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The Ship Sinking Off Sri Lanka Looks Like A Lasting Environmental Disaster
A sinking cargo ship off the coast of Sri Lanka is causing an environmental disaster for the country that looks set to have long-term effects.
The X-Press Pearl caught fire on May 20 and burned for two weeks, but the fire appears to have mostly burned out. The crew was evacuated. The ship is now partially sitting on the seabed with its front settling down slowly.
Its cargo is the concern: The ship was carrying dangerous chemicals, including 25 tons of nitric acid and 350 tons of fuel oil. The ship's operator says oil has not spilled so far. But what's already having an impact on beaches nearby are the 78 metric tons of plastic called nurdles — the raw material used to make most types of plastic products.
Wave after wave of plastic pellets are washing ashore. The ship is about 5 miles from the nearest beach.
Also at The Guardian.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 07 2021, @10:15AM
"Whatever poor people do in Sri Lanka" is often fishing and taking care of tourists, both of which are harmed by this shipwreck.
No one will want the salvaged plastic, so anything that gets cleaned up will just become waste to be recycled or otherwise disposed of. Some of the other cargo on the ship might be salvageable, like the lead ingots, but that will go to salvage specialists, not beachcombers. Cleanup efforts usually aren't very helpful. Remember all those pictures of people wiping oil off of birds after the Valdez shipwreck, that was all pretty much useless, the birds died anyway, it might have even made things worse.
I expect the effects will be short term, though, cleanup efforts or no. While the plastic won't biodegrade, it will mechanically degrade, and soon enough these little pellets will become invisibly small microplastic pollution.
The Guardian article talks about "decades and decades" before things return to normal, but my guess is that everything will have returned to normal within a couple of years. There will still be some extra plastic in the environment, but it won't be visible and will end up being somebody's PhD thesis.