More dangerous goods aboard stricken Rena
November 30th, 2011
More bungling on the Rena was revealed last week when Maritime NZ announced an urgent investigation into the late disclosure by the Mediterranean Shipping Corporation of 21 previously undisclosed containers holding dangerous goods.
11 containers were originally reported as holding dangerous goods, when the Rena went aground on the well-marked Astrolabe Reef in the small hours of October 5, where it lost oil and some 87 containers into the sea.
“For reasons still unknown,” the required disclosures under the International Maritime Dangerous Goods Code didn’t occur for some six weeks and may have breached maritime law.
All 21 containers are below decks and contain a relatively low risk total of 490 tonnes of cryolite, a bonding agent that can be toxic if breathed as dust.
MNZ says “expert advice is that the cryolite on board Rena is considered to be of low risk given that the product is only slightly soluble in water, so is expected to dissolve slowly. Any dissolved material will be diluted and dispersed very rapidly, reducing the potential effects further.”
Meanwhile, Waikato University’s Chair in Coastal Science Professor Chris Battershill says the full environmental impacts of dispersants used to combat the Rena oil spill remain largely unknown.
Attempts to use dispersants to break up the oil before it washed ashore were abandoned.
Battershill says “unfortunately we know little about the toxicology of the dispersants on NZ species.”
The university’s Coastal Marine Group will provide a report by Christmas to help in determining how future marine disasters should be managed.
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