Something very suspicious is happening with the reaction to an oil spill in Mauritius.
Evidence of a primary foreign crime turns out to be unpleasant. The oil spill and planned collapse of Japanese Wakashio assets in Mauritius is a crime; in fact, several national and foreign laws appear to have been violated.
Four members of the Mauritius team are feared to have died from a Wakashio rescue ship, tugboat Sir Gaetan Duval (three were still dead and the captain is still missing).
If the evidence of this developing investigation is treated appropriately, it can be a very serious crime.
For the context, Mauritius in the Indian Ocean is in the midst of a primary oil spill crisis, the most giant it has ever faced. , on a 100,000-year-old primary pristine coral reef and in a network of highly protected nature reserves containing some of the world’s rarest creatures. These had been designated nature reserves because they also contained some of the most vital sites of ancient and cultural importance for Mauritius.
The front of the 300-metre-long Panamanian-flag Japanese shipment then sank controversially on August 24 and over the course of days, nearly 50 whales and dolphins appeared dead off the coast of Mauritius, which had already been badly affected during the month of August. 6 oil spill. The island country surprised and giant and ongoing national protests have since called for greater transparency and accountability in the response to the oil spill. The scale of these protests is unprecedented for the island country.
In addition, the oil spill cleaned up, which it financed through the ship’s insurer, Japan P
Lack of transparency on all sides is the only consistent and reliable feature of this incident.
125 square kilometers and 36 kilometers of the delicate mauritius Sea coast are now being cleaned without any independent supervision, apart from government scientists whose independence has already been questioned after the first statements about the death of whales and dolphins. The country has all the experience needed to manage a primary response to an oil spill, whether in the country and among its gigantic and well-informed diaspora population, a giant army of foreign experts has been hired through the ship’s insurers and donations from remote Mauritians. The entire southeast coast is now fenced and access is limited through a giant police presence to Independent Scientists in Mauritius, and only foreign experts can enter the area.
Full control of the clean-up of hydrocarbon spills is now raising eyebrows that possibly everything would not be what it seems.
There have already been 3 moments in the reaction to an oil spill since the ship split in two on August 15 (3 weeks after the initial stranding on July 25).
Each of these occasions alone has led to a radical turn in the way the reaction to the oil spill is managed.
By contrast, press releases from foreign organizations interested in Mauritius mean a sense of “more of the same,” than a deep surprise and an image reflected in each event. This partly explains why there have been so many protesters who oppose the way the oil spill is being controlled and the indifference to calls from the people of Mauritius.
This is a crisis that could have been averted by a set of more guilty and guilty national and foreign actors.
Only Mitsui OSK Lines (MOL) and IMO have issued public statements expressing their sadness at the loss of life in tugboat Sir Gaetan Duval. In a reaction to Forbes on September 2, MOL said, “Our minds and prayers pass to those who were affected by the collision between the tugboat and the barge on the way to Port Louis. The next day, in reaction to Forbes, an IMO spokesman said: “We are saddened to be informed of the deaths of others involved in the rescue operation. There is a mandatory process of investigating the turn of destination ».
To date, Forbes has reported on 16 foreign organizations that have been publicly announced in the country, at least 79 experts (based on public information). The actual numbers are probably much higher. These organizations are necessarily who is maritime and foreign maritime insurance, and it comes with the UN maritime regulator – the International Maritime Organization – which has had a presence on the ground since August 12, the organization of oil owners – ITOPF, the shipping insurer – Japan P
Despite the presence of some of the most reputable names in global shipping, even the top fundamental processes that have been in position for a primary oil spill seem to be missing.
It has been 61 days since the giant iron ore ship entered Mauritius’ eastern coral reef directly, and it appears that several foreign laws were violated only in the reaction phase to the oil spill. The Management Convention, the control of the IMO of anti-fouling systems on ships, the IMO Hong Kong Convention on the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships and the Death of 49 Protected Whales and Dolphins. Wildlife or CMS, as well as violations of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling under the International Whaling Commission, was not a minor oversight.
There have been donations from renowned governments around the world with great delight in responding to oil spills. What happened to these assistance donations?
Why were the culprits of the oil spill so confident that they could deal with the scenario that such aid was rejected?The effects show that the scenario has moved from one catastrophic result to another.
History now has beyond the initial surprise of the oil spill, but how the reaction to the oil spill is controlled and the behavior of the bodies involved.
Wakashio temporarily becomes a case study of what should not be done on the occasion of a primary trade shift of fate in a distant country, where there is no genuine understanding of context, history or ecology.
Rick Dawson, a veteran of 40 of the world’s largest oil spills, spoke to Forbes about what he hopes to see of a primary oil spill and what he sees in Mauritius. Its role of monitoring and managing the cleaning and evaluation of herbal resource damage (NRDA).
Rick has worked with the U. S. Department of the Interior. But it’s not the first time For 4 decades and has been concerned about the search for some of the most important oil spill cases in the world, such as The Exxon Valdez, Cosco Busan and BP Deepwater Horizon. evidence deemed necessary in any process that opposes those guilty of any contaminant in US waters. And he became interested in the defining agreement between the U. S. government.
He was heavily in the oil spill and intervention in Mauritius and made the following observations.
Rick Dawson: This is the strangest oil cleanup operation I’ve noticed and I’ve noticed a lot of oil spills, over 40 in a four-decade race. I don’t know what to do with wakashio’s stage in Mauritius. Even the highest fundamental protocols seem to be missing. With so many foreign organizations on the ground, I find it confusing, because there is a popular set of responses that have been implemented.
Here are my top five most sensitive disorders that I am dealing with lately with the answer.
Rick Dawson: There were 49 whales and dolphins killed in the 3 weeks after the Wakashio oil spill, it’s very worrying. This isn’t normal. Something went very wrong and is to perceive what caused those deaths, what role oil played in that and how the reaction to an oil spill has replaced at this stage, this has environmental and legal implications. In past oil spills, the reason for the death of marine mammals exposed to oil is that they expand a respiratory virus that kills them, just as Covid-19 is a serious respiratory disease for humans. However, in the case of the spill in Mauritius, the case of mortality is more “acute” and remains unknown.
Killing a whale without a permit is a violation of national and foreign law. In many countries around the world, arrests have already been made for such an occasion that it violated the law. In Maurice, 49 whales and dolphins died. It’s a crime. There are 49 victims, each of whom is calling for an investigation.
As a crime scene, whale and dolphin carcasses should be frozen as evidence so that appropriate specialists can perform independent autopsies, which is necessarily an autopsy performed on whales to identify the cause of death.
Where are the 49 bodies of whales and dolphins stored?How were they classified and stored?What security protocols have been applied to them?What component of each animal was taken for necropsies?Mauritius has commercial fisheries and aquaculture operations, so freezing and storing these bodies has not been a problem. Even if they are personal facilities, when a country is in a state of national emergency, the government has stricter powers to act.
If this had happened in the United States, the death of a whale or protected dolphin would be considered a crime under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (1972) and the Endangered Species Act (1973), among other United Nations laws protecting dolphin whales. This would mean that several foreign laws could also have been violated.
In the United States, each incident is punishable by a $25,000 fine for each violation. This could also come with sentences ranging from supervised probation and network service to years in prison. I’ve noticed both of them. So, for 49 dead whales and dolphins, that means a $1. 2 million fine and potentially many years in prison. According to the legal definition, knowingly killing a species would come with circumstantial evidence such as conscious avoidance and intentional ignorance of the law.
A law enforcement officer allegedly interviewed the ship’s insurer, the ship’s charterer, and the ship’s owner, with the aim of finding out what civil or illegal legislation had been breached that would justify the arrest of any of their representatives.
The fact that 49 whales or dolphins appear to have died so soon after a primary oil spill is deeply troubling, which is not normal. The reaction to an oil spill deserves to have stopped at the time and there deserved to be a radical mirror image and a replacement of the technique at that level. An investigation will want to know if primary adjustments have been made to the reaction to an oil spill. at this level or if things have gone on as usual.
Could the death of whales and dolphins have been prevented or mitigated if universal practices were followed?
Rick Dawson: An oil spill cleanup operation is analogous to a doctor treating a patient for illness or ailment: first, diagnose the disease or ailment by means of acting tests to determine the domain or framework spaces affected, and then make a decision on the maximum effective remedy that will be applied to the disease in the affected domain or organs. Any other action plan would be considered reckless.
So the first thing you need to do when you get to the scene of a primary oil spill is get a map of the entire area. Take a giant marker and start identifying spaces that are and would possibly require special attention.
It is not a closed procedure, but it involves the local network that has the most productive knowledge of local fishing grounds, ecological areas and cultural and ancient sites. This you want done openly to build, accept as true, and make sure everyone is on the same page and that no major sites have been lost. This is a critical step.
From there, a cleaning plan deserves to be agreed and then carried out under the supervision of independent scientists and representatives determined through the local network who will have to live with the consequences in the coming decades. that have a transparent clash of interests and with the point of protests observed in the country would amount to igniting an attack on an already flammable situation. Why would you do that?
An oil spill cleanup operation should be treated as a dermatologist who removes moles from your skin. It requires surgical precision and a scalpel. Wearing a one-size-fits-all technique is like burning a mole on your face: it will cause permanent scarring.
In Mauritius, I see at least 8 other domains. These come with sandy beaches, stone beaches, volcanic rocks, mangrove forests, coral atoll islets, underwater coral reefs, seagrass beds, historic fortresses. These canopies have a domain of at least 32 km long and many more square kilometers in the domain of the oil spill in the coral lagoon.
Then you would have network representatives, independent experts and local fishermen or tour boat operators, who know the area, to map each and every ecological, cultural and ancient site along that coast.
We would like to know all the species that would possibly be affected by the oil spill or response, as well as all sites of cultural or ancient importance. Mauritius has spaces that have been well studied, so this will not be difficult.
The site of the oil spill was in a domain of excessive old interest. I see there are remnants of the 1810 Battle of Grand Port. If it was the war he explained to Maurice and marked Maurice’s transition from the French to the British. , is significant. It is also provided in the Arc de Triomphe. His earlier articles were about the 137 sailors who died in the lagoon at the Battle of 1810. So now we’re talking about war graves that may have been simply disturbed. the cleaning operation begins, an examination must be commissioned to collect the status of these remains before further damage occurs.
If this were to take place in the United States, there is the U. S. National Historical Preservation Act, which covers buildings and monuments, as well as the Archaeological Resource Protection Act, for many deep ancients that are still being discovered. Ancient or archaeological monument is a crime of crime with very serious penalties.
The prices of such investigations will be covered without delay through the insurer. It is in your interest to have a transparent and fast concept of the condition of these shipwrecks and historical sites. Mauritius is free to decide on the organization of independent experts it uses to thoroughly assess the condition of those remains after the oil spill, and the insurer pays.
I do not know the law of Mauritius, however, I am sure that you will have to have legislation that protects those historical sites from intentional damage. This is a crime scene and being treated as such. Someone’s guilty of what happened here.
Now, once you have a complete picture of what we’re dealing with, only then can you start the cleanup operation. In this way, we make sure that the cleaning operation itself does not cause more damage than the original oil spill. carrying out any of these baselines has an effect on advance studies, knowing that the oil spill occurred in a domain of significant national and foreign importance can simply be considered negligence.
We have noticed that this happens in many places around the world and we heard the same 3 excuses: it was not the damage caused by us, it was not much oil, oil is rarely so bad.
I gave them an idea in a past interview about how we would look to clean up each of the areas, taking care of each of them. It would definitely not be the best strain sprayer at some of those traditional and culturally significant sites that are likely to cause additional damage.
Again, all of this would have been resolved with the appropriate sensitivity map regardless of the area. It’s not too late, but this type of sensitivity map will have to be built, and it will have to be done smoothly with the entire network involved in this mapping.
Rick Dawson: Oil has an exclusive chemical signature. It necessarily resembles DNA and is used to “identify” the source of the oil. When the oil is mixed into an engine, it bureaucracies an exclusive chemical signature (due to the peculiarities of the source). traceable to that source. So of the 60,000 ships sailing the ocean in the world, we know precisely which oil belongs to which ship.
It is certainly imperative to collect many oil samples quickly. The explanation for why it is so vital is that it can allow scientists to identify the type of oil we are dealing with and perceive how it can behave in the ocean. another and consists of a cocktail of other chemicals that are poisonous in their own way for marine life and human health. An oil footprint is the first maximum critical step in any primary reaction to an oil spill. Determines all facets of clinical evaluation. impact efforts, cleanliness and rehabilitation.
Not doing this is equivalent to a doctor wanting to perform surgery without getting the patient’s blood type. This is the basis of any reaction to an oil spill.
If such an oil footprint is not made in the early days of the oil spill, very serious questions will begin to arise, given the presence of so many foreign organizations on the floor that had made recommendations on the reaction to the oil spill and that they have a broad delight in it.
What we check regularly is the “type and effect” of the oil. Tell me why it’s important.
“Destination” means understanding the chemical composition of oil and how it begins to reposition itself when interacting with ocean water. Without delay, the oil begins to reposition when it hits the ocean. It is affected by water temperature, sunlight (both heat and ultraviolet rays). , each of which has other effects), bioavailability (i. e. the amount of oil that small creatures can absorb), bioconcentration (toxins that accumulate along the food chain), the length of the oil particles. spillage, the oil is regularly disassembled molecule by molecule from the beginning. This is a large-scale crime scene investigation, similar to the famous “CSI” television screen. A crime occurred in Mauritius and the evidence will have to be treated as such.
“Effect” means perceiving how oil adjusts over time. All samples will want to be collected from the same places to examine and perceive how oil fits over time. The action of waves, sunlight, ocean currents replace the length of oil waste. By converting the length of the waste, the chemistry of the oil is adjusted, as is toxicity.
In terms of sampling scale, it’s huge. I would expect at least one pattern of a one-kilometre oil pot and additional patterns around another known environmental landscape (e. g. corals, mangroves, bes, seagrass beds, etc. ). expect those patterns to be collected on a daily basis.
It would also have expected samples of the shipment and fueling vessels carrying oil from the Wakashio, which have obviously been identified.
Today, Mauritius has had loads or even thousands of samples that were safely stored, labeled and monitored in a giant warehouse somewhere. This sampling is all you’ll have to go through over the next few weeks and months.
Sampling is neither debatable nor complex. It is very undeniable and research can be done in less than an hour. At most, a pattern might want to be airborne to a laboratory with mass gas spectrometry chromatography (GC-MS). But at most it’s a 24-hour hold. It’s been 52 days since Wakashio failed.
There are transparent sampling rules and manuals written and published on the ITOPF online page; it is easy to locate and is called TIP14: Sampling and tracking offshore oil spills. These are all popular playbooks. There is an ITOPF representative in the room in Mauritius, so it does not deserve to be difficult to organize and implement the most productive practices around the sampling of hydrocarbon spills. These things usually happen in the days after a primary hydrocarbon spill, so it’s almost weeks without any large-scale sampling or oil fingerprints.
There are a number of foreign organizations on the ground, such as the IMO and the insurer, Japan P
More seriously, the International Federation of Oil Tank Owners against Pollution (ITOPF), whose motto says “promoting an effective response to spills” in its logo, has two representatives in the Mauritius room. There are 17 technical guides indexed in ITOPF to deal with all facets of an oil spill. There is even a technical information document (TIP14) that focuses solely on how to model and print oil.
So what happened to all Wakashio oil samples and fingerprints which, according to ITOPF, are the most productive practices?When did ITOPF give its advice at national crisis committee meetings?[ITOPF has been contacted to comment but still responded. ]
There would be a large number of foreigners if this opinion were not officially given to Mauricio, given the vital legal implications of withholding those opinions.
Rick Dawson: Grease a lot of bad things inside. When it enters the marine environment, it begins to replace its toxicity. There are many tactics in which this toxicity replaces, but a vital pathway is relief in particle length that facilitates digestion through small creatures.
This is why it’s not just about spraying oil off the coast with water, chemicals, soap or a low-quality detergent, as this can cause even more serious long-term damage. We have learned from many oil spills around the world and all primary oil reaction organizations are aware of that. Thirty years after the Exxon Valdez in Alaska, the oil spill and the way the cleanup operation was controlled have many serious environmental consequences.
We want to know how oil is adjusted and what chemistry does, to be aware of the destruction that oil can cause in the environment.
There are at least 4 chemical control effects that you would expect to get early and report elsewhere on the spill site. These are the grades of 1. Carbons, 2. Whip, 3. Phosphates, 4. Heavy Metals.
In an environment with coral reefs, it’s about throwing disinfectant into the ocean. It will kill and whiten all coral reefs in that area. He wants to know what’s going on with the phosphates in the water.
Let’s take phosphates, which is PO4 in chemistry, for example. Phosphates are a mandatory vital detail for biological processes. However, if those grades are high, this can cause primary disorders in reef systems. The 3 biggest dangers I am feared by Mauritius’ fragile coral reefs due to phosphates are:
The same goes for heavy steels. I read that some of these endangered species are being relocated to coral atolls. Was there a proper investigation of heavy steels before they were returned?High concentrations of heavy steels have a significant impact on fitness. In this lagoon, the last thing to do is to put them back in a heavy steel concentration zone. It would be a very irresponsible recommendation for the Mauritius authorities.
You know that PSOs in general and heavy metals in particular cause physical fitness disorders in seafood that feed through the public.
Rick Dawson: I’m involved with what I see about biological sampling in Mauritius.
Typically, in an oil spill, a population of all species that may be affected is compiled. Specialists of these species would be contacted and a database would be temporarily established to perceive the mixture of destructive chemicals in these species.
Then the samples deserve to be collected. This is the mastery of scientists and we have some of the most productive in the world at NOAA. They can tell you precisely what type of sampling and biological testing is needed, as the techniques have been significantly complex over the past decade with new genomic techniques to track oil in various species, which are invisible.
In terms of the number of samples, I would expect the samples to now be in hundreds.
I read a report that only 21 samples were taken on August 14 and 15, even statistically significant!Any top math student can tell you how many samples you want to get even something important.
For an oil spill, calculate the amount of samples you want to take from statistical research of your initial samples that will sometimes give you an average, popular deviation, median, and variance. It would then take the variance that will allow you to estimate the number of samples to be taken to maintain compliance statistically. This is complex research and will need to be done through someone familiar with demographic statistics. You may want to stratify for each media type and resource type.
So now there have been a lot of samples and the samples want to be collected daily so we can see the settings over time.
You would go through rare species, however, the municipalities that allow you to make a comparison of what is happening.
As for testing, biomarker signatures are available to identify the spread of destructive carcinogenic HAPs in a biological chain. This is what is needed, and all samples must be handled, documented and thoroughly processed to prevent contamination of evidence. protocols in this regard, and I sense that it has been offering assistance to Mauritius since 13 August.
So, in general, those are some of the observations that are evident to me. In this case, I locate the answer compared to other primary oil spills and wonder why.
Representatives of ITOPF, IMO, Japan P
I am a progressive economist oriented to innovation, sustainability and moral economic growth. Lately I’m working with leading generation corporations in Silicon Valley in
I am an economist of progression focused on innovation, sustainability and moral economic expansion. Lately I’ve been working with leading generation corporations in Silicon Valley on opportunities for sustainable expansion, i. e. targeting low-income countries. I am president of the LSE Ocean Finance Initiative, WEF Global Network of Experts and a member of the CCICED China Council. My e-book on sustainability in the fourth industrial revolution, Soul of the Sea in the Age of the Algorithm, focuses on a revival of the oceans and climate and is based on me as an advisor on the economics and innovation of governments and global CEOs of Fortune 500.