After years of hauling the products of industry, this is the end of the line for hundreds of decaying ships: stranded at high tide on a desolate beach in the west of India, waiting to be broken up for scrap. Here, and at other beaches around the Indian Ocean, armies of workers tear the ships apart under appalling conditions, lacking the basics of sanitation and safety, for less than two dollars a day. Some work without shoes or tools, dismantling rusting boats with their hands.

Nearly every ship waiting to be scrapped is contaminated with something, mainly asbestos and PCBs. Fleet owners, unwilling to comply with environmental and economic realities in the developed world, send their vessels to the Subcontinent to exploit cheap labor, avoid regulatory oversight, and feed the demand for metal in South Asia’s expanding markets.

Despite the danger, the workers along the beach appreciate any chance at a better life; “This place is haunted by death. But it is better to work and die than starve and die.”

The Baltimore Sun’s Pulitzer Prize-winning articles on shipbreaking.

Google Satellite Maps of Alang, India, demolition beach. [Scroll north]

Google Earth location of Alang: 21 23’ 56.72”N, 72 11’ 15.16”E

‘End of the Line’ photo essay by Brendan Corr

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See Also: Images of the Yamato,NYC Taxis Going Green,World’s First Bionic Man!,

This entry was posted by Jeffrey Goodman on Tuesday, September 5th, 2006 at 11:31 am and is filed under Environment, Social Change. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.