Further research revealed that in high enough concentrations the chemical was also toxic to plankton, algae, a wide variety of mollusks and, potentially, higher mammals like otters, dolphins and humans.
In 1988, the EPA banned TBT use on boats less than 82 feet in length – a category that includes recreational sailboats, motorboats and fishing vessels. Small boats spend most of their time docked in marinas, allowing the chemical to accumulate in high concentrations.
Unable to legally sell TBT to U.S. customers, New Nautical started exporting its products to South American and Caribbean countries that didn’t have restrictions on the chemical.
Then, in 2001, the International Maritime Organization, which regulates most of the world’s major harbors, adopted legislation to phase out TBT by September 2008.
Demand for TBT declined as Norrie’s competitors began developing tin-free anti-foulants. Then, three years ago, Norrie said, the chemical company that produced TBT in the United States stopped manufacturing the product due to lack of demand.
The last order of TBT that New Nautical ever made was also one of its largest. The company bought enough TBT to last for several years. Today it is the last remaining distributor of TBT-based paint in the U.S.
Environmental impact
Norrie developed alternative products for sale in the U.S., but said he continued selling TBT overseas because he wasn’t convinced by the science.
“There is scientific data that backs up the fact that there are some harmful effects to the environment. But there’s also scientific data that shows that it’s not,” Norrie said. Hotspots like shipyards and marinas are especially affected by TBT toxicity, but research is less certain on the impact from the slow leaching of TBT from ships at sea.
The World Wildlife Fund predicted in the late 1990s that by 2001 there would be a range of alternatives to TBT-based paints, but the industry is still waiting.
According to biologist Michael Champ, many anti-foulant producers have returned to old solutions: copper and zinc compounds. But these products don’t work as well as TBT, and only last about half as long, requiring ships to return for reapplication every two to three years. New research has uncovered environmental risks associated with these products that are multiplied by the frequent need for cleaning and reapplication.
Nancy Smith, associate professor of marine biology at Eckerd College, performs product testing for anti-foulant companies, including New Nautical.
“I don’t think you can develop something that’s not going to be toxic and leave a signature in the environment,” Smith said. “That’s what they all want to do, but I don’t know.
“I guess the alternative is to not allow people to move stuff around. But you can’t do that. I guess you have to deal with what you’ve got, and try to reduce it to the fullest extent possible without having the environmental effects.”
Currently, New Nautical is developing a non-metal anti-foulant in partnership with the Belgium-based Janssen Pharmaceutica. The product, called Econea, is based on a chemical that’s toxic to barnacles, but biodegrades rather than building up in the environment.
“I’m not a guy who wants to be known a polluter of the environment,” Norrie said. “I love the ocean. I love coral. I dive. I snorkel. It’s my passion.”
Norrie is uncertain when the new product may be on the market. “You’ll have to ask the Lord about that,” Norrie says. He said the EPA has stalled the process for now, and that a past product took years to get through the red tape. “It took us over two years and in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to get it registered before we could even sell a dime’s worth of it,” Norrie said. “What’s limiting us in those areas really is our own government, which is a shame.”