There are literally people dying on this planet for lack of fresh water and this is just used as hydraulic fluid and then thrown into the ocean while ships pass by. Everything is wrong with this.
Have you ever considered the cost involved transporting fresh water to those who need it?
It's cheaper to dig a canal than to widen one, because you're going to be digging through a bunch of dry land with no special engineering issues. Then you knock the ends out. It's cheaper still if they import a bunch of Chinese slave labor.
Even cheaper when you use local Nicaraguan slave labor.
So I am a bit of a pen fan, and I use fountain pens... They arent necessarily the solution for you, but this leads in to a really important consideration...
Paper.
What paper are you using? Maybe try a better quality paper? I use whitelines:
http://whitelines.se/
and the paper is AMAZING. No bleed (which is also a factor of paper), thick paper, the white lines is an awesome feature, etc.
DO NOT use the moleskine paper... it is just crappy.
Always draw your curves, then plot your reading.