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pacific ocean
'Another Trump-Authorized Murder': 1 Dead, 2 Survivors Reported After Latest US Boat Bombing
More than 200 people have been killed in US strikes targeting boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean that the Trump administration claimed—without providing evidence—were smuggling drugs.
Jun 17, 2026
The US military said Tuesday that one person was killed and two others survived the latest attack on a boat that the Trump administration claimed—again without providing concrete evidence—was involved in smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
"On June 16, at the direction of the commander of US Southern Command Gen. Francis L. Donovan, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations," SOUTHCOM said in a statement.
"Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations," the statement continued. "One male narco-terrorist was killed during this action, and there were two male survivors."
SOUTHCOM added that it "immediately notified [the] US Coast Guard to activate the Search and Rescue system for the survivors."
It is not known whether the survivors were saved.
The attack—in which no US forces were harmed—was one of more than 60 that have occurred in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean since US President Donald Trump launched the campaign early last September. More than 200 people have been killed.
Relatives of people killed in some of the boat strikes, as well as officials in Venezuela and Colombia, say that at least some of the victims were fishers who were not part of the illicit drug trade.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro has accused the US of “murder." Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was abducted during a US invasion in January and imprisoned in the United States on dubious narco-terrorism charges.
In January, relatives of two Trinidadian fishers killed in the strikes filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit in Massachusetts.
Experts argue that the strikes are illegal. Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America previously said that even in cases of vessels that were involved in drug trafficking, the bombings were illegal and “the equivalent of straight-up massacring 16-year-old drug dealers on US street corners.”
Just Security editor-in-chief and New York University School of Law professor Ryan Goodman said last month that the “overwhelming consensus of experts, myself included, assess these to be murder because no armed conflict” is occurring, adding that they would be a “war crime if it were armed conflict"—and possibly even a "crime against humanity."
Responding to Tuesday's strike, former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth lamented what he called "another Trump-authorized murder" and act of "blatant criminality."
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Boat Strike Survivors Say They Were Captured, Tortured by US Forces
"They treated us like animals," said an Ecuadorian fisher who survived an attack on the Don Maca.
Apr 21, 2026
President Donald Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and US Southern Command have repeatedly taken to social media to brag about deadly boat bombings supposedly targeting drug traffickers in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean for nearly eight months. On Tuesday, survivors of some alleged US strikes on fishing boats accused American forces of torture.
The Ecuadorian fishing boat La Fiorella "went up in smoke" on January 20, and "the eight fishermen aboard have not been seen since," Camila Lourdes Galarza reported for Drop Site News on Tuesday. "Now, 36 survivors of two Pacific attacks fitting a similar profile alleged that they were abducted and tortured by American forces and taken by boat all the way to El Salvador before being returned to Ecuador."
The journalist spoke with attorneys, relatives, and survivors, including Hernán Flores, captain of La Negra Francisca Duarte II, which was bombed by a drone with a yellow cylinder on March 17. Flores said: "A lot of us had wounds all over our bodies from the explosion. One young man was bleeding so much he filled the floor of our lifeboat with blood... The drone had flown through our cabin window, torn my nephew's foot so bad you could see flesh and bone, and made the boat's roof cave in on the back of my neck. A few seconds later, an explosion shook the boat, causing a terrible ringing in our ears. Out of exasperation, the guys threw themselves into the water, some without life jackets, even the ones who don't know how to swim."
The survivors made their way to a blue boat with "spear" on the hull, full of armed, blond, English-speaking men in camouflage uniforms—who drew their guns, handcuffed the fishers, put hoods over their heads, and held them on the vessel's "scorching metal deck for over 24 hours, blistering their skin," Galarza reported. They were only given a bottle of water, and "all but one fisherman were denied medical attention, despite the severity of what they had just endured."
They were eventually returned to Ecuador, where Trump has recently deployed US forces for a joint campaign targeting "narco-terrorists." However, first, they were turned over to El Salvador's Coast Guard—which, on April 3, also intercepted 20 more Ecuadorian fishers with "vision and hearing loss, bruised limbs, and perforated arms."
According to Galarza, those fishers had been aboard the Don Maca, and "they reported a strikingly similar account of an alleged attack by US soldiers: a bombarded boat, a round of bullets, and no due process." Sebastián Palacios, one of the survivors allegedly held hostage for eight days, said that "they treated us like animals."
⚡️New from @dropsitenews.com: Rare Survivors of Pacific Boat Strikes Allege US Forces Kidnapped & Tortured ThemAs airstrikes & reports of torture under Ecuador’s US-backed military regime continue to mount, fishermen tell Drop Site...By Camila Lourdes Galarzawww.dropsitenews.com/p/rare-survi...
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— Drop Site (@dropsitenews.com) April 21, 2026 at 2:50 PM
Galarza noted that US SOUTHCOM directed questions about all three incidents to Ecuador, whose Port Authority hung up after hearing that a phone call requesting comment was from journalists.
Harriet Barber got a similar response from SOUTHCOM for her Tuesday reporting on the Don Maca attack in The Guardian. The journalist spoke with survivors, including Palacios, as well as an attorney representing the crew, Fernando Bastias Robayo of the Human Rights Council.
"A US vessel intercepted them and forced them aboard. Once they were detained, their fishing boat was blown up," said the lawyer. "They were arbitrarily hooded and later abandoned on the Salvadorian coast. Any apprehension followed by incommunicado detention constitutes an enforced disappearance."
"It was a form of psychological torture, not knowing what's really going to happen to your life and having your face covered," he added.
Palacios told Barber that "I get scared in the middle of the night. I can't sleep well. My ears still hurt... I think that's it for me. I'm done with fishing. Going back out there is impossible. I thought they were going to kill us."
“If there were no drugs aboard those boats, it’s a hugely embarrassing ‘false positive’ for US intelligence at a time when that intelligence is being used to kill people, no questions asked.”
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— Adam Isacson (@adamisacson.com) April 21, 2026 at 10:23 AM
Tuesday's reporting came just two days after SOUTHCOM announced on social media that "Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by designated terrorist organizations... along known narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean," killing three alleged "male narco-terrorists."
Sunday's strike brought the death toll from Trump's boat-bombing campaign to at least 180, according to The New York Times. The Intercept's tally is 181, while the Washington Office on Latin America believes 182 people are dead. Critics of the campaign have accused the US administration of "war crimes, murder, or both."
Responding to Trump's latest confirmed attack, Amnesty International USA on Monday condemned "three more murders at sea" and declared that "Congress must act to stop these bombings."
So far, both chambers of the Republican-controlled Congress have refused to pass war powers resolutions aimed at halting Trump's boat strikes. Similar measures targeting his aggression toward Venezuela and Iran have also failed to advance.
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Trump's ‘Slaughter at Sea Continues’ as US Military Kills 6 More in Eastern Pacific
"No telling what a military that engages in a monthslong killing spree outside the law might do," said one policy expert.
Mar 09, 2026
With the Trump administration's unprovoked war on Iran spiraling out of control, sending oil prices skyrocketing and leading to war crimes allegations against the US, the public's attention has largely shifted away from the White House's bombings of boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean—but the killings of six men on Sunday made clear that the administration has no intention of ending its deadly attacks on boats it claims, without providing evidence, are involved in drug trafficking.
US Southern Command said in a social media post Sunday evening that at the direction of Gen. Francis Donovan, it had struck a vessel "operated by designated terrorist organizations."
The announcement echoed previous communications about lethal boat strikes since last September, claiming that the vessel "was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations," but pointing to no evidence the US forces used to make that determination.
The bombing was the 42nd strike carried out by the Trump administration in six months, according to Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America.
The New York Times reported that at least 156 people have now been killed in the boat strikes, while Isacson placed the number at 158. He emphasized that the victims' "guilt for a noncapital crime" remains unknown.
Drug trafficking in the Latin America region has typically been treated as a criminal offense, with US law enforcement agencies sometimes working with the Coast Guard to intercept boats suspected of carrying illicit substances to the US, arresting those on board, and conviscating the drugs.
Under President Donald Trump's second administration, the Department of Defense has insisted boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific pose an imminent threat to the US and that an influx of drugs from Latin America qualifies as an attack on US soil.
The deadly bombings the Pentagon has carried out as a result have led legal experts to accuse Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and others involved in the strikes of war crimes and murder.
Trump claimed to Congress in October that the US is in an "armed conflict" with drug cartels in Venezuela, but Congress has not authorized attacks on boats or inside Venezuela.
Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have introduced war powers resolutions to stop the attacks from continuing, but they have been voted down, with the vast majority of Republicans rejecting them. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) joined the GOP in voting down one of the resolutions in the Senate.
A day before the latest strike, Trump met with Latin American leaders at the "Shield of the Americans" summit in the Dominican Republic and urged them to join the United States' fight against drug cartels, calling them an "unacceptable threat to national security."
Forces from the US and Ecuador also joined in carrying out military operations against criminal organizations in the South American country last week.
Although Trump's claims that drugs are being trafficked to the US from Venezuela and that the country's government was participating in the criminal enterprise have underpinned the boat bombings, Venezuela has not been found to be a major source of drugs that arrive in the US. After invading the country in January, the president quickly pivoted to discussions on taking control of Venezuela's vast oil reserves.
Brian Finucane, senior adviser at the International Crisis Group, suggested Sunday that Trump's continued boat strikes show the White House is unlikely to be bound by international law as it continues to threaten countries in Latin America, such as Cuba, and carries out its war on Iran.
"The slaughter at sea continues," said Finucane. "No telling what a military that engages in a monthslong killing spree outside the law might do."
On Friday, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is scheduled to hold its first-ever hearing on the legality of the US boat strikes, following a push for action from human rights groups.
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Death Toll Up to 128 People as Trump Pentagon Commits Two More Killings at Sea
"They killed more than 127 people aboard boats, in 33 attacks, in five months," said one analyst. "And the amount of cocaine found at the US land border keeps increasing."
Feb 06, 2026
Just over a week after the families of two Trinidadian men sued the Trump administration over the boat bombings that killed their relatives, the US Department of Defense killed two more people in the eastern Pacific Ocean, bringing the total death toll to at least 128 in the White House's operation that it claims is targeting drug traffickers.
The US Southern Command said in a social media post that at the direction of Cmdr. Gen. Francis L. Donovan, "Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by designated terrorist organizations."
As with the other dozens of strikes the Pentagon has carried out in the Pacific and the Caribbean Sea since September, Southern Command did not provide evidence for its claim that "narco-terrorists" were killed in the attack or that the vessel was traveling "along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations."
The White House has persistently claimed that the boat strikes are aimed at stopping drug cartels based in Venezuela from sending drugs to the US, but international and domestic intelligence agencies have not identified Venezuela as a major player in the trafficking of illicit substances—particularly not of fentanyl, the leading cause of overdoses in the US.
President Donald Trump has claimed the US is in an "armed conflict" with drug cartels. Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle have unsuccessfully sought to pass war powers resolutions to stop the administration from attacking vessels and targets in Venezuela.
Dozens of strikes preceded the Trump administration's invasion of Venezuela and abduction of President Nicolás Maduro, whom the White House has accused of being directly involved with drug trafficking. Since attacking Venezuela, though, administration officials have all but admitted their goal in the South American country is to take control of its oil supply.
The killings of nearly 130 people in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific have been denounced as extrajudicial "murders" by numerous legal experts, and a top military lawyer at the Pentagon warned officials in August, weeks before the operations began, that carrying out the strikes could expose military top brass as well as rank-and-file service members to legal liability.
In the case of at least one bombing in September, the official who oversaw the strike told Congress that the boat was found to have been headed to Suriname, not the United States. One vessel had turned back toward Venezuela, away from the US, when it was struck.
The strike on Thursday was announced soon after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed that "some top cartel drug-traffickers... have decided to cease all narcotics operations INDEFINITELY due to recent (highly effective) kinetic strikes in the Caribbean.” Hegseth did not provide evidence for the claim.
Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America emphasized on Thursday that after killing more than 127 people in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, the administration has nothing to show for the operation but "a collection of gruesome videos" of the bombings.
"The amount of cocaine found at the US land border keeps increasing," he said, citing Customs and Border Protection statistics.
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4 More Killed in Pacific Boat Strike as White House Ramps Up Demands for Venezuelan Oil
President Donald Trump “wants to keep on blowing boats up until Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro cries uncle," said White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles in a recent interview.
Dec 18, 2025
Hours after US House Republicans voted down a war powers resolution Wednesday aimed stopping the Trump administration from continuing its attacks on "presidentially designated" terrorist organizations, the death toll of the Pentagon's continued boat strikes was brought to 99 with the latest bombing in the Pacific Ocean.
US Southern Command reported Wednesday night that at the direction of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the military had killed four people in a "kinetic strike on a vessel operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization in international waters."
As with the rest of the more than two dozen bombings that the administration has carried out in the Caribbean and Pacific since September, the Pentagon said that intelligence had confirmed the boat was "engaged in narco-trafficking operations."
The White House has not released evidence that the boats it's targeted were carrying drugs. In the past, the US military has been involved in intercepting vessels suspected of drug trafficking and charging passengers with a criminal offense, but President Donald Trump has insisted the US is engaged in an armed conflict with drug cartels in the Western Hemisphere, including in Venezuela.
US and international intelligence agencies have not found Venezuela to be a significant source of drugs flowing into the US and have found the country to play virtually no role in the trafficking of fentanyl, the biggest cause of drug overdoses in the US.
The latest boat bombing came a day after Trump announced a "total and complete blockade" on oil tankers approaching and leaving Venezuela, accusing the country of stealing "Oil, Land, and other Assets" from the US.
Venezuela nationalized its petroleum sector in 1976, taking control of its own vast oil reserves. Previously, US-based companies had largely controlled the country's oil industry. In 2007, then-President Hugo Chavez further pushed out US oil giants such as Exxon Mobil when he nationalized foreign oil projects in Venezuela.
Stephen Miller, a top adviser to Trump, accused Venezuela's government of "theft" on Wednesday.
“American sweat, ingenuity, and toil created the oil industry in Venezuela,” Miller said in a social media post. “Its tyrannical expropriation was the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property. These pillaged assets were then used to fund terrorism and flood our streets with killers, mercenaries, and drugs.”
Regarding the blockade, Trump also said Wednesday that Venezuela "illegally took" US energy rights.
While the administration has insisted for months that its deadly boat strikes are aimed at stopping drug trafficking, comments from White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles in an extensive Vanity Fair interview released Tuesday further confirmed that the White House aims to take control of the South American country.
Trump “wants to keep on blowing boats up until Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro cries uncle," said Wiles.
Brian Finucane, senior adviser at the International Crisis Group, said Wednesday night's boat strike amounted to "more premeditated killing outside of armed conflict."
"There's a word for that," he said.
Legal experts have said the repeated, lethal bombings of boats have been part of a campaign of extrajudicial killings and have warned Hegseth and others involved in the attacks could be liable for murder.
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World's Largest Coral Found in Pacific, Unharmed by Planetary Heating
"While the nearby shallow reefs were degraded due to warmer seas, witnessing this large healthy coral oasis in slightly deeper waters is a beacon of hope."
Nov 14, 2024
Scientists announced on Thursday their discovery of the largest coral ever documented off the coast of the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific Ocean and celebrated the fact that the massive underwater ecosystem appears to be unharmed by planetary heating—but said the discovery underscores the need to urgently protect marine environments.
Scientists and filmmakers from National Geographic's Pristine Seas research program, which aims to push governments to protect the oceans, visited a remote site near the Solomon Islands in mid-October, and initially thought the large object just below the ocean's surface was part of a shipwreck.
Cinematographer Manu San Félix dove into the water to examine the object and found that it was actually a huge network of coral polyps.
The coral was found to be 34 meters (111 feet) wide and more than five meters (16 feet) high—larger than a blue whale and big enough to be viewed from space.
The mega coral, or pavona clavus, is thought to be about 300 years old, and scientists said it could provide insight into historical conditions in the world's oceans.
"Protecting the reef cannot make the water cooler, cannot prevent the warming of the ocean. We need to fix that, we need to reduce carbon emissions."
Enric Sala of the Pristine Seas project compared the discovery to "a big patch of old growth forest," telling New Scientist that the coral, which is not showing signs of the bleaching observed in a growing number of reefs around the world, is providing shelter and sustenance to fish, shrimp, worms, and crabs.
"Large adult coral colonies like this contribute significantly to the recovery of coral reef ecosystems due to their high reproductive potential," Eric Brown, a coral scientist told Euronews. "While the nearby shallow reefs were degraded due to warmer seas, witnessing this large healthy coral oasis in slightly deeper waters is a beacon of hope."
But Sala told Euronews that the coral is not necessarily "safe from global warming and other human threats."
Record-breaking ocean temperatures have caused coral bleaching events across the planet over the past two years, impacting biodiversity in the world's oceans as well as increasing the risk of sea-level rise and impacting tourism industries in coastal areas.
Sala said the discovery should push governments to protect more of the world's oceans. About 8.4% of the Earth's ocean is under a marine protected area (MPA) designation, and the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction treaty was finalized in 2023, pledging to protect the biodiversity of the oceans.
Establishing more MPAs alongside climate action, Sala said, will help shield coral like the one found near the Solomon Islands from pollution and the effects of planetary heating.
"Protecting the reef cannot make the water cooler, cannot prevent the warming of the ocean," Sala told New Scientist. "We need to fix that, we need to reduce carbon emissions. But MPAs can help us buy time by making the reefs more resilient."
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Migrant Drownings in Pacific Soared 3,200% After Trump Raised Border Wall: Study
The Trump administration nearly doubled the height of the border barrier as part of its "zero tolerance" immigration agenda.
Mar 08, 2024
The number of migrants drowning in the Pacific Ocean while attempting to enter the United States from Tijuana, Mexico skyrocketed by 3,200% after the Trump administration dramatically increased the height of the border barrier extending into the southern California sea, a study published Thursday revealed.
The study—published in JAMA, the American Medical Association's journal—found that 33 people drowned while trying to swim across the southern border between 2020-23, compared with just one death in the previous four years. Researchers tied the soaring fatalities to the Trump administration's decision to raise the height of the border wall from 17 feet to 30 feet as part of its "zero tolerance" immigration agenda.
"This height change has been associated with an increased rate of severe injuries seen by trauma surgery departments in San Diego, California," the paper notes.
The study also reported an increase in fatal accidents and a 400% spike in serious injuries caused by migrants falling from the wall.
Study co-author Anna Lussier, a student at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine, told the Times of San Diego that the idea for the paper came amid a dearth of data on migrant drownings in the Pacific.
"Lifeguards showed us a presentation on migrant rescues they were performing because of potential human smuggling," she explained. "Their stories weren't showing up in the news, and the numbers struck me as odd."
Study co-author Peter Lindholm, a professor-in-residence at the UCSD School of Medicine, said he and Lussier are conducting further research to determine exactly how migrants drowned.
"Drowning is the endpoint of death in the water, but we're trying to determine the actual cause of death: Hypothermia? Hypoxia? Swimming-induced pulmonary edema?" he told the Times of San Diego.
The study also found that migrant drownings in the Rio Grande decreased from 97 in 2016-19 to 96 in the following four years.
Higher walls and other barriers including the razor-wrapped buoys installed by Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in the Rio Grande have not deterred migrants from attempting the perilous border crossing. Unlawful crossings of the southern frontier have shot up in recent years.
U.S. President Joe Biden—a Democrat facing a tough reelection campaign in which immigration is a key issue—has responded to the border surge with an unrequited willingness to work with Republicans and adopt some of their anti-migrant policies to stem the flow.
Last year, the Biden administration waived more than two dozen environmental laws in order fast-track construction on Texas sections of the border wall championed by former President Donald Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican nominee.
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Locals Alarmed as Japan Plans to Discharge Water From Fukushima Nuclear Plant This Week
"Nothing about the water release is beneficial to us," said a Japanese fisherman who lost his brother in the 2011 tsunami. "There is no advantage for us. None. It's all detrimental."
Aug 22, 2023
Local fishers, Greenpeace, and others shared fresh concerns Tuesday as Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced that the release of treated radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear facility into the Pacific Ocean may start as soon as Thursday, more than a dozen years after an earthquake caused a tsunami that triggered reactor meltdowns.
Over the next three decades, Japan plans to discharge about 1.34 million gallons of water—or enough to fill over 500 Olympic swimming pools—into the ocean after using an advanced liquid processing system (ALPS) to remove most radionuclides.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company said Tuesday that "as the entity responsible for the safe and steady decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, TEPCO is strictly abiding by the government's decision and request, and shall quickly make preparations to commence discharge with the utmost vigilance in accordance with the implementation plan."
Greenpeace Japan project manager Hisayo Takada declared that "we are deeply disappointed and outraged by the Japanese government's announcement," and stressed that the discharge decision has been made "despite concerns raised by fishermen, citizens, Fukushima residents, and the international community, especially in the Pacific region and neighboring countries."
Haruo Ono, a 71-year-old fisherman from Shinchimachi who lost his brother in the 2011 tsunami, told Agence France-Presse: "Nothing about the water release is beneficial to us. There is no advantage for us. None. It's all detrimental."
"Fishermen are 100% against," Ono continued. "The sea is where we work. We make a living off of the sea, we're at the mercy of the sea. So if we don't protect the sea, who would?"
Takashi Nakajima, a 67-year-old who runs a supermarket in Sōma, Fukushima Prefecture that sells local seafood, said of the discharge plan, "It's like a scheme to release the water before public opposition can flare up."
Recalling when customers refused to sample local octopus in 2012, just after trial fishing began near the site of the nuclear disaster, Nakajima told Kyodo News, "Catch from the area won't sell, it will be a repeat of before."
As The Japan Times reported:
Tuesday's decision follows Kishida's meeting with the head of the National Federation of Fisheries Cooperative Associations, or Zengyoren, at the prime minister's Office on Monday in an attempt to gain the association's approval for the plan.
Zengyoren Chairman Masanobu Sakamoto confirmed the group's continued opposition to the plan, although he added that the proposal had obtained a certain degree of understanding within the fishing industry.
Japan's prime minister vowed Tuesday that "the government will take responsibility to deal with negative publicity and concerns among fishermen about whether their livelihoods can continue as before, even if the process takes decades until the discharge of the treated water is completed."
"We have taken every step to ensure a safety net is in place," said Kishida, whose government has allocated about 80 billion yen ($548 million) to aid local fishers and mitigate negative attention. "I want the relevant ministries to continue implementing measures while staying on the side of the fishermen."
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) gave the plan a green light last month, after concluding that TEPCO "has demonstrated its capabilities for accurate and precise measurements of the radionuclides" in the plant's water, and "the approach and activities to the discharge of ALPS treated water taken by Japan are consistent with relevant international safety standards."
The United Nations nuclear watchdog said Tuesday that Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi "has committed to the IAEA continuing its impartial, independent, and objective safety review during the discharge phase," so the agency "will maintain an onsite presence at Fukushima Daiichi" and "publish available data for use by the global community."
The release plan has long generated global criticism, including from the Chinese government. On Tuesday, a spokesperson for the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Wang Wenbin, decried Japan's approach as "an extremely selfish and irresponsible act."
"China strongly insists that Japan should rectify this wrong decision and abandon its plan to discharge radioactive water into the sea," the diplomat added. "The Chinese side will take all necessary measures to protect marine ecology, safeguard food safety, and public health."
According to The Associated Press:
In Seoul, Park Ku-yeon, first vice minister of South Korea's Office for Government Policy Coordination, told a briefing that officials confirmed Japan would discharge the wastewater in line with its initial plan.
If it does not stick to the plan, Park said, South Korea will request Japan to immediately stop the discharge which could threaten safety of South Koreans. Opposition lawmakers and activists protested vehemently, demanding Japan immediately scrap the plan.
Hong Kong and Macau announced that they are banning products from Fukushima and nine other prefectures in response to Tokyo's announcement Tuesday.
"The myth is being perpetuated that discharges are necessary for decommissioning. But the Japanese government itself admits that there is sufficient water storage space in Fukushima Daiichi," Greenpeace East Asia senior nuclear specialist Shaun Burnie noted Tuesday. "Long-term storage would expose the current government decommissioning roadmap as flawed, but that is exactly what needs to happen. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear station is still in crisis, posing unique and severe hazards, and there is no credible plan for its decommissioning."
"Instead of engaging in an honest debate about this reality, the Japanese government has opted for a false solution—decades of deliberate radioactive pollution of the marine environment—during a time when the world's oceans are already facing immense stress and pressures," added Burnie. "This is an outrage that violates the human rights of the people and communities of Fukushima, and other neighboring prefectures and the wider Asia-Pacific region."
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China Says IAEA Approval of Fukushima Water Release Should Not Be Final 'Green Light'
"What impact will the long-term accumulation and concentration of radionuclides bring to the marine environment, food safety, and people's health?" the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs inquired.
Jul 05, 2023
Anxiety is growing this week in Asian and Pacific island nations after the United Nations' nuclear regulator approved Japan's plan to dump treated wastewater from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear power plant into the ocean—a course of action for which the Chinese government said Tokyo would "bear all the consequences."
"Simply for saving cost, Japan has insisted on discharging the nuclear-contaminated water into the sea in disregard of the concerns and opposition from the international community and taken the Pacific Ocean as the 'sewer,'" the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (CMFA) said on Tuesday. "We believe that the IAEA report should not be the 'shield' or 'green light' for Japan's discharge of nuclear-contaminated water into the ocean."
The ministry's statement came in reaction to the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) approval on Tuesday of Japan's plan to gradually release more than 1 million metric tons of filtered Fukushima wastewater into the Pacific despite years of warnings from environmentalists and the overwhelming opposition of people in the wider region.
Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, located about 150 miles northeast of the capital, was catastrophically damaged during the massive March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that caused meltdowns in three of the facility's reactors.
"No matter what the report says, it will not change the fact that Japan will release millions of tons of Fukushima nuclear-contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean in the next three decades," CMFA said. "Will Japan's purification facility be effective in the long term? Can the international community be timely informed when the discharged water exceeds the discharge limit? What impact will the long-term accumulation and concentration of radionuclides bring to the marine environment, food safety, and people's health? These are the questions that the IAEA report failed to answer."
"We once again urge the Japanese side to stop its ocean discharge plan, and earnestly dispose of the nuclear-contaminated water in a science-based, safe, and transparent manner," the ministry added. "If Japan insists on going ahead with the plan, it will have to bear all the consequences arising from this. We urge the Japanese side to work with the IAEA to put in place as soon as possible a long-term international monitoring mechanism that would involve stakeholders including Japan's neighboring countries."
"We once again urge the Japanese side to stop its ocean discharge plan, and earnestly dispose of the nuclear-contaminated water in a science-based, safe, and transparent manner."
The government of one of those neighboring countries, South Korea, said Wednesday that it accepts the IAEA's approval of the wastewater release.
"It has been the government's long-standing stance to recognize the IAEA as a prestigious internationally agreed-upon agency, and we hold respect for its findings," Office for Government Policy Coordination First Deputy Chief Park Ku-yeon said during his daily press briefing.
However, a Gallup poll of more than 1,000 South Korean adults last week found that nearly 80% of respondents are worried about possible ocean and seafood contamination from the wastewater dump.
South Koreans have in recent days been stockpiling seafood and salt amid growing safety concerns over the impending wastewater release, for which no date has yet been set.
"I recently bought 5 kilograms of salt," Lee Young-min, a 38-year-old woman in Seongnam, told Reuters last week. "As a mother raising two children, I can't just sit back and do nothing. I want to feed them safely."
There have been regular protests against the planned Fukushima wastewater dump in South Korea and China—two countries that, like many others with nuclear power plants, have discharged far greater quantities of treated radioactive wastewater into oceans and other bodies of water than Japan plans to release.
"Nuclear sites all over the world... discharge diluted wastewater to seas, rivers, and lakes. This has been going on for decades without significant impacts," University of Portsmouth environment science professor Jim Smith told Science Media Centre last week.
"For example, the La Hague reprocessing facility releases about 10,000 terabecquerels of tritium per year into the English Channel," Smith continued. "Radiation doses from this are very low and there is no evidence of significant ecosystem impacts."
"The planned release from Fukushima of 22 terabecqurels per year to the Pacific Ocean is about 450 times lower than the La Hague releases and 50 times lower than releases from the U.K's Sellafield facility," he noted, adding that claims of significant risks to the planned Fukushima release "are not founded in scientific evidence."
"Dilution is no longer the solution to pollution, so whilst the Japanese may dispose of their wastewater in the interim, it would be a good opportunity to look at other disposal methodologies in the future."
However, Tony Hooker, director of the Center for Radiation Research, Education, and Innovation at the University of Adelaide in Australia, said that "whilst this disposal plan meets the scientific and regulatory requirements for the disposal of radiation into the sea, and no environmental or human health impacts are likely to be observed, there is a growing question regarding the use of the sea as a dumping ground when our oceans are already stressed and struggling."
"Dilution is no longer the solution to pollution, so whilst the Japanese may dispose of their wastewater in the interim, it would be a good opportunity to look at other disposal methodologies in the future," Hooker added. "The Pacific Island Forum Scientific Panel has proposed to use the wastewater to make concrete, therefore locking up the residual radioactive tritium."
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Study Warns El Niño Could Cost Global Economy $84 Trillion by 2100
"We can say with certainty that societies and economies absolutely do not just take a hit and recover," said the lead author of research showing a downturn after the warm phase could last 14 years or longer.
May 19, 2023
With experts anticipating El Niño will return in the months ahead, a pair of Dartmouth College researchers warned this week that the long-term cost to the global economy could be as much as $3 trillion by 2029—which could be largely felt by poorer countries.
The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a climate pattern that affects sea surface temperatures across the tropical Pacific Ocean, has three phases: the cooler La Niña; neutral, which the world is now experiencing; and the warmer El Niño that is expected soon.
"El Niño triggers far-reaching changes in weather that result in devastating floods, crop-killing droughts, plummeting fish populations, and an uptick in tropical diseases," explained a Dartmouth statement about the study, published Thursday in the journal Science.
Doctoral candidate Christopher Callahan and Justin Mankin, an assistant professor of geography at the college, examined economic conditions for several years after the 1982-83 and 1997-98 El Niño events. They connected those two warm phases to $4.1 trillion and $5.7 trillion in global income losses, respectively—far higher than previous estimates.
"El Niño amplifies the wider inequities in climate change, disproportionately impacting the least resilient and prepared among us."
"We can say with certainty that societies and economies absolutely do not just take a hit and recover," said Callahan, the study's lead author, noting that their data suggest an El Niño-related downturn could last up to 14 years or longer.
"In the tropics and places that experience the effects of El Niño, you get a persistent signature during which growth is delayed for at least five years," he continued. "The aggregate price tag on these events has not ever been fully quantified—you have to add up all the depressed growth moving forward, not just when the event is happening."
The pair found that the gross domestic product of the United States was roughly 3% lower in 1988 and 2003 than it would have been without the preceding El Niño events—and, for the latter phase, GDPs in coastal tropical countries were more than 10% lower.
"The global pattern of El Niño's effect on the climate and on the prosperity of different countries reflects the unequal distribution of wealth and climate risk—not to mention the responsibility for climate change—worldwide," said Mankin. "El Niño amplifies the wider inequities in climate change, disproportionately impacting the least resilient and prepared among us."
"The duration and magnitude of the financial repercussions we uncovered suggests to me that we are maladapted to the climate we have," he added. "Our accounting dramatically raises the cost estimate of doing nothing. We need to both mitigate climate change and invest more in El Niño prediction and adaptation because these events will only amplify the future costs of global warming."
Callahan and Mankin's study was released the same day as research published in the journal Nature Reviews Earth and Environment that found human-caused global heating has likely made El Niños and La Niñas "more frequent and more extreme."
Models for the latter research showed that sea surface temperature extremes were about 10% more intense for the six decades after 1960, compared with the previous 60 years. Co-author Mike McPhaden, a senior research scientist at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said that "the big events pack the most punch, so even though 10% doesn't sound like much, it juices up the strongest and most societally relevant year-to-year climate fluctuation on the planet."
"In practical terms, this translates into more extreme and frequent droughts, floods, heatwaves, wildfires, and severe storms, just like we observed during the recent triple dip La Niña that ended in March," McPhaden told The Guardian.
Given that observed trend and expectations it will continue, the Dartmouth researchers project that even if countries pursue their pledges to cut planet-heating emissions, global economic losses related to El Niño could reach $84 trillion for the 21st century.
"If you're estimating the costs of global warming without considering El Niño," Mankin warned, "then you are dramatically underestimating the costs of global warming."
"Our welfare is affected by our global economy, and our global economy is tied to the climate," he said. "When you ask how costly climate change is, you can start by asking how costly climate variation is. We're showing here that such variation, as embodied in El Niño, is incredibly costly and stagnates growth for years, which led us to cost estimates that are orders of magnitudes larger than previous ones."
The Associated Press reported Thursday that "some—but not all—outside economists have issues with the new research out of Dartmouth College, saying its damage estimates are too big."
However, McPhaden welcomed the findings, telling the AP that he has long believed previous estimates were far too low and the "big loser during El Niño is the Global South."
While the Dartmouth projections suggest 2023's looming warm phase could cost trillions of dollars, the NOAA scientist stressed that "the economic impacts of the El Niño that is predicted for later this year will depend on how strong it is."
"Monster El Niños" like the 1997-98 event "can be hugely damaging with lingering effects that carry over into following years," he said. "On the other hand, if it turns out to be a garden variety El Niño, the consequences may be more muted and the recovery time shortened."
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