Two years after Hurricane Norma hit La Paz, which left 45 boats stranded, there are still boats abandoned at sea without the owners assuming any responsibility.
Despite the fact that the Maritime Navigation and Commerce Act makes the owner responsible for removing their vessel (or at least marking) in the event of sinking or stranding and for having civil liability insurance, Astrid Karam, vice president of Marine, Cargo & Logistics and Aviation, a global risk and insurance consultant, pointed out that in practice this is not true.
“In Mexico, the law imposes extensive responsibility, however, in practice, debris removal and environmental remediation do not come automatically in the policy of yachts or boats: they are costly and conditional extensions. If a yacht sinks, the owner may discover that the insurance company only paid for the repair or the total of the hull, but not for the comprehensive removal work or environmental fines, unless those coverages had been specifically contracted and documented,” Karam explained.
Gaps that facilitate inaction of the law
The legal framework establishes the obligation to have insurance and to remove sunken helmets, but control over compliance is weak.
“It is a must to have insurance, but in practice the cost, lack of consistent oversight and a culture that underestimates risk make many owners prefer to sail without a policy,” Karam said.
This was confirmed by sources from the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources and the Federal Attorney's Office for Environmental Protection who requested not to be identified for fear of reprisals, and who pointed out that in practice many vessels are not insured and that verification depends on the Port Authority.
Without verification, unregistered boats proliferate, and when an incident that causes environmental damage occurs, it is not possible to identify the owners and those responsible.
Transfer of removal and remediation costs
Specialist Karam warns that insurance available in Mexico usually excludes the costs of removing sunken helmets or mitigating spills, and when policies contemplate such coverage, they set limits that rarely reach real costs.
When the insurance does not include removal and remediation or the cost exceeds the amount insured, the insurer pays up to the contracted limit and the rest must be covered by the owner; but if the owner cannot, the authority has the obligation to intervene to protect the public interest and then seeks to recover the cost of the intervention.
The range of costs for removing a vessel, Karam said, ranges from one thousand to 200 thousand dollars in the case of large vessels.
In La Paz, the costs have been transferred to the organized community of La Paz, according to Pablo Ahuja, founder of the citizen initiative Mar Libre, which has been responsible for dismantling and removing abandoned hulls in the bay of La Paz.
“We have removed nine boats with donations of between 20 and 45,000 pesos per ship,” said Ahuja.
The group's calculations estimate an expense close to 250,000 pesos, which fell on voluntary contributions and not on landlords or insurers.
In a report prepared by the group Metiches by Naturaleza, it is estimated that the removal of 20 vessels cost the local government around 6 and a half million pesos in 2024, with an investment of between 300,000 and 350,000 pesos per vessel serviced. If we add up the expenses of authorities and civil society, the figure is around 7 million pesos.
Fishermen affected
The impact is not only financial, in the case of the cooperative Pescadores Auténticos del Manglito, the town stranded in the area of February 5 and Rangel represents a daily risk in its operations, says its president, Juan Carlos Telechea, describing how an accident not attended to by owners or insurance companies becomes a burden for fishermen and tourists.
“The stranded helmet reduces the maneuvering area of both the cooperative and the tour pangas. Pangas move around here all day long,” Telechea said.
Telechea warns that with rain and storm surges, the situation tends to get serious, since the stranded hulls alter the dynamics of currents and sandbanks, reducing the maneuvering space for pangas in the middle of the working season.
Some ways of solving
Karam pointed out that the problem of sunken ships in La Paz is not an isolated vacuum, but rather a fragile system. Weak controls, weak dissuasive sanctions and simple evasion mechanisms combine to rescind the legal obligation to have insurance.
It considers that both insurers and authorities share responsibility: the former, for offering limited products that do not cover relevant risks; the latter, for accepting incomplete policies without reviewing the necessary coverages.
From a risk management perspective, the specialist warns that it is not enough to demand insurance. Verifiable guarantees, agile processes and bridge financing are needed, otherwise stranded vessels will continue to accumulate as an environmental and fiscal liability in the bay.
To reverse this, it proposes a package of simultaneous incentives: regulatory (mandatory and verifiable insurance), economic (subsidies and discounts), commercial (reduced rates), market (accessible products) and educational (training). Only in this way is private interest aligned with public protection and makes it feasible to contract policies that include shipwreck removal and environmental remediation.
“The absence of adequate insurance on many ships makes La Paz the holder of real and potentially high financial risks: direct rescue and remediation costs, liabilities for harm to third parties and loss of income from tourism and fishing, which in the absence of payment by the owner tend to fall on the local authority or the community,” he warns.
The presence of stranded hulls is a legacy of Hurricane Norma and also a latent risk to the bay. Pablo Ahuja, founder of Mar Libre, has recorded cases: “I know of three from El Mogote that are still stranded in the mangroves.” These are structures that are not easily removed because they involve maneuvering from the open sea.
Others, on the other hand, were reduced to scrap after partial predatory interventions: “There was a sailboat sunk at the tip of the Mogote; they came in with a backhoe and dumper just to remove the lead keel and left the rest of the hull in the water”.
Fishermen fear that if preventive actions and effective oversight are not implemented, the next hurricane will multiply the debris in the bay and will aggravate the social and financial costs that now fall on the community.
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