Tanker wreck off Spain adds to toxic seabed horror
Date: 25-Nov-02
Country: NORWAY
Author: Alister Doyle
Corroding toxic cargoes in deep waters are likely to haunt the world for decades before they break up or dissipate in the oceans. Nuclear waste will stay radioactive for thousands of years.
The Bahamas-registered Prestige sank on Tuesday in waters 3,600 metres (11,810 ft) deep off north-west Spain, taking most of its 77,000 tonnes of fuel oil to the seabed after also releasing giant slicks that have blackened the coastline.
Tankers such as the Castillo de Bellver, which sank off South Africa in 1983, or the Atlantic Empress, sunk off Tobago in 1979, took tens of thousands of tonnes of oil to the seabed after disastrous spills. That oil is apparently still aboard.
"Experience indicates that cargo can be stable for decades once it is on the seabed," said Ian White, managing director of the International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation.
He said the oil was likely to coagulate as thick as "chewing gum" due to the pressure and the cold.
But what goes down must come up, if it is buoyant in water like oil. In the best case, it will flow out slowly. In the worst, wrecks can suddenly crack open as they rust.
Last year up to 91,000 litres (20,020 gallons) of fuel leaked from the USS Mississinewa, a U.S. military oil tanker sunk by a Japanese suicide submarine in World War Two off the remote Yap atoll in the South Pacific. The spill stopped the 700 islanders from fishing.
That wreck is one of 1,080 World War Two warships charted in the South Pacific alone.
DUSTBIN
The oceans have been humanity's preferred dustbin through the ages but the long-term impact of toxic waste on fish stocks and other marine life, already hit by overfishing, are unknown.
World leaders at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg in September agreed to reverse the decline in fish stocks by 2015.
In one of the worst cases of deliberate atomic pollution, seven Soviet nuclear reactors with nuclear fuel aboard were dumped in the Arctic Kara Sea off the north of Russia.
"These seven dumped atomic reactors can have consequences for many thousands of years," said Thomas Nilsen at Norwegian environmental group Bellona. "Dumping is a false pillow that passes the problem to the next generations."
Nuclear submarines have also sunk in accidents, with reactors and warheads.
"As far as I'm aware there has been no detection of nuclear leaks from these submarines to date," said Stephen Saunders, editor of Janes Fighting Ships.
"Obviously they have to be monitored...but this may be the best place for them," he said. Of two U.S. sinkings, the USS Thresher went down off the coast of New England in 1963 and the USS Scorpion sank in the Atlantic in 1968.
Among accidents by the Soviet Union's fleet, a "November" class submarine sank in the Atlantic off Spain in 1970, a "Yankee" class sank off Bermuda in 1986 and a Mike class submarine sank off Norway in 1989.
In a rare salvage, the Russian Kursk was raised last year after it sank in the Barents Sea in 2000, killing all 118 aboard after a torpedo explosion.
And between Norway and Denmark dozens of ships were scuttled after World War Two containing mustard gas, a deadly chemical that burns and blisters, and other Nazi chemical weapons.
A Norwegian report this week said that the wrecks showed little signs of corrosion and that sea-life around the wrecks was abundant. It recommended leaving the ammunition where it is.
