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NY Times, Feb. 13, 2018
A Nearly Invisible Oil Spill Threatens Some of Asia’s Richest Fisheries
By STEVEN LEE MYERS and JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZ
ZHOUSHAN, China — A fiery collision that sank an Iranian tanker in the
East China Sea a month ago has resulted in an environmental threat that
experts say is unlike any before: An almost invisible type of petroleum
has begun to contaminate some of the most important fishing grounds in
Asia, from China to Japan and beyond.
It is the largest oil spill in decades, but the disaster has unfolded
outside the glare of international attention that big spills have
previously attracted. That is because of its remote location on the high
seas and also the type of petroleum involved: condensate, a toxic,
liquid byproduct of natural gas production.
Unlike the crude oil in better-known disasters like the Exxon Valdez and
the Deepwater Horizon, condensate does not clump into black globules
that can be easily spotted or produce heart-wrenching images of animals
mired in muck. There’s no visible slick that can be pumped out. Experts
said the only real solution is to let it evaporate or dissolve. Absorbed
into the water, it will remain toxic for a time, though it will also
disperse more quickly into the ocean than crude oil.
Experts say there has never been so large a spill of condensate; up to
111,000 metric tons has poured into the ocean. It has almost certainly
already invaded an ecosystem that includes some of the world’s most
bountiful fisheries off Zhoushan, the archipelago that rises where the
Yangtze River flows into the East China Sea.
The area produced five million tons of seafood of up to four dozen
species for China alone last year, according to Greenpeace, including
crab, squid, yellow croaker, mackerel and a local favorite, hairtail. If
projections are correct, the toxins could soon make their way into
equally abundant Japanese fisheries.
Exposure to condensate is extremely unhealthy to humans and potentially
fatal. The effects of eating fish contaminated with it remain
essentially untested, but experts strongly advise against doing so.
“This is an oil spill of a type we haven’t seen before,” said Paul
Johnston, a scientist at Greenpeace Research Laboratories at the
University of Exeter in England. “Working out the impact is actually a
huge task — probably next to impossible.”
For China, the disaster has become a test of its ambitions as a global
and regional steward of the seas, especially at a time when it is
reinforcing its territorial claims, including disputed territories with
Japan in these waters. Given its proximity, China has taken the lead in
investigating the disaster and monitoring the spill, but it has faced
some criticism for what some see as a slow and inadequate response thus far.
Officials in Beijing announced on Feb. 1 that samples of fish taken
within four to five nautical miles of the sunken ship contained traces
of petroleum hydrocarbons, suggesting possible condensate contamination;
they pledged to expand the range of testing to 90 miles, and closely
monitor fish coming into markets.
The threat of contamination has raised anxiety in the ports that cling
to the rugged coastlines of Zhoushan’s islands, though such fears are
usually expressed with quiet resignation lest one offend the government.
“The quality will go down because of the oil in the water,” Hai Tao, a
fish wholesaler at the International Aquatic Product City in Putuo, a
district on Zhoushan’s biggest island, said as he watched a ship unload
hundreds of crates of mantis shrimp, a delicacy headed to restaurants
across China.
The spill began on the evening of Jan. 6, when the Sanchi, a
Panamanian-flagged, Iranian-owned tanker, collided with a cargo ship in
waters roughly 160 nautical miles east of Shanghai. The Sanchi exploded
and burned for more than a week before sinking. All 32 crew members are
presumed dead.
Katya Popova, a senior research scientist at the National Oceanography
Center in England, said there had not been a sufficiently coordinated
international operation, and that was exacerbating the scale of the
disaster.
The lack of visible devastation has almost certainly dampened public
reaction that might have galvanized a more vigorous response.
“A much larger-scale operation is needed,” she said. “It hasn’t been
monitored. It’s a mystery.”
In Beijing, officials have been eager to demonstrate that the government
was doing everything possible first to respond to the disaster and then
to protect the health of its economically and politically sensitive
fishing industry, which employs 14 million people.
They have issued regular statements and held briefings, showing video of
efforts to clean up the condensate and to monitor the sunken wreck,
which was located at a depth of 115 meters, or about 377 feet. It is
believed to still be leaking condensate and other fuels.
Han Xu, deputy director of the fisheries administration bureau of the
Ministry of Agriculture, told reporters at a news conference in Beijing
late last month that the accident had “a certain impact on the density
of fishery resources” in the area, but that the government did not yet
know the extent of the threat.
“At present, the investigation and monitoring are still ongoing and we
are awaiting results of investigations into pollution and successive
fishery resource investigations,” he said.
In the meantime, the authorities have ordered a ban on fishing in the
areas affected.
In the East River Fish Market in Putuo, one seller brusquely dismissed
questions about the spill as she stood beside a stall full of fish,
including a tuna selling for roughly $100. “Our fish are not from out
there,” she said, though some of them very likely were.
The size of the area affected by the disaster has expanded and
contracted. At one point in January, there were three different spills
spotted on the surface, covering an area that measured more than 128
square miles. Complicating the calculations is uncertainty about the
amount of condensate that ended up in the water.
China’s Ministry of Transportation initially played down the possibility
of a spill, then said 136,000 metric tons had been lost. Later, it
revised the figure downward to 111,000 tons — still enough to make it
the worst tanker spill at sea since 1991.
Some of the condensate may have burned off in the fires, sparing the
sea, but contaminating the air. Officials said they were testing air
samples in the provinces around Shanghai.
If any fuel washes ashore, there may be ways to limit the damage in the
immediate vicinity, with machines or by hand. But the biggest issue now
seems to be that nobody knows the scale of the problem or which parts of
the high seas are affected.
The spill is already drifting east toward Japan, but winds and currents
can be unpredictable. The contamination could even reach waters as far
off as Tokyo.
The Japanese Coast Guard has announced that black globules had been
found on at least nine islands along the chain between Okinawa and the
main Japanese islands. Those would not be from the condensate, though
they could be other oil from the Sanchi wreck.
In any case, the discoveries suggested the condensate may have already
reach Japan’s third most important fishery, teeming with bonito and
yellowfin tuna. A dead sea turtle, evidently choked by oil, washed
ashore on one island, Amami Oshima.
Hiroshi Takahashi, a fisheries official in Kagoshima, said that the
impacts of the spill on seafood were “the biggest concern right now.”
The cause of the disaster remains a mystery. The Sanchi was nearing the
end of its voyage to South Korea through one of the most heavily
traversed parts of the world’s oceans when it collided with the CF
Crystal, a bulk carrier flagged in Hong Kong that was delivering grain
to China from the United States.
As the Sanchi erupted into flames, the Crystal managed to make harbor —
and is now in one of Zhoushan’s many ports.
At least five Chinese Coast Guard ships, aided by fishing boats, led the
rescue efforts and the long struggle to extinguish the blaze that
consumed the tanker for eight days before it sank on Jan. 14. Japan and
South Korea each sent one ship, and the United States Navy sent a P-8A
Poseidon aircraft from Kadena Air Base on Okinawa.
A Chinese emergency team in flame-resistant suits at one point boarded
the burning ship, recovering the bodies of two crewmen and the “black
box” data recorder before the intensity of the heat drove them off. One
other body was pulled from the sea.
On the Shengsi islands, the part of the Zhoushan archipelago that was
closest to the accident, the spill could threaten an industry already
strained by polluted runoff from the Yangtze and by overfishing.
At one village nestled in a harbor, three boats unloaded their final
catches before the start this week of the Lunar New Year holidays. An
astounding variety of fish were sorted dockside into plastic trays. Wu
Zhihong, who with her husband owns one of the trawlers, said the catch
over the last year had been an improvement over the year before.
Ms. Wu expressed hope that the damage from the spill would be limited,
absorbed into a wider, forgiving ocean. “The sea is very big,” she said
amid a cacophony of fishmongers who descended on the pier to bargain
over the catch.
Steven Lee Myers reported from Beijing and Zhoushan, and Javier C.
Hernández from Beijing. Olivia Mitchell Ryan contributed research from
Zhoushan, Zoe Mou from Beijing, and Hisako Ueno from Tokyo.
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