MARINE MAMMAL COMMISSION — Annual Report for 1992 
Port Reception Facility Guidelines 
At the 25th session of the Marine Environment 
Protection Committee in September 1988, the Com- 
mittee adopted guidelines providing advice on steps to 
implement Annex V. Among its key parts, the 
guidelines include sections on training and education, 
provisioning ships to minimize the generation of 
garbage, port reception facilities, and procedures for 
handling, processing, and storing garbage aboard 
ships. As noted in previous annual reports, the 
Marine Mammal Commission drafted the initial U.S. 
paper recommending development of the guidelines. 
It also drafted the section of the guidelines on ship- 
board handling, processing, and storage procedures. 
Because of the difficulty in enforcing garbage 
discharge restrictions at sea (in part due to the large 
Ocean area to be patrolled and limited number of 
enforcement officers) and the necessary reliance on 
voluntary compliance by all seafarers, the section on 
port reception facilities is particularly important. 
Without adequate, convenient, readily available facili- 
ties in ports, ships’ crews will have difficulty meeting 
and may even resist regulatory measures. For this 
reason, sound advice on how to develop adequate port 
reception facilities for garbage is a fundamental need 
if Annex V is to be effective. 
When the guidelines for Annex V were written in 
the mid-1980s, however, little information was 
available on port reception facilities for garbage, and 
the section on this subject was necessarily brief. 
Recognizing the importance of adequate port reception 
facilities, the U.S. Marine Entanglement Research 
Program and other groups supported work late in the 
1980s to address port needs. The results of these 
efforts were examined during the Second International 
Conference on Marine Debris in April 1989. 
In light of these developments, the Marine Mam- 
mal Commission drafted a paper for the Marine 
Environment Protection Committee, recommending 
that the guidelines section on port reception facilities 
be updated and expanded. In particular, it suggested 
that the section be revised to include new advice on 
matters such as administrative arrangements and 
procedures for establishing port reception facilities, 
the types and costs of reception facility equipment, 
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space and siting considerations for equipment and 
garbage storage, how to notify vessel operators of the 
availability and use of reception facilities, and project- 
ing the types and amounts of garbage likely to be 
returned to port. 
The draft paper was provided to the Coast Guard, 
which agreed with most of the points and recommen- 
dations it contained. The Coast Guard submitted the 
paper with some modifications for the Committee’s 
30th session in November 1990. The Committee 
agreed to consider recommended changes and the 
U.S. delegation offered to draft a new section on port 
reception facilities. The Marine Entanglement Re- 
search Program, in consultation with the Coast Guard, 
subsequently contracted for a report on possible 
revisions, building on the points included in the paper 
drafted by the Commission. The Coast Guard submit- 
ted the resulting report to the Committee for the 31st 
session in July 1991. 
Rather than taking up the report’s recommenda- 
tions, however, the Committee deferred action in light 
of a proposal by The Netherlands recommending that 
a comprehensive manual be developed to provide 
advice on port reception facility needs for all types of 
ship-generated wastes regulated under the Convention 
(i.e., oily wastes, noxious liquid substances, and 
garbage). The Netherlands subsequently prepared a 
paper expanding on its proposal for the 32nd session 
of the Committee in March 1992. Based on that 
paper, the Committee established a working group to 
develop a comprehensive manual on port reception 
facilities and agreed to convene an intercessional 
meeting to speed its preparation. 
The contractor who prepared the U.S. report on 
port reception facilities participated in the interces- 
sional meeting held on 24-25 June 1992 in The 
Hague, The Netherlands, and in the working group 
meeting held at the 33rd session of the Committee on 
26-31 October 1992. Based on progress made at the 
latter meeting, the chairman of the working group 
advised the Committee that the group expects to 
complete work on the manual at the 34th session in 
July 1993. 
The Committee took note of the progress and 
expressed appreciation to the U.S. delegation for its 
