The MV GL Lan Xiu, which was carrying 2000 head of livestock, was refuelling at Hamilton in Brisbane in January when an accidental oil spill occurred. It took less than five minutes for about 4.5 tonnes of oil to spew into the Brisbane River after a valve was not closed properly. The vessel’s owner of the ship that has caused the oil spill in the Brisbane River has been fined $60,000.
Oil in Our Waters is a 22-minute documentary about the illegal dumping of oil from ships. This film explores the extent of the problem, the impact of oil on the marine environment, the creation of MARPOL, the rewards for whistleblowers, and the penalties faced by polluters caught in the United States.
Source: Marine Defenders
Fibre from the stem of the banana plant can efficiently absorb oil spills that pollute coasts and threaten marine life says a new study by Indian researchers published during September. Banana fibre, when treated with certain chemicals, can absorb up to 18 times their weight of oil, Carbohydrate Polymers.
10 years after the Prestige oil spill off the Spanish coast, four men, including the vessel’s Master, went on trial last week in a northern Spanish Court. The Prestige oil spill is claimed to have caused the worst oil slick in Spain’s history, as 50,000 tonnes of fuel oil was dumped into the sea.
MIT researchers have developed a new technique for magnetically separating oil and water that could be used to clean up oil spills. They believe that, with their technique, the oil could be recovered for use, offsetting much of the cost of cleanup. The researchers will present their work at the International Conference on Magnetic Fluids in January. Shahriar Khushrushahi, a postdoc in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, is lead author on the paper, joined by Markus Zahn, the Thomas and Gerd Perkins Professor of Electrical Engineering, and T. Alan Hatton, the Ralph Landau Professor of Chemical Engineering. The team has also filed two patents on its work.
60 metric tonnes of bunker fuel were spilled on Singapore’s Temasek Fairway. According to the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA), the agency received a report at about 1400hrs on 9 September (Singapore time) that a Hong Kong-registered bulk carrier “Sunny Horizon”, collided with the “DL Salvia”, a Korean-registered Liquefied Petroleum Gas carrier.
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Officer of the Watch 