M Notice stands for Marine shipping Notice.

Safety, pollution prevention, and other important information are made available to the shipping industry through these documents.

What are the 3 Types of M Notices?

• Merchant Shipping Notices (MSNs)

• Marine Guidance Notes (MGNs)

• Marine Information Notes (MINs)

1. Merchant Shipping Notices (MSNs):

• The purpose of Merchant Shipping Notices is to convey mandatory information that must be followed under UK regulations.

• The MSNs represent statutory instruments and provide technical details.

2. Marine Guidance Notes (MGNs):

• The Marine Guidance Notes provide guidance and recommendations to industry regarding interpretation of law and general safety advice.

3. Marine Information Notes (MINs):

Information in Marine Information Notes (MIN) is generally:

• Valid for a short period of time, such as timetables for MCA exams

• Relevant to a small group of people, such as training establishments or equipment manufacturers.

Second Registers..

• They are also called offshore ship registers or international ship registers

• In some cases, a second register will be established in the "parent" State e.g. the Norwegian International Ship Register (NIS), established in Norway to operate alongside the Norwegian "first register"

• In other cases, they are located in an offshore territory linked to the “parent” state, such as Kerguelen (linked to France), Isle of Man (linked to the UK). These registers are known as offshore registry.

• In June 1987, the NIS was established, which was an immediate success that led other countries to follow suit.

• In contrast to FOCs, second register ships must still have a genuine connection with their flag State even if crewing, taxation, and other laws are relaxed.

• The ITF (sec C05) determines whether ownership is genuinely from the flag "parent" state and whether trade unions there accept the agreements.

• Danish International Ship Register (DIS) (Denmark), Isle of Man (UK), Kerguelen (France), Madeira (Portugal) and Norwegian International Ship Register (NIS) (Norway) are included in the list.

Globally, crude oil is one of the most important fuel sources and, historically, has contributed to over a third of the world’s energy consumption.

However, at the same time, crude oil has become a major threat to the environment over the last two centuries. Most importantly, the spillages of oil from accidents involving tankers and oil rigs have polluted our seas as well as oceans and badly affected the marine ecosystem.

Among such tankers spillage, the Exxon Valdex oil spill is the second largest in U.S. waters, after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in terms o volume of oil released.

Detailed Story:

At 12:04 am on March 24, 1989, Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker carrying 54million gallons of crude oil , owned by Exxon Shipping Company, struck Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef, 1.5 miles west of Tatitlek, Alaska and spilled 10.8 million gallons of crude oil over the next few days.

On the evening of March 23, 1989, Exxon Valdez left the port of Valdez, Alaska, bound for Long Beach, California, with 53 million gallons of crude oil onboard.

On March 24, just after midnight, the ship hit Bligh Reef, a well-known navigation hazard in Alaska's Prince William Sound.

Over 11 million gallons of crude oil were spilled into the water as a result of the collision.

The spill was one of the largest oil spills in U.S. waters at the time. Oil slicks eventually covered about 1,300 miles of coastline after initial attempts to contain the oil failed.

Joseph Hazelwood, the captain of the Exxon Valdez, turned the massive ship over to an unlicensed third mate after drinking a lot of alcohol while he was boating.

Felony charges against Hazelwood were dropped in March 1990. The defendant was convicted of a single charge of misdemeanour negligence, fined $50,000, and ordered to perform 1,000 hours of community service.

Over 11,000 Alaska residents, federal responders, and employees of Exxon Valdez worked together to clean up the oil spill in the months after it occurred.

According to the company, cleaning up the spill cost about $2 billion, while habitat restoration and personal damage totalled $1.8 billion.

Oil dispersant chemicals were used to spray in the water and on shore, hot water was used to wash oiled beaches and rescue and clean animals trapped in the oil.

The officials wanted to study the effect of cleaning measures that at the time were unproven to leave some areas of shoreline untreated. Afterwards, they found that high-pressure, hot water hoses were effective at removing oil, but caused even greater ecological harm than before by killing the remaning plants and animals.

Mearn's Rock is a large shoreline boulder that was oiled but not cleaned. The plants and small creatures growing on Mearn's Rock have been photographed every summer since the spill. In three to four years following the spill, many of the mussels, barnacles, and seaweeds that lived on the rock before the spill returned to normal levels.

Before the spill, Prince William Sound was a pristine wilderness. All of that changed dramatically after the Exxon Valdez disaster, which caused widespread destruction to wildlife. An estimated 250,000 seabirds, 3,000 otters, 300 seals, 250 bald eagles and 22 killer whales were killed.

In the early 1990s, the oil spill may have become a contributing factor to the collapse of the salmon and herring fisheries in Prince William Sound. Small shoreline towns, such as Valdez and Cordova, suffered in the years that followed as fishermen went bankrupt.

Exxon Valdez's oil spill resulted in a total economic loss of up to $2.8 billion, according to reports.

According to a 2001 study, oil contamination was still present at more than half of the 91 beach sites tested in Prince William Sound.

In the Sound alone, the spill has killed about 40 percent of the sea otter population. Sea otter numbers did not reach their previous levels until 20 years after the spill, in 2014.

Fishermen in Prince William Sound have never fully re-established stocks of herring, once a thriving income source.

Following the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the US Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, which was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush in 1990.

It also mandated that every oil tanker in United States waters must have a double hull, and increased penalties for companies responsible for oil spills.

It seems possible that the Exxon Valdez disaster might have been prevented if the tanker had been constructed with double-hulls to reduce the chances of spills.