Interim Report of the Working Group on Risks of Maritime Activities in the Baltic Sea (WGMABS)

The Working Group on Risks of Maritime Activities in the Baltic Sea (WGMABS) met on 14–16 April 2015 in Helsinki, Finland. This was the first meeting of the working group and the aim was to reviews the current work to understand what kind of scientific tools are available for risk management of maritime risks. It was decided already before the meeting that the focus will be on large-scale oil accidents, as it was considered that this is an area where ICES has not had much activities even though the impact on nature can be very large in large-scale oil spills. For example other ICES working groups have already studied the introduction of new species in ballast waters of vessels, but large-scale oil spills are not.Governance measures against oil spill risk can be divided into preventive and recovery measures. The ground for these measures is the legislation concerning safety on life at sea and marine pollution prevention.