There is little in the international maritime system to prevent aging tankers and other dangerous ships from hitting the open seas. While individual port authorities do have the power to block entrance to their ports, or to require repairs in a vessel before permitting it to leave, the standards vary from port to port. Even in the world's most sophisticated ports it is rare that more than a third of ships are given serious safety or maintenance inspections. And no one has control over ships just passing by.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO), an arm of the United Nations, is the sole international body overseeing the shipping industry, and it has no real teeth. The IMO can establish minimum standards for safety and maintenance of seagoing vessels, but it is up to each of the 163 individual member nations to ratify those regulations -- then to enforce them. Currently, there is a range of irregularly enforced guidelines, with wild variation from nation to nation in the application of standards. According to the IMO, most of the major flagging nations have ratified far less than half of the IMO's proposed conventions regarding maritime safety and related issues.

Unlike other U.N. organizations, the IMO's financial support comes not largely from major powers, but is assessed on the basis of tonnage. Flagging nations such as Panama, Liberia, the Bahamas, Antigua & Barbuda, St. Vincent, Malta, Honduras, and the Marshall Islands, which together represent more than half of the total tonnage of today's fleet of oceangoing vessels, thus have a disproportionate influence over the votes in the IMO. In contrast, such great maritime powers as the United States, Great Britain, Greece and Spain have seen the tonnage of ships under their flags dwindle dramatically over the past two decades and along with it their power within the IMO.

Without a powerful international enforcement agency in place, individual nations and regional political organizations are doing what they can within the law to defend themselves against dangerous ships. While a country doesn't have the legal power to regulate the condition of ships passing along its coast, it can deny access to its harbors -- the only real point of leverage nations have over the shipping industry. Following the Prestige disaster in November 2002, the European Union banned all single-hull tankers carrying heavy fuel oil from its member nations' ports. In December 2003, the IMO responded to fierce European pressure and passed a resolution urging its members to phase out single-hull oil tankers.

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