Large demonstration outside the Mauritius Prime Minister's Office in Port Louis, on August 29, 2020, in protest at the environmental fallout from the Wakashio oil spill earlier this month.

 AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Nishan Degnarain (Forbes) • August 31, 2020

On Monday, it was revealed that 47 whales have been found dead along the South East coast of Mauritius, including pregnant females and juveniles. The numbers continue to rise each day, around the crash site and sinking of the forward section of the Wakashio.

This come amid the extreme secrecy of the operation to salvage the rear of the vessel, disposal of the removed oil and clean up the oil along the coast. The lack of transparency about the methods being used for the cleanup is raising additional concerns about any longer term risk with the use of chemical dispersants. Comparisons are now being drawn between the cleanup in Mauritius and the hushed-up oil spill and cleanup operation in Venezuela earlier this month in its famous Morrocoy National Reserve.

Already, there were concerns about the controversial decision to deliberately sink the forward section of the Wakashio in an undisclosed location off the coast of Mauritius. Two days later, scores of dead dolphins and whales started drifting dead onto the shores of Mauritius.

Concerns about Wakashio salvage operation

•  This follows major demonstrations at the weekend in Mauritius and around its embassies around the world at the weekend, that attracted over 100,000 marchers (around 10% of the country) according to a report in the UK’s Independent newspaper. The protesters had marched peacefully on the streets of the capital, demanding justice and accountability for the environmental impact of the pollution, including the dead whales and dolphins.

• This comes as international ocean NGO, Sea Shepherd revealed there was over 203,000 tons of ballast water on board the vessel when it hit the reefs of Mauritius (200 times the amount of oil leaked). Given concerns and international laws created in recent years to stop the harmful spread of marine disease through the release of ballast water, it is unclear whether this ballast water was safely removed from the vessel. Ship owner, Nagahsiki Shipping have not responded to media requests for comments.

• At the same time, it is also being reported locally that the salvage team may have used seismic blasting in the sensitive areas around the Mauritian coast as part of the salvage operation. This is an area famed for its whale nursing sites, and several pregnant female Melon-headed whales and juveniles have already been found washed up in the past few days. If it is true that such seismic blasting had been undertaken, serious questions will need to be asked under whose authority such tests were conducted, and whether a thorough environmental impact assessment had been done of the area prior to the test, when there are dozens of luxury Five Star Hotels along Mauritius’ East Coast that offer tourists Dolphin and Whale Watching tours in the area.

  International NGO criticism of global shipping

26 AUGUST 2020: The Transship company carries out work to remove the capsized Delfi bunker tanker out of the Black Sea's Gulf of Odessa. The vessel under the Moldovan flag was washed ashore during a storm.

 KONSTANTIN SAZONCHIK/TASS

The international NGO community have also started to raise serious questions about the role of the global shipping industry in this incident. In a statement to Forbes, global ocean protection NGO, Ocean Conservancy has called for a full and independent investigation into the whale and dolphin deaths in Mauritius. 

Chris Robbins, head of Science Initiatives at Ocean Conservancy and who worked for a decade on oil spill response and ecosystem restoration after the BP Deepwater Horizon tragedy highlighted the risk to dolphins in particular following a major oil spill.

“Marine mammals like dolphins were among the most severely impacted marine species affected by the Deepwater Horizon disaster and recovery is estimated to take decades. Marine mammals are exposed to toxins in oil through inhalation, ingestion, aspiration and skin absorption, resulting in immediate death or sub-lethal effects such as lung disease, damage to the immune system and reproductive failure.

Right at the outset, Ocean Conservancy recognized that long-term monitoring is essential to tracking the recovery of impacted species such as marine mammal populations, as well as the broader marine ecosystem. Dolphins are long-lived and, as we saw in the northern Gulf of Mexico, the health effects of the spill could ripple throughout local dolphin populations for years to come.”

De-carbonizing the international shipping fleet

Activists from the Extinction Rebellion climate action group protest outside the International Maritime Organisation in London on February 17, 2020 against pollution in the Arctic due to the global shipping industry.

 AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Ocean Conservancy has also gone on to call for bold shipping reform, echoing calls from other international environmental groups such as Greenpeace, WWF and Sea Shepherd for the same, citing the heavy engine fuel used as one of the main reasons this disaster was so extensive.

“In the ongoing uncertainty about science being used to assess the impact of the oil spill in Mauritius, one thing is crystal clear: we need to transition rapidly from fossil fuels to renewable energy. This includes, as a priority, de-carbonizing the international shipping fleet.

We estimate that full de-carbonization must occur by 2034 to remain within the 1.5 Celsius target set by the Paris Agreement. Accordingly, that will entail replacing all HFO (Heavy Fuel Oil) burning ships with cleaner green fuels like hydrogen or ammonia, which will also dramatically reduce the risk of a spill affecting marine mammals.

 Japan and the Japanese based Nagashiki Shipping, owners of the MV Wakashio, have a key role to play in all of this. As one of the largest shipbuilding nations along with China and the Republic of Korea, Japan can set the standards to prevent the next Wakashio, and publicly commit to accelerating the IMO’s international timeline for full decarbonization. This spill should be a wakeup call for all shipbuilding nations.”

This statement from Ocean Conservancy, echoes WWF’s call for justice for the ocean including calls to reform of the ‘flags of convenience’ regime, a system that many have argued for years has allowed ship owners to behave with impunity on the world’s oceans.  A range of legal and financial instruments have been highlighted by WWF for how a country like Mauritius can attempt to restore this unique ecosystem, based on other lessons from the Western Indian Ocean.

Warning about collateral damage from oil spill cleanup operations

JUNE 8 2010: The fin of a porpoise is flecked with oil on June 8, 2010 in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico near East Grand Terre Island, Lousiana following BP's Deepwater Horizon spill.

 GETTY IMAGES

Ocean Conservancy’s Chris Robbins went further and cautioned about many of the secondary effects of an oil spill clean up operation that he had learned from the BP Deepwater Horizon tragedy, that ended up causing even more harm.

He listed these in an article on the Ocean Conservancy site where he listed a five-point plan, for how Mauritius should think about its response to the Wakashio oil spill.

“There are some lessons from the Gulf of Mexico after the BP Deepwater Horizon tragedy that can be applied to the unfolding tragedy in Mauritius on how to respond to the spill from the standpoint of response, clean up, documenting damage, holding the responsible party accountable and building a long-term restoration plan.”

So far, there has been no additional comments from either the vessel owner, Nagashiki Shipping company, or the multi-billion dollar ship operator that had leased the vessel, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, on the deaths of the dolphins or whales.

Notably, there has also not been a public statement on the oil spill from several other major UN or other ocean protection organizations, 37 days into this major ecological crisis.