The ship repair business in the Canary Islands is facing a peak in technical demand arising from the reactivation of international crude oil maritime transport. Hundreds of tankers are leaving their anchorages after being idle for three to four months in the Gulf of Persia, one of the world’s most aggressive marine environments for the proliferation of biological fouling. Viktoras Kišūnas, Business Development Director at Garant Diving, warns that the real operational risk for these fleets is not located visibly on the outer coating but inside the sea chests, the critical intakes that feed the ships’ cooling, ballast, and fire-extinguishing systems.
Industry technical guidelines stipulate that modern antifouling coatings require a constant flow of water derived from navigation to activate their biocidal properties, setting the safety stopping limit between 18 and 30 days. Prolonged idleness in warm waters destroys this passive chemical protection, accelerating the accumulation of organisms in low circulation areas that strangle the water intake section toward the engines. The loss of efficiency due to friction on the hull increases fuel consumption, but a sea chest collapsed by biofouling compromises the ship’s safety, forcing emergency technical stops in major logistical corridors.
The ship repair sector in the Canary Islands positions itself as the watchmaker of the Central Atlantic to absorb this bottleneck in underwater technical service capacity. The ports of Las Palmas and Santa Cruz de Tenerife share the pressure of the global waiting list alongside reference centers like Singapore, Algeciras, Antwerp, Rotterdam, and Klaipėda, due to the shortage of qualified commercial diving equipment to simultaneously service dozens of vessels. The strategic geographic position of the islands allows shipowners to schedule mandatory inspections and maintenance work before performance losses are reflected irreversibly in consumption data.
Customs Regulation and Waste Capture in Underwater Work
The execution of this work at the Canary terminals faces a rigorous environmental regulatory framework that rules out traditional scraping methodologies using divers with standard rotating brushes. International biosecurity requirements demand digitized pre-inspections, controlled precision cleanings, and the use of cleaning technologies with mandatory waste capture to prevent the spread of invasive species in port waters. A deficient technical procedure not only damages the expensive paint schemes of the hull but also generates automatic compliance issues and control inspections from port authorities at the ship’s subsequent discharge destinations.
Companies based in the Port of Las Palmas and Tenerife diversify their technical capabilities through hydrodynamic cleaning systems by cavitation and suction tools attached to underwater robots (ROVs), capable of cleaning rough surfaces without wearing down the thickness of the protective layers of tanks and structures. This industrial specialization retains the added value of consignments within the archipelago, attracting contracts from major shipping companies looking to optimize their carbon intensity indices required by the International Maritime Organization. Investment in ultrasonic diagnostics and flow monitoring equipment allows for the verification of complete clearance of the intake grids without the need to dry-dock the ship.
The real cost of fleet inactivity accumulates in the hidden areas of the ships, forcing operators to reevaluate their preventive maintenance strategies during market transition phases. Ship repairs in the Canary Islands capitalize on this migration of financial risk, turning the need for environmental compliance into a competitive advantage for shipyards of Spanish capital. Advance planning of underwater interventions is established as the only effective tool to restore the design speed of tankers, ensuring secure charter contracts in a global market that penalizes the energy inefficiency of propulsion plants.
