Environmental catastrophe looming in Bay of Plenty?

Like many (and like the media, obcessed with the Rugby World Cup) I didn’t pay much attention to this story until the past day or so. Alarm bells rang when I heard the Radio New Zealand interview with Brett Keller, the owner of Tauranga Marine Charters (see below)

It seems that for five days, while the Bay of Plenty had settled weather nothing much happened - some divers sent down, a heiicopter circling. Now the weather is deteriorating and they have managed to pump 10 tonnes out of 1700 tonnes of balck oil from the ship.

The people of Tauranga, it seems have been given no information about what was happening.

Now (most alarmingly) it seems that Corexit, a decoagiulant that was used in the Gulf of Mexico is going to be used.  Corexit is many times more toxic than the oil itself and has shown to have almost certainly caused human as well as marine life deaths.

Whether we will see environmental catastrophe in the Bay of Plenty remains to be seen, but hopefully this will spark a national discussion about Petrobas (or whoever) drilling for oil in deep water off the coast of New Zealand - before the election.

Weather halts bid to remove oil from stricken reef ship

Long process to remove oil and shift stricken container vessel

New Zealand Herald

Bad weather has halted efforts to pump 1700 tonnes of oil from a stricken container ship off the Tauranga coastline.

Crews aboard the barge 'Awanui' have pumped 10 tonnes of oil from the Rena, which is stranded on the Astrolabe Reef, since 8:30pm last night.

They were called off this morning due to safety concens amid "changing weather conditions" at the reef.

Maritime New Zealand (MNZ) said the urgent salvage operation had to be stopped if there were any fears for the safety of the 25-strong salvage team on board Rena.

It estimated it take another two days to transfer all the fuel from the vessel.

"This is an incredibly quick response for a salvage operation...

"The safety of the salvage team and crew remains paramount. If conditions worsen we will temporarily stop the operation until it's safe to resume. Until then they will continue to pump fuel off the vessel for as long as it's safe to work."

The salvage operation would likely begin again later today - and would carry on "around the clock", Maritime New Zealand said.

Oil needed to be transferred from the ship urgently because forecasts were for more bad weather in the coming days, it said.

"The weather is expected to deteriorate in the coming days, so we are working around the clock to remove the oil. The weather will impact on both the salvage and oil recovery effort."

MetService has issued a severe weather watch for the Bay of Plenty, with strong northeasterly gusts and heavy rains possible in the region today.

Forecasts issued to MNZ predicted increasing north-easterly winds impacting its salvage operations in the coming days.

Transport Minister Steven Joyce said the effort to remove oil from the MV Rena before it causes an ecological catastrophe is likely to take a long time.

"Assuming we're able to get the oil off in a certain time, I've heard weeks and even months in terms of the salvage of the containers and the ship - it's going to be a fair bit of work over a long period of time," he told the Herald.

Prime Minister John Key said his advice was that oil would start arriving on Bay of Plenty's Papamoa beach on Wednesday.

People were being advised not to collect seafood.

He has joined Mr Joyce and a growing chorus of others demanding to know how the Rena struck the wildlife-rich Astrolabe Reef early last Wednesday morning.

"I think the first thing you'd have to say is this is a very large ship that, in calm waters, has hit a well-documented reef," Mr Key said.

"So some serious questions need to be asked about why that happened and who is responsible, and there are two inquiries under way to get those answers.

"Obviously the Government is very keen to understand how such a catastrophe could take place."

The three crew members on duty at the time were being spoken to.

There was less oil visible on the water than seen previously, although the situation was likely to worsen with winds picking up over coming days.

Boats were using a large skimmer to scoop up the oil last night.

Maritime New Zealand's national on scene commander, Rob Service, could not say how long it could take to clean oil from the shoreline.

An oil-coated little blue penguin yesterday became the ninth seabird to be recovered and processed at the oiled wildlife response centre - a base of tents, tanks and makeshift laboratories set up at Mt Maunganui capable of taking up to 500 birds.

The little bird appeared back to its lively self after it was dropped in a pool and began happily swimming around, delighting Conservation Minister Kate Wilkinson and photographers.

Co-ordinator Kerri Morgan expected to see many more cases of affected wildlife. Two hundred volunteers were standing by to help.

Brett Gartrell, Massey University's Wildlife Facility Director, told Newstalk ZB there is no way to tell how many more birds could be affected, but they have experts on standby to deal with up to a thousand.

He said 10,000 Grey Faced Petrels are in one area near the Rena, and thousands of Diving Petrels in another. There are also between 200 and 300 Little Blue Penguins around the area.

Mr Gartrell said they are able to get a projection of where the oil is headed, so they all scare the birds away from those areas.

"One is to just be having lots of boats and people and activity there but we also use things like air horns and whistling tape that we put up that moves in the wind and gives off a high pitch whistling noise."

He said as for marine mammals like dolphins, they can put sonic devices in the water to make noises to get them away.

The team dealing with the salvage, led by Dutch specialists Svitzer, had 250 workers.

Two more barges to recover heavy fuel oil in the water were on their way.

The New Zealand Defence Force has provided specialist staff, two shore patrol vessels, Seasprite and Iroquois helicopters, a C-130 Hercules sent to pick up equipment from Australia, a dozen specialist staff and the HMNZS Endeavour, which arrived at Tauranga last night for use as a potential command centre.

A further 300 army staff were on stand-by.

Mr Key rejected criticism over response efforts by environmental groups, the Green Party and Labour, who are calling on the Government to take over.

"We've had a plan, it has been activated and mobilised, and all I can say is that I asked international experts whether we were acting quickly enough and if there was anything else we could do - and the assurance I've been given is it's relative to other accidents around the world and we've been acting very quickly."

FOUR OPTIONS

1. Dispersant:

The chemical Corexit 9500, used to tackle BP's disastrous spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year, is being sprayed to break up the black oil. But it is not clear whether it is working, and international experts are measuring the results.

2. On-Water Recovery:

Scooping up oil from the water, also being tried, is a weather dependent and largely ineffective approach. In most instances, less than 10 per cent of the oil is recovered.

3. Protection Booms:

Many are asking why booms aren't being used to ring-fence the leaked oil. But conditions such as strong currents, deep water and wave action have made it impossible to use them.

4. Shoreline Clean-Up:

The least preferred - but ultimately inevitable - option, with oil due at Papamoa Beach on Thursday. Removing oil from sandy beaches was considered far easier than from areas such as rocky foreshores

Here is the interview with Brett Keller (the second of two)

Update:

Efforts made to avert toxic oil crisis

Stuff

10 October, 2011, 4 pm

LATEST: Officials are scrambling to avert a public health crisis as "toxic" oil washes ashore after a cargo ship stranded off the Tauranga coast last week.

Clumps of sticky, black, smelly oil are polluting the beach at Mt Maunganui, one of the country's most popular holiday spots following the grounding of the Rena container ship last Wednesday. More oil was expected to wash up near Papamoa within the next 24 hours amid worsening weather conditions.

For story GO HERE