they have approved paint that you can use if you are in the yacht clubs in the basin. You have to sign a paper telling them what's on your bottom and they keep it on file. I did a test with my grand daughters water colors against the approved paint and the kids paint won. They did a study and it turns out that we have to much copper in the sediment. They discount the military ships and the thousands of cars with copper in the brake shoes washing into the bay and dump it all on the private yachts. I wonder how many 38 foot sailboats you could paint with the amount of paint they put on just one of the aircraft carriers we have in the bay? I think we have three in town right now plus the most of the entire fleet but we're going to wright them all off and dump it on the boaters and make us paint with non toxic paint. If I could mix my paint with 10% of what the military puts on I could probably last for 5 years. I truly live in the land of nuts..... I'm a responsible citizen. I wouldn't want to hurt the environment any more then our government. I certainly wouldn't want to put anything worse for it then the military puts on their bottoms, just kinda equal to it.