Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Nick Ling: Waikato University Ecology Expert on the danger to marine life after the Manawanui sunk by Samoa

Transcript

Nick Ling: Waikato University Ecology Expert on the danger to marine life after the Manawanui sunk by Samoa · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The potential echo catastrophe the Mono Manui. This is in Samaira.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Videos captured near the site yesterday of the grounding showing
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: a turtle struggling to swim in a thick oil slick
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: with shipping containers, planks of wood and life jackets floating nearby.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Nick Ling is the associate professor at Warcuter University School
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: of Medicine. He's with us this morning, Nick, Good.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Morning, Yeah, good morning, right, how are you?
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm good, thank you. So this oil, let's first
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: of all, there's a thousand tons of it. This is
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: not Arina grade heavy oil. This is engine oil.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so as I understand it, unlike the fuel oil
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: that was on the arena, which was called heavy fuel oil,
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: this is a much lighter grade. So it's more similar
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: to automotive diesel oil. So the thing is with these
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  Speaker 2: ship oils is that they contain a mixture of different hydrocarbons.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: And obviously the stuff that we burn in our cars
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  Speaker 2: is a very light grade. And so if you leave
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: that too, if you have the spill of that, it
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: would just simply evaporate away. So the stuff that's on
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  Speaker 2: the Manuwanui is a light grade of shipping fuel oil,
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  Speaker 2: and so much of the material that was released in
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  Speaker 2: the early spill would have evaporated off and that leaves
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  Speaker 2: a residue of the sort of heavier components, and that's
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: what would have been observed yesterday in the video of
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: that struggling turtle. And obviously, you know those sort of
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  Speaker 2: marine animals, anything that has to interact with the surface,
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  Speaker 2: like those turtles that have to come to the surface
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  Speaker 2: to breathe, they will then encounter that.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: And the case that stays on the surface, does it.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Well, as the spill progresses, much of those
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: lighter components will evaporate and then finally the last stage
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  Speaker 2: is that you'll get sort of tari deposits which will
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  Speaker 2: actually be heavier than the water, and they will then
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: finally sink as tar balls to the bottom.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Right, And how big is this? How big of a
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: deal is this a thousand tons?
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  Speaker 2: It's certainly pretty big. So that's about three times the
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: amount of oil that was released from Marena wreck. But
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  Speaker 2: certainly the media reports yesterday of the first assessment of
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: the wreck by divers are very encouraging in that they're
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: not showing any leakage currently and that would suggest that
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  Speaker 2: almost all of that is contained within the wreck. So
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  Speaker 2: obviously the next priority would be to remove that material
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: through salvaging the wreck.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Right, is there a risk actually getting SALVO vessels in
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  Speaker 1: there that we might have a pile up?
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well certainly. You know, obviously it's right next to
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  Speaker 2: a reef and it's a fairly exposed place, so there
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  Speaker 2: is the potential hazard of working in that area when
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  Speaker 2: you're sending other marine assets into that area. But it's
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: not impossible to do that obviously. The experts salvas are
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: used to working in those sort of conditions. I mean
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  Speaker 2: that was the case with the Arena as well. The
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: salvers had to work right next to the reef in
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  Speaker 2: a very exposed area, and so it's just a case
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: of managing that risk.
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  Speaker 1: So best case scenario here, Nick, we have most of
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  Speaker 1: the oil apparently still contained within the vessel. If we
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: can get in there Selvo, the environmental impact might be
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: quite small.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, potentially, Yeah, I mean obviously there's potentially other
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: things on the wreck as well. I mean that was
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: the case with the Arena. You know, it had contained
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  Speaker 2: as a dangerous goods on board. We don't know what
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  Speaker 2: else is on the Manawanui at this stage, you know,
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  Speaker 2: potentially there's munitions and those sort of things that might
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  Speaker 2: be on a naval ship and they would need to
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: be salvage as well. But certainly the initial assessment seems
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: very encouraging that the wreck is fully intact, that's sitting
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: on the bottom at a reasonable depth. It's only thirty
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: meters deep. That means it's accessible by normal divers. The
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: fact that it's intact means that removing the oil should
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: be a much more simple task, and potentially salvaging the
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  Speaker 2: entire wreck and removing it entirely is obviously easier to
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: do when the reck is intact rather than broken up.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's a good point, and it's only thirty
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  Speaker 1: meters deep, so that is potentially a possibility. Nick, Thank
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: you so much for your time. Nick Ling, Associate Professor,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: School of Science at why katz A University, saying that
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: scigns are looking good in terms of the environmental impact.
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• 4:32
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• 4:35
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