Coast Guard battles to contain oil & chemical spill off Kerala
KOCHI: The Kerala govt issued a statewide alert Sunday as Coast Guard teams battled to contain a potentially worsening spill of oil and hazardous chemicals from Liberian cargo ship MSC ELSA 3 that capsized and sank in the Arabian Sea, 14.6 nautical miles off Thottappally harbour in Alappuzha, in the morning.
The vessel carrying 643 containers - 13 of them bearing hazardous cargo - had sent out distress signals around 1.25pm Saturday when it was 38 nautical miles from Kochi. Coast Guard responded immediately and evacuated 21 crew members. By the time MSC ELSA 3 started capsizing closer to the harbour around 7.50am Sunday, Indian Navy vessel INS Sujatha rescued the last three crew members.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Time of India
8 hours ago
- Time of India
A Stitch Across Centuries To Sail Across The Sands Of Time
The Goa-made stitched ship, Kaundinya, inducted by the Navy refutes the colonial claim that Europeans taught the world to sail. The vessel demonstrates how India built seaworthy ships thousands of years ago. A 15-member Navy crew is expected to take the motorless vessel to Muscat, following age-old trading routes In one quiet corner of Goa's Divar island, chisels ring out like ritual gongs. The thick scent of fish oil hangs in the air — acrid and unmistakable — seeping into skin, cloth, and memory. Woodchips carpet the floor, mingling with the discarded strands of coir rope, and somewhere in the din, the low murmur of Malayalam swirls between bursts of drilling and the slap of waves beating against timber. In the middle of it all, Babu Sankaran works quietly. His hands, callused by decades of labour, move out of muscle memory — steady, precise, unhurried. He crouches low, chipping away at a wooden pulley he has carved earlier with his hands. Sankaran wears what looks like the same overalls he had for years — frayed at the edges. Once a deep blue, it is bleached by sweat and sun into something paler. Navy's antique armour On May 21, when the yacht was commissioned and inducted into the Indian Navy, Sankaran stood on the pier to take in the INSV Kaundinya. The 20-metre wooden yacht is stitched together like a suit of wooden armour, lashed with coconut husk rope soaked in fish oil and tree sap called kundroos. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like A stress-relief game that everyone around me is playing Elvenar - Play on Browser Learn More Undo There are no nails. No bolts. Just knowledge passed from father to son, from generation to generation, now mostly forgotten. But now, that legacy will sail from the brink of oblivion to the centre of the international seafaring spotlight. The ship has no modern trappings, no creature comforts, and certainly no engine. After all, this is no ordinary ship. It is the result of a 'completely crazy project' dreamed up by a member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, Sanjeev Sanyal. He was inspired by the painting of a 5th-century vessel painted onto the ancient rock walls of the Ajanta caves. Shipwrights and artisans use the 'I-X' pattern to stitch the planks together, similar to the cross-stitch technique in embroidery, where the 'I' represents a straight stitch and the 'X' represents a cross stitch India, a Sailing Guru A 15-member Navy crew will command the vessel — not with modern motors but under full cotton sails, aided only by winds and trailing oars, as it was done centuries ago. 'When we really attempt to sail it, we will have to really relearn the art of sailing the square, trailing oar, flexible hull ship, something that no living being knows how to do,' Sanyal said. 'This ship is a unique piece of equipment that we have not sailed before.' Indeed, the tradition defies time. Indian sailors have known for millennia how to read the monsoons and how to shape a hull that could rise with the tide and bend with the waves without breaking. 'We must challenge the narrative that Europeans taught the world to sail and travel,' said naval historian Commodore Srikant Kesnur (retd). 'This endeavour could be seen as the revival of cultural memories of India's maritime past. When the crew of this ship sails to various ports and nations, it will arouse curiosity and interest in the name of the ship, the unique form of the ship, and its link with civilisations of the past. ' Ancient ingenuity unsinkable 'This project is a resurrection of the past, a past that for the last 1,000 years was forgotten. It lived etched on coins, on paintings in caves… that ends now. We have India's own stitched ship,' said Prathmesh Dandekar, the managing director at Hodi Innovations, a shipyard at Divar. The Indian Navy and the Union ministry of culture jumped on board and roped in Hodi Innovations to turn the dream into a floating, ocean-going objective: retrace the maritime legacy of ancient Indian seafarers. 'If you see today, we don't have any written information about these kinds of boats. And unfortunately, we have not found any shipwrecks,' Dandekar said. 'So, the whole idea for us is to sail this ship on those ancient trade routes to showcase that back in the day, India could build seaworthy ships and was a big maritime power.' This vessel is expected to sail from Mandvi in Gujarat to Muscat in Oman, following the age-old trading routes that once ferried spices, ivory, cotton, and ideas across the Arabian Sea. Babu Sankaran, master craftsman of stitched ships, has been working on wooden ships for 45 years Rich travel history The art of stitching, with a rope and hands, kept the hull flexible — able to absorb the ocean's fury without splintering. In the ancient days, it allowed Indian ships to reach Arabia, East Africa, and Southeast Asia. That knowledge now rests in a handful of men like Sankaran — 61 years old, invisible in a crowd, his eyes trained to squint against the sun. 'At the age of 16, I went to Oman to work. I've been working on wooden ships for the past 45 years,' Sankaran said. 'There are others in my hometown of Vadakara in Calicut, but we are the last of this generation. This could well be the last ship I have stitched.' He runs his hand along the INSV Kaundinya as it lies moored at the Karwar naval base. Every knot is an act of remembrance of ancient techniques. Every pull of the coir rope is a tug — not just towards the ocean, but towards the past. Sankaran will soon fly to Abu Dhabi to work on another wooden dhow. 'They don't want a stitched ship. They will use nails,' he said. The INSV Kaundinya's voyage may be months away. But the journey has begun to reclaim old knowledge and to again value labour done by hand. The skill, once orally passed from father to son along the coasts of Malabar and Coromandel, is now documented for posterity.
United News of India
9 hours ago
- United News of India
Kerala: Efforts continue to remove 54 containers washed ashore
Kochi, June 7 (UNI) Efforts are on to remove 54 containers washed ashore after the Liberian cargo vessel, MSC ELSA 3, capsized off Kochi on May 25, sources said on Saturday. Around 17 containers washed ashore were removed from the Kollam and Thiruvananthapuram coasts. The removal of containers is being done by the Waterline Shipping appointed by Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC). The Waterline Shipping has already removed 13 from Kollam and four from Thiruvananthapuram shores. However, fishermen complained that manual cleaning of plastic pellets, came off sacks and swamped the coast in many areas, is slow. The 184-metre-long ship built in Germany in 1997 was carrying 640 containers, including 13 containing hazardous materials. Over 100 containers are reported to have been lost at sea, and several have washed ashore in Alappuzha, Kollam, Ernakulam and Thiruvananthapuram. The vessel was carrying 367.1 tonnes of Very Low Sulfur Fuel Oil (VLSFO) and 84.44 tonnes of marine diesel fuel. UNI DS SS
The Hindu
19 hours ago
- The Hindu
Proposed air enclave in Thiruvananthapuram will give a fillip to Coast Guard presence in southern region, says Coast Guard Director General
Coast Guard Director General S. Paramesh on Saturday (June 7, 2025) described the long-pending proposal for an air enclave for the maritime law enforcement agency in Thiruvananthapuram as a 'work in progress.' Once all the approvals are secured and it gets commissioned, the enclave will give a fillip to the Coast Guard's charter of duties including search and rescue (SAR) operations in the southern region, he said. According to him, the enclave will permanently station helicopters, considerably enhancing operational preparedness and response to emergencies out at sea. 'Fixed-wing aircraft can come here on detachment and operate from here,' the Flag Officer told The Hindu after inaugurating a new, 76.7 metre-long jetty for Coast Guard vessels at Vizhinjam. Although the Coast Guard station at Vizhinjam is equipped with fast-patrol vessels and interceptor boats, air support has to come from Kochi, where the Coast Guard has its regional headquarters. The commissioning of a major seaport at Vizhinjam, SAR related to fishing vessels and maritime emergencies such as the recent sinking of the Liberian-flagged container ship MSC Elsa underscore the need for the increased presence of the Coast Guard in the southern part of Kerala. Expanded Coast Guard presence in Thiruvananthapuram district will definitely help during incidents such as the sinking of MSC Elsa since it is the first responder to maritime emergencies, Mr. Paramesh said. 'It (the sinking of MSC Elsa) is a very unfortunate incident. The matter is being investigated by the Director General Shipping. Once they finish the investigation, we will come to know the reasons that caused the ship to flounder and sink,' he said. Operational preparedness The new Coast Guard jetty at Vizhinjam is expected to enhance the Coast Guard's operational preparedness significantly, the Flag Officer said. The construction of the jetty, though started in September 2019, had been delayed on account of the presence of a half-submerged tug at the site. Work was resumed in April 2024. The jetty is 76.7 metres long, eight metres wide and four to six metres deep. Earlier, Coast Guard vessels in Vizhinjam were forced to depend on commercial berths, which was seen as a major handicap considering the agency's growing responsibilities in the region. 'The new jetty is a very important piece of operational infrastructure for us. We are the first responders to any issue in the maritime arena be it search-and-rescue, medical evacuation or matters related to coastal security. So it is very important for us to have the wherewithal on shore for our ships to berth safely and respond quickly to emergencies out at sea,' said Mr. Paramesh.
