Coast guarding
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A ship sinks near Cochin port, reminds India that preventing oils spills is easier than cleanups
Debris has begun to wash ashore Kerala's coast, after a Liberian-flagged cargo ship capsized just 27km away on Sunday. Warnings have been issued, rightly, that people shouldn't get close and touchy with the beached containers. Besides hazardous cargo, oil spill is the other danger. The ship's tanks were carrying over 450 metric tonnes of diesel and furnace oil. India's coast guard and navy did a good job rescuing the crew, but fighting damage to coastal ecosystems and fishing livelihoods may prove a much greater challenge.
Recent central govt EnviStats patted Kerala's beaches for having the least polluted waters in the country. Unless the oil spill threat proves punier than feared, all possible resources – including international ones – need to be mobilised to preserve this healthy shoreline. Standard global solutions range from skimming oil from the water surface by various means, using chemical dispersants to break up an oil slick into smaller concentrations, booms to slow its spread, and bioremediation.
One disheartening thing is that technological progress on this front leaves a lot to be desired. For example, the fraction of oil spill recovered after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was not much higher than after the Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska three decades earlier. These were both high visibility events that drew billions in cleanup dollars. But environment experts point to optics and efficacy being completely different yardsticks. Bombarding the DP spill with the trademarked Corexit dispersant produced a vast, cloudy suspension. It looked like it was helping. But actually, it only spread the oil further, reaching even more marine life at different depths.
Data indicates that not only is removing oil spills from the sea challenging, it is ineffective even in calm waters. So while keeping our fingers crossed that Kerala doesn't have a big tragedy on its hands this time, it is lessons in prevention that would be of real help in the future. For example, could MSC ELSA 3 have been towed away from India when it started listing? At 28 years of age, was this feeder vessel un-portworthy? At 640 containers, was it overweight? Analysing such issues thoroughly is key to lifting the country's trade by sea while protecting it from the dangers ships can visit upon us.
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This piece appeared as an editorial opinion in the print edition of The Times of India.
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