“Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don’t interfere.”

–President Ronald Reagan

Though not the largest oil spill the United States has ever experienced, nor its worst environmental disaster, the BP/DEEPWATER HORIZON Oil Spill (DEEPWATER HORIZON) was enormous and devastating. Ignited by pressurized methane gas bubbling up from a depth of 18,360 feet below the sea, the DEEPWATER HORIZON oil rig exploded on April 20, 2010, killing eleven men. After the rig sank two days later, breaks in the riser pipe connecting the rig to the ocean floor began spewing hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil and gas into the Gulf of Mexico. At first, the spill was nearly impossible to control effectively. Oil flowing from the well washed up on the shores of Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi, and polluted thousands of square miles of ocean. Three months later, the well was successfully capped, ending the catastrophic flow of oil. Assessment of the ecological and economic damage continues, as do cleanup efforts.

Although some may believe that no one contemplated that an environmental disaster of such magnitude could occur, for catastrophes like DEEPWATER HORIZON, a coordinated national emergency response plan has existed in some form in the United States since 1968. The National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan (NCP), created to respond to oil spills and hazardous substance releases, was borne out of the 1967 TORREY CANYON disaster off the coast of England. After the supertanker ran aground and spilled over thirty-one million gallons of crude oil into the Celtic Sea, the U.S. Government, recognizing the United States’ own vulnerability, created the NCP, which provided a national response strategy for oil spills. Many acts of Congress required amendment and expansion of the NCP over the years, culminating in the passage of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA), which resulted in the most recent major revisions to the NCP.

“In an honest service there are commonly low wages and hard labour: in piracy, satiety, pleasure and ease, liberty and power . . . . [A] merry life and a short one shall be my motto.”

— Captain Bartholomew Roberts, aka “Black Bart,” notorious pirate in the seventeenth century

Human beings, whether on land or at sea, have always had to choose between leading an honest, hardworking existence and leading a life of crime. Those who put to sea and choose the latter, we call pirates–and there have been no shortage of them. Pirates have long menaced the high seas, seeking harbors and ports to plunder and pillage for treasure. Although a 1696 trial at the Old Bailey deemed that “piracy is only a sea-term for robbery” that was “committed within the jurisdiction of the Admiralty,” it continues to emerge in new forms over time. As the twenty-first century unfolds, the world again confronts piracy. Rather than the romanticized “Black Bart” Roberts, today’s pirates are often found in small dhows off the coast of Somalia armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). Some supply themselves with modern-age sextants, namely global positioning devices, and walkie-talkies. These new pirates have seized large tankers carrying oil or chemicals–cargoes valued up to $100 million–as far as several hundred miles off the coast of Somalia. In 2008, pirates attacked 141 vessels off the Horn of Africa; in 2010, the number increased to 160 vessel attacks, which resulted in the capture of 53 ships in the region; and in the first half of 2011, there were already 177 pirate attacks. These attacks continue today.