- Email: [email protected]
More hazardous chemicals ashore
Marine Pollution Bulletin
back each time. Its plumage was completely water-logged, but it was energetic enough to swim actively and to fly underwater very f a s t - m u c h too fast to give anyone a chance to capture it with a dip-net or whatever. With the water only a degree or two above freezing it must have been on a knife-edge of thermal death, with all its insulation gone; I imagine that there was a sufficient supply of small nekton near the s u r f a c e - euphausiids were very abundant in the area, for e x a m p l e - for it to maintain a sufficient intake to keep up its body heat for a while. Apparently much more intelligent than the gannet, it rapidly seemed to size up the situation; so off it went briskly, with a couple of backward looks, and I lost sight of it almost at once in the large swell. The rest of its story was predictable and, I found, rather sad. The incident reminded me very much of the pelicans one used to find shaking as if with ague on the beach in Southern California, too weak to fight the gentle onshore
winds, and dying from organochlorine overdoses. Fortunately, that situation seems to have been t e a r e d up, but it will be much harder to prevent oil tankers from destroying themselves in mysterious circumstances than to clean up the act in the odd chemical manufacturing plant. It seemed to me that we were going to go on finding drowning birds until we ran out of oil or puffins. Or both? It didn't help my state of mind, anyway, that in our main working area we were subjected to a surprisingly loud double thump several times each day as a Concorde passed over on its way to or from the eastern United States. The sea isn't what it used to be, as I was reminded on this cruise; maybe our editorials, mostly concerned with institutional responses to marine pollution, would be sharper and more effective if editorial writers came faceto-face with a drowning puffin more frequently. Evidently they are not hard to find: in fact, they find you . . . .
Double Oil Spill Disasters Hit Caribbean
m o d e l - R I V E R S P I L L - t h a t is able to predict the movement and contamination damage resulting from single or continuous oil spills on rivers. It can simulate the spreading and deposition of oil on fiver banks taking into account wind, wind-generated waves and river current to predict primary contamination sites and Shell consider it is an important step in helping to develop contingency plans for accidental spills, determining the type of containment and recovery equipment needed in specific areas and helping provide technical information for assessment of environmental risk and directing movements of manpower and equipment in a clean-up operation. Riverspill has already been specifically applied to the 749 mile stretch of the Lower Mississippi River and when tested by simulating two oil spills that occurred in 1974 and 1977, its predictions were found to be very close to the pollution which had been observed.
The two worst oil spills ever recorded have transformed two areas of the Caribbean into major disaster zones. An oil well 'blow-out' in the southern Gulf of Mexico on June 3 (Mar. Pollut. Bull., 10, 215-216, 1979) has now caused the biggest oil slick ever recorded and pollution has already reached beaches of Southern Texas. While an estimated 76 million gallons of oil was spilled in the Atlantic, east of Tobago, when two tankers collided and the slick this spill f o r m e d - r e p o r t s indicate it measures 25 km by 5 k m - h a s been swept west into the Caribbean. The double tanker collision on 19 July, in which 26 seamen died, occurred about 30 km north-east of Tobago and involved the Atlantic Empress fully laden with 278 000 tons of Arabian crude and the Aegean Captain carrying 200000 tons of crude from the Netherlands Antilles to Singapore. The total oil spillage is estimated at 90 000 tons. At one stage it was feared that the massive oil slick would be swept onto the shores of Tobago but strong winds diverted the slick north of the island and it has continued to drift into the southern Caribbean. Both ships were on fire after the collision. That on the Aegean Captain was extinguished after 2 days and the ship patched and towed to safety. The Atlantic Empress was less fortunate. Fire-fighting continued for 10 days but there were several explosions in the cargo tanks and the vessel eventually sank with a substantial part of her cargo still in the cargo tanks. The insurance claims resulting from this collision are likely to be the largest recorded in marine insurance history.
Computer
vs
Polluter
The Shell Development Company's Westhollow Research Centre has developed a computer simulation 246
ALAN LONGHURST
More Hazardous Chemicals Ashore Dangerous chemicals are still being washed ashore along the south coast of England. The latest incident involved a quantity of cellulose nitrate, some grades of which are powerful explosives and extremely inflammable substances. Four full drums, each weighing approx. 100 kg, have been found on beaches in the vicinity of Hastings and Bexhill. They had been manufactured in West Germany and were lost from a deck cargo whilst en route to Casablanca in Morocco. A subsequent investigation was carded out by the East Sussex County Council in conjunction with the UKAEA Harwell Chemical Emergencies Centre. This revealed the nitrogen content of samples taken from the drums was less than 12%, and hence the risks of human injuries resulting from explosions was minimal on this occasion.
Volume 10/Number 9/September 1979
I
Ii-- o1
• ' The
In common with previous incidents (see Mar. Pollut. Bull., 9, 229, 1978), the hazard warning symbols on each drum had become almost completely obliterated by the time of recovery on the shore. This incident again clearly demonstrates the inadequacy of the present international regulations governing the durability of hazard warning symbols on goods transported by sea. T R E V O R R. D I X O N
Marine Chemistry into the Eighties A symposium on the direction of chemical research within the sea for the next decade was held at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, on 31 May and 1 June, 1979. Symposium content centred around two themes. One was research into the chemistry of pollutional processes within both non-living and living components of the ecosystem. The other theme concerned nutrient biochemistry, but even in this area papers were presented on impacts of trace metals. Additional indicators that pollutional studies will substantially influence marine chemists' activities during the 1980s, came a few days later. A NATO Fjord Oceanographic Workshop held June 4-8 at the Institute of Ocean Sciences, Pat Bay, explored the range of physical, chemical, geological and biological processes within fjords around the world. There was repeated appearance in the sessions of pollution-related chemical studies of the processes between water, sediments and organisms deriving from the widespread use of threshold fjords as waste receiving areas, particularly in Norway and British Columbia.
Environmental Toxicology Research Programme The University of Victoria, British Columbia, has received a grant of $518000 for the period 1979-81 from the
seaside.
""
National Sciences and Engineering Research Council to conduct research in marine and freshwater environmental toxicology. There are four components to the programme. One team will research the biochemistry of salmonid responses to low levels of contamination by copper and zinc, and the impact of those metals on the species' immunocompetence. Another team will research the chemistry and carcinogenicity of impurities and their derivatives in commercial grade pesticides. A third team will function as a field group centering on rehabilitation and detoxification processes in previously contaminated marine ecosystems. The programme represents an effort on the part of scientists within the Departments of Chemistry, Biology, and Biochemistry and Microbiology to combine and extend existing environmental research programmes at the University.
Ocean Resources Exhibition The Fourth International Exhibition on the Exploitation of Ocean Resources will be staged at the Oceanexpo in Bordeaux, France, 4-8 March, 1980. Equipment on view will include the latest developments in pollution prevention and control technology, in addition to equipment for effective surveillance of 200 mile zones, offshore technology, fishing and port installations. Paired with the exhibition will be OCEANTROPIQUES, the first world exhibition and symposia on the activities and achievements of developing countries.
Arabian Sea Spill A large, unknown volume of kerosene was spilled when the Liberian tanker A viles sank in the Arabian Sea following an explosion which claimed the lives of nine crewmen. 247
back each time. Its plumage was completely water-logged, but it was energetic enough to swim actively and to fly underwater very f a s t - m u c h too fast to give anyone a chance to capture it with a dip-net or whatever. With the water only a degree or two above freezing it must have been on a knife-edge of thermal death, with all its insulation gone; I imagine that there was a sufficient supply of small nekton near the s u r f a c e - euphausiids were very abundant in the area, for e x a m p l e - for it to maintain a sufficient intake to keep up its body heat for a while. Apparently much more intelligent than the gannet, it rapidly seemed to size up the situation; so off it went briskly, with a couple of backward looks, and I lost sight of it almost at once in the large swell. The rest of its story was predictable and, I found, rather sad. The incident reminded me very much of the pelicans one used to find shaking as if with ague on the beach in Southern California, too weak to fight the gentle onshore
winds, and dying from organochlorine overdoses. Fortunately, that situation seems to have been t e a r e d up, but it will be much harder to prevent oil tankers from destroying themselves in mysterious circumstances than to clean up the act in the odd chemical manufacturing plant. It seemed to me that we were going to go on finding drowning birds until we ran out of oil or puffins. Or both? It didn't help my state of mind, anyway, that in our main working area we were subjected to a surprisingly loud double thump several times each day as a Concorde passed over on its way to or from the eastern United States. The sea isn't what it used to be, as I was reminded on this cruise; maybe our editorials, mostly concerned with institutional responses to marine pollution, would be sharper and more effective if editorial writers came faceto-face with a drowning puffin more frequently. Evidently they are not hard to find: in fact, they find you . . . .
Double Oil Spill Disasters Hit Caribbean
m o d e l - R I V E R S P I L L - t h a t is able to predict the movement and contamination damage resulting from single or continuous oil spills on rivers. It can simulate the spreading and deposition of oil on fiver banks taking into account wind, wind-generated waves and river current to predict primary contamination sites and Shell consider it is an important step in helping to develop contingency plans for accidental spills, determining the type of containment and recovery equipment needed in specific areas and helping provide technical information for assessment of environmental risk and directing movements of manpower and equipment in a clean-up operation. Riverspill has already been specifically applied to the 749 mile stretch of the Lower Mississippi River and when tested by simulating two oil spills that occurred in 1974 and 1977, its predictions were found to be very close to the pollution which had been observed.
The two worst oil spills ever recorded have transformed two areas of the Caribbean into major disaster zones. An oil well 'blow-out' in the southern Gulf of Mexico on June 3 (Mar. Pollut. Bull., 10, 215-216, 1979) has now caused the biggest oil slick ever recorded and pollution has already reached beaches of Southern Texas. While an estimated 76 million gallons of oil was spilled in the Atlantic, east of Tobago, when two tankers collided and the slick this spill f o r m e d - r e p o r t s indicate it measures 25 km by 5 k m - h a s been swept west into the Caribbean. The double tanker collision on 19 July, in which 26 seamen died, occurred about 30 km north-east of Tobago and involved the Atlantic Empress fully laden with 278 000 tons of Arabian crude and the Aegean Captain carrying 200000 tons of crude from the Netherlands Antilles to Singapore. The total oil spillage is estimated at 90 000 tons. At one stage it was feared that the massive oil slick would be swept onto the shores of Tobago but strong winds diverted the slick north of the island and it has continued to drift into the southern Caribbean. Both ships were on fire after the collision. That on the Aegean Captain was extinguished after 2 days and the ship patched and towed to safety. The Atlantic Empress was less fortunate. Fire-fighting continued for 10 days but there were several explosions in the cargo tanks and the vessel eventually sank with a substantial part of her cargo still in the cargo tanks. The insurance claims resulting from this collision are likely to be the largest recorded in marine insurance history.
Computer
vs
Polluter
The Shell Development Company's Westhollow Research Centre has developed a computer simulation 246
ALAN LONGHURST
More Hazardous Chemicals Ashore Dangerous chemicals are still being washed ashore along the south coast of England. The latest incident involved a quantity of cellulose nitrate, some grades of which are powerful explosives and extremely inflammable substances. Four full drums, each weighing approx. 100 kg, have been found on beaches in the vicinity of Hastings and Bexhill. They had been manufactured in West Germany and were lost from a deck cargo whilst en route to Casablanca in Morocco. A subsequent investigation was carded out by the East Sussex County Council in conjunction with the UKAEA Harwell Chemical Emergencies Centre. This revealed the nitrogen content of samples taken from the drums was less than 12%, and hence the risks of human injuries resulting from explosions was minimal on this occasion.
Volume 10/Number 9/September 1979
I
Ii-- o1
• ' The
In common with previous incidents (see Mar. Pollut. Bull., 9, 229, 1978), the hazard warning symbols on each drum had become almost completely obliterated by the time of recovery on the shore. This incident again clearly demonstrates the inadequacy of the present international regulations governing the durability of hazard warning symbols on goods transported by sea. T R E V O R R. D I X O N
Marine Chemistry into the Eighties A symposium on the direction of chemical research within the sea for the next decade was held at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, on 31 May and 1 June, 1979. Symposium content centred around two themes. One was research into the chemistry of pollutional processes within both non-living and living components of the ecosystem. The other theme concerned nutrient biochemistry, but even in this area papers were presented on impacts of trace metals. Additional indicators that pollutional studies will substantially influence marine chemists' activities during the 1980s, came a few days later. A NATO Fjord Oceanographic Workshop held June 4-8 at the Institute of Ocean Sciences, Pat Bay, explored the range of physical, chemical, geological and biological processes within fjords around the world. There was repeated appearance in the sessions of pollution-related chemical studies of the processes between water, sediments and organisms deriving from the widespread use of threshold fjords as waste receiving areas, particularly in Norway and British Columbia.
Environmental Toxicology Research Programme The University of Victoria, British Columbia, has received a grant of $518000 for the period 1979-81 from the
seaside.
""
National Sciences and Engineering Research Council to conduct research in marine and freshwater environmental toxicology. There are four components to the programme. One team will research the biochemistry of salmonid responses to low levels of contamination by copper and zinc, and the impact of those metals on the species' immunocompetence. Another team will research the chemistry and carcinogenicity of impurities and their derivatives in commercial grade pesticides. A third team will function as a field group centering on rehabilitation and detoxification processes in previously contaminated marine ecosystems. The programme represents an effort on the part of scientists within the Departments of Chemistry, Biology, and Biochemistry and Microbiology to combine and extend existing environmental research programmes at the University.
Ocean Resources Exhibition The Fourth International Exhibition on the Exploitation of Ocean Resources will be staged at the Oceanexpo in Bordeaux, France, 4-8 March, 1980. Equipment on view will include the latest developments in pollution prevention and control technology, in addition to equipment for effective surveillance of 200 mile zones, offshore technology, fishing and port installations. Paired with the exhibition will be OCEANTROPIQUES, the first world exhibition and symposia on the activities and achievements of developing countries.
Arabian Sea Spill A large, unknown volume of kerosene was spilled when the Liberian tanker A viles sank in the Arabian Sea following an explosion which claimed the lives of nine crewmen. 247