Spills can kill

“The marine parkis doomed for sure,” says environmentalist Rajkot-based Niranjan Chaya. “Oil spills and pollution are slowly destroying marine life. One gallon of oil spill is equivalent to zero oxygen content in 5,000 gallons of sea water. And oil spills are very frequent here. The consequent pollution is causing absolute havoc here,” he says.

The park is home to more than 200 species of fish, 40 types of corals, 25 types of prawns, 15 species of starfish, 150 species of aquatic animals, 90 spices of water birds, the sea tortoise, sea snakes, 210 varieties of algae and many other species. Several of these species are endangered.

“All this stands threatened today. While we are unable to differentiate between development and destruction, environment suffers,” says Luvkumar Khachar, another local environmentalist. According to Vadinar port officer S.K. Kotak, “small” oil spills have become very common in the Gulf of Kutch. “During the receding high tide sometimes the oil slicks get diverted into the high seas. Butwhen the spills occur when the tide is about to come in, the oil slicks touch the coast. The unfortunate part is that unless it is spotted early we are unable to do anything about it.”

The bad news is that the government is poorly equipped to handle a major oil spill in the Gulf of Kutch. The state government and the two ports are poorly equipped and do not have the expertise to handle oil spills. In fact none of the government agencies, including the forest department, which is in charge of park, the pollution control board, the district administration, and the port authorities, have the expertise or technology to tackle oil spills.

Only the Kandla Port Trust, the IOCL, and the Coast Guard have the necessary equipment. Help from the Coast Guard is always taken for granted, as other government agencies do not have the necessary resources to deal with major spills. According to Richard Golob, director of the Oil Research Institute, USA, “even if 20 per cent of the spilt oil is recovered, it is a greatachievement”. But that is only possible on the high seas. Near coasts, with recurring tides, recovery is very lowindeed.

Spilt oil chokes marine life. It kills local fish because the oil sticks to their gills. Research has shown that oil spills are also directly responsible for affecting the reproductive cycle in certain species of fish. It also destroys the microscopic food which sustain much of marine life. When the oil hits the coast, it causes severe damage to mangroves. The aerial roots are destroyed and this ultimately leads to the degeneration of the local plants. Even 20 years after the Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska, life has not returned to normal there, as Chaya points out.

Says R.C. Pal, director of Marine National Park, “It is a little unnerving because we are very poorly equipped to do anything in the event of a major oil spill. At a time when all government agencies and companies should be having state-of-the-art crisis management equipment, we still depend on other agencies like theCoast Guard to do the job for us.”

The other problem is in nabbing the culprit in time. Unfortunately, although there are two research units on fisheries affiliated to the Gujarat Agricultural University in Sikka and Okha, between which lies the park, the oil samples have to be sent to Dehradun for testing. “Which means it takes a long time to ascertain the real villain responsible for the spill, and this hampers investigations,” forest officials say.

Studies of a rare coral colony in Narora lagoon, which lies in this region indicate that survival of the coral here is also under great threat thanks to the slick. Says Khachar, “The corals don’t stand a chance of survival if strict norms and safety standards are not maintained here. If you want development and environment to go together, you have to ensure there are no oil spills and pollution here.”

Pal couldn’t agree more.“Already there is an indirect assault on their existence due to the occasional spills which not only paint the coast black butleave a residue of thick oil patches sticking to reefs and mangroves. Fish and water birds are affected. And if there is a major oil spill, this entire stretch will be destroyed beyond repair because the tides come in so fast that it is difficult to control them,” he says.

The disaster management force, ironically, lists the fire brigade and state intelligence bureau as agencies that could help in times of crisis, although neither can deal with such mishaps.

“We are talking of disasters of large dimensions. Ultra-large crude oil tankers twice the size of football fields, can carry up to 3 lakh metric tonnes of crude. So, obviously, if something happens to them the damage that they can wrought will also be enormous,” says a port official.

Indian Oil Corporation officials point out that the biggest problem is the difficulty in coordinating the various concerned agencies, especially when reaction time is minimal. At the ports, the single-mooring buoys, where oil is offloaded, are four to five kilometresinto the sea. With heavy currents and high wind velocity and the tides, the average reaction time available is not more than one hour. “If the spill occurs in the night and is not noticed, the shore is bound to be covered with oil,” says a forest department official.

Although, IOCL’s buoys were sanctioned in 1982, before the park was created, two more buoys of private companies have also been cleared. The Union ministry of Environment & Forests agreed to this on the grounds that they were required for development. However, since then, no further buoys have been allowed.

State Fisheries Minister Babubhai Bokhiria claims that the fish catch has gone down by two lakh tonnes along the Saurashtra Coast, especially off the Jamnagar and Veraval coasts. The fisheries industries near Salaya is also believed to be badly affected due to oil spills.

Last fortnight’s oil spill on the Vadinar coast is just a harbinger of what is in store for this scenic and ecologically significant region which can boast of havingsome of the most uniue species of coral and marine life in the world.