"...here there is no place to land on from out of the grey water. For without are sharp crags, and round them the wave roars surging, and sheer the smooth rock rises, and the sea is deep thereby, so that in no wise may I find firm foothold and escape my bane, for as I fain would go ashore, the great wave may haply snatch and dash me on the jagged rock - and a wretched endeavour that would be."
- Homer, The Odyssey

In Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus is cast adrift and finds himself at the mercy of the elements. Over the years many mariners have found the lee shore of the Olympic Coast, with place names such as Destruction Island and Graveyard of the Giants, their bane. The adoption of the Area to be Avoided (ATBA) off the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary was conceived as a buffer to allow help to arrive to adrift vessels along this rocky and environmentally sensitive coast. Despite advances in technology and our best efforts at preventing maritime accidents there will always be a certain amount of risk involved in marine shipping.

A catastrophic discharge of oil or hazardous materials remains one of the greatest threats facing the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary. Reducing this threat has been one of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) highest priorities. The sanctuary, the third largest in the United States, sits at the entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, a major thoroughfare linking the important North American ports of Seattle, Tacoma, and Vancouver with trading partners all around the Pacific Rim. The juxtaposition of such an important international trade route and a national marine sanctuary requires the balancing of political, social, economic, and natural resource issues.

The sanctuary, designated in May 1994, worked with the U.S. Coast Guard to request the International Maritime Organization (IMO) designate an Area to be Avoided (ATBA) on the Olympic Coast. The IMO defines an ATBA as "a routeing measure comprising an area within defined limits in which either navigation is particularly hazardous or it is exceptionally important to avoid casualties and which should be avoided by all ships, or certain classes of ships". This ATBA was adopted in December 1994 by the Maritime Safety Committee of the IMO, "in order to reduce the risk of marine casualty and resulting pollution and damage to the environment of the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary". The ATBA went into effect in June 1995 and advises operators of vessels carrying petroleum and/or hazardous materials to maintain a 25-mile buffer from the coast. Since that time, Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary has created an education and monitoring program with the goal of ensuring the successful implementation of the ATBA.

The sanctuary ensured that information on the ATBA was placed on both domestic and international nautical charts and publications. In addition, sanctuary staff worked closely with industry and government agencies to develop an education strategy. This effort resulted in the development of an ATBA flyer distributed in 1996 by the Washington State Office of Marine Safety, the Puget Sound Steamship Operators Association, the Marine Exchange of Puget Sound, the Canadian Coast Guard, 13th Coast Guard District's Marine Safety Office Puget Sound (MSO) and Vessel Traffic Service Puget Sound (VTS). A copy of this flyer is also now part of the Coast Guard's Vessel Traffic Service's Users Manual.

To test assertions that voluntary ATBA provisions were widely accepted by the marine industry, the sanctuary designed a vessel traffic-monitoring program using Canadian Coast Guard radar data. Since February 1998 OCNMS has continuously monitored compliance to the ATBA provision. Where vessels were identified as not complying with the provisions of the ATBA, OCNMS and the USCG Captain of the Port have sent out plots of the vessel's transit as well as correspondence under joint signature. Response from the marine industry to the program has been very favorable. Many of those responding commented on how the correspondence was useful in educating their crews.

In February 2000 OCNMS published a report (PDF 1.3Mb) documenting a decrease in the number of vessels transiting the ATBA from July 1995 through September 1999. In August 2000 the sanctuary completed an ATBA Applicability Study and provided it as part of the sanctuary's comments to the USCG's Port Access Route Study (PARS). The sanctuary's recommendation included two elements. First, it increased the size of the ATBA to the north and west, to take into account recommended changes to the traffic lanes. This increased size provides a greater margin of safety around the navigational hazards of Duntze and Duncan Rocks and Tatoosh Island. Second, it expanded the class of ships to which the ATBA applies to include ships of 1,600 gross tons and above. These ships carry substantial amounts of bunker fuel, which, if spilled, would have a devastating impact on the unique, valuable, and sensitive resources of OCNMS. The USCG included the sanctuary recommendations (PDF 48k) in the final PARS and they were subsequently brought to the IMO by the U. S. delegation. These proposals were adopted by the IMO on May 29, 2002 and went into effect on December 1, 2002.

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Vessel Traffic-Monitoring Program