A team of UN experts on Tuesday arrived on Mauritius to aid efforts to prevent an oil spill from further damaging its pristine environment.
Salvage crews were in a race against the clock as they pumped fuel from the stricken Japanese-owned bulk carrier MV Wakashio, which ran aground on a coral reef last month and began leaking oil five days ago.
Authorities have said that the hull has growing cracks and could split in two at any moment.
Photo: AFP
The interagency UN team would “support efforts to mitigate impact of [the] oil spill on natural resources and on [the] population,” the UN office in Mauritius said.
Japan has dispatched a six-member team, including members of its coast guard, to assist.
France has sent more than 20 tonnes of technical equipment — including 1.3km of oil containment booms, pumping equipment and protective gear — along with technical advisers from nearby Reunion Island.
The Wakashio ran aground with 4,000 tonnes of fuel, and according to a statement released by Mitsui OSK Lines, which operates the vessel, about 1,180 tonnes of fuel has leaked into the surrounding powder waters.
Vashist Seegobin, a professor of ecology and conservation at Mauritius University, said that while the amount of fuel seeping from the vessel appeared to have slowed, “it is still leaking — we must remain on alert.”
The bulker struck a reef at Pointe d’Esny, an ecological jewel fringed by idyllic beaches, colorful reefs, sanctuaries for rare and endemic wildlife, and protected wetlands.
Thousands of volunteers, many smeared head-to-toe in black sludge, have turned out along the coast since Friday last week, stringing together kilometers of improvised floating barriers made of straw in a desperate attempt to hold back the sludge.
“We confirmed that the crack inside the hull of the ship had expanded. Since this ship is unable to navigate by itself, it is moored to a tugboat so that it will not drift even if it is broken,” Mitsui OSK Lines said.
Legal sources, speaking on condition of anonymity as they are not authorized to speak to the media, said that the Wakashio was on its way from China to Brazil.
The captain, an Indian citizen, and several crew members were on Tuesday interrogated by police as authorities question why the vessel was so close to Mauritius.
“Everything depends on what the South African experts manage to get off the black box,” a source close to the investigation said.
Mauritius and its 1.3 million inhabitants depend on the sea for food and ecotourism, having fostered a reputation as a conservation success story and a world-class destination for nature lovers.
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