Oil spill threatens India’s beaches, nesting turtles

CHENNAI: Hundreds of students and fishermen were working Friday (Feb 3) to clean up an oil spill on India’s southern coast that campaigners say threatens the turtles that nest there every year.

The Indian Coast Guard said around 35km of coastline off the southern city of Chennai had been affected by the spill which occurred when two ships carrying fuel collided last week.

Campaigners and fishermen have accused the government of being slow to contain the damage from the spill, the scale of which has only emerged in recent days.

Even the major news channels in India largely ignored this disaster on their prime-time shows, being pre-occupied with election news, budget and an overt dose of politics and filmi fluff, say media watchers.

“What ought to have been a localised incident has now become a regional one because of the culture of denial,” said Nityanand Jayaraman, a Chennai-based environmental activist.

Jayaraman reminded the reporters that it was the peak nesting season for Olive Ridley turtles, which swim to the beaches of South India to lay eggs after mating at sea.

“The key thing is not technology but honesty. You need to reveal the true extent of the damage otherwise it leads to a false sense of complacency. With oil spills long-term effects are certain,” he said.

Olive Ridleys are most abundant of all sea turtles around the world, according to WWF India, but their numbers have been declining and the species is recognised as vulnerable by the IUCN Red list.

Their unique mass nesting, where thousands of females come together on the same beach to lay eggs, is a major tourist attraction.

It is not known how many turtles have been affected, but AFP pictures showed workers in safety suits removing a dead turtle from the shore this week.

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Local fishermen also criticised the speed of the official response to the spill.

“They (authorities) didn’t remove it immediately, and so now it has spread across all beaches, including Marina (beach),” K. Bharati of the Fishermen’s Welfare Association in South India said, referring to a popular local beach.

Volunteers wearing gloves could be seen scooping up the thick tar with shovels off Kamarajar Port in Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu state.

“We have tried all kind of technology and found that only manual cleaning is possible. So we have deployed more than 500 people, they are working really hard,” M.A. Bhaskaran, chairman of Kamrajar Port, told reporters.

The government has ordered a high-level probe, headed by director general shipping, to nail the guilty behind the oil spill that took place off the Chennai Coast following collision between two ships and the report is likely in a month, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said on Friday, even as the Madras high court directed the state government to urgently look into the issue and take necessary steps.

Oil spill has been a cause of concern ever since ‘M T BW Maple’ leaving after emptying Liquefied Petroleum Gas on January 28 collided with M T Dawn, Kanchipuram, loaded with petroleum oil lubricant (POL) off Ennore Port, which is among top 12 major ports in the country.

Minister of State for Shipping Pon Radhakrishnan said the vessel had more than 32,000 tonne of oil and has been emptied.

“Oil spill has been cleaned. From the tank, it did not leak. Oil was leaked from the engine. There is no leakage from the ship,” Radhakrishnan said.

Radhakrishnan also informed the Lok Sabha that more than 80 per cent of the clean-up operation after the oil spill has been completed and most of the residual work is expected to be over within two to three days.