Focus on aftermath of oil spill

Tahir Qureshi clambered on board a launch moored just off a rocky outcrop on the east coast of Karachi, the boat see-sawing dangerously as one of the crew grabbed a hand and guided the ecosystems specialist from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) on board. "Careful how you step - last week, we had a visitor who fell into this water," Qureshi told this correspondent, pointing downwards to seawater clearly flecked with oil, as well as other, even more dubious substances. He stood, balanced carefully in the centre of the deck, as his visitor negotiated the small gap between shore and boat without incident. "This isn't just oil from the wrecked tanker: this is contaminated by sewerage water, by chemicals from factories, by oil from the oil refineries and, by engine oil from all these trawlers," Qureshi said, shifting his weight to retain his footing as a gentle swell passed under the boat. A crew-man put his body weight behind a push to make the launch move away from the makeshift pier and the man standing behind the wheel spun it around so that the boat turned slowly until its bow faced out, towards the open channel. With the engine now running, the pilot put it into gear and the launch began to steer a course through calm waters, passing by row upon row of little settlements along the waterfront. "These are the communities that rely on fishing to sustain them; it's their sole livelihood," Qureshi said, pointing to a row of little piers and fishing skiffs standing against a background of little huts and a few houses. "They live here, eat here, they bathe in this water and, because of all this pollution, now exacerbated by the oil spill, they've developed all sorts of illnesses: eye problems, skin infections, even tracheal complaints," he said, noting that an IUCN survey had helped pinpoint the local communities' problems. "Watch now, as we go along, you'll see the water turn red from the black sheen it currently has," Qureshi said, pointing to a jet of water gushing out from the stern. Soon enough, the water changed colour, glinting a dullish red, tinged with the rainbow flecks that are tell-tale signs of any form of oil particles in water. The red water was the result of effluents from a huge cattle colony where abattoirs abounded, Qureshi explained. "But this, still, isn't the main problem," he said. "The oil spill from the tanker is." The launch was by now making good headway through a channel lined on the starboard side with more fishing communities and fishermen readying their boats in the early morning sunlight for another long day at sea, and, off the port side an island shrouded by greenery. "Look, can you see them? Those are the mangroves, see?" Qureshi said, raising his voice excitedly. "They're drying, they've become stunted and, because of the contamination from the oil spill, they're dying. They're not very happy. They're not happy because they don't have the age gradations which are so necessary, because if they have those, then that means they're producing seeds, and if they're producing seeds, that means they're growing." This had been happening for a while because of pollution in any case, but now the problem had worsened because of the oil spill, Qureshi added. WRECKED TANKER The Tasman Spirit, a Greek-registered tanker carrying roughly 67,000 mt of crude oil, ran aground just off the Karachi coastline in late July, spilling one-sixth of its cargo almost immediately upon impact, and continued to leak as local and international crews battled to try and siphon the remainder of its cargo off to save the local environment from further degradation.

Fishermen repair their boats outside Karachi

Soon, battered by the rise and fall of daily tides, the ship began to fall apart, and salvage crews were forced to up the ante: with 35,000 mt of crude still on board, a race against time had begun to divest the ship of its remaining cargo before the ship actually broke apart. Horrified conservationists, including Qureshi, said the catastrophe had already hit marine life hard. Qureshi said he had personally witnessed hundreds of dead fish and crabs lying on a beach close to an upscale waterfront neighbourhood, where residents had already begun to complain of the effects of the spillage. "The coastal environment where the spill occurred is a rich and diverse tropical marine/estuarine ecosystem. It includes extensive mangrove forests, habitats for Green and Olive Ridley sea turtles, dolphins, porpoises and beaked whales, and several species of lizards and sea snakes," a subsequent report commissioned by Pakistan's ministry of environment and completed by the Sindh Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA), said. The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), the IUCN and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) helped in the compilation of the report, which said that the initial impacted area covered about 40 sq km, with seawater analyses revealing extensive hydrocarbon contamination. As soon as the incident occurred, Karachi port authorities acted quickly to preserve their ships and installations, setting up "marine roadblocks" around the harbour to keep the rapidly spreading swill at bay, a KPT official told IRIN in July. International consultants were called in to help and aerial sprays were commissioned, so that the damage to the marine environment could be minimised, he added. But conservationists like Qureshi were mortified by the scale of the damage they could see, and angrier still at what they called "a lack of preventive measures, and not taken quickly enough".

Seawater coloured yellow by outflow from local sewage systems

Thickly populated areas along the Clifton coastline, leading up to Port Qasim in the east, were likely to be badly affected, Qureshi told IRIN in August. "There are heavily populated clusters of fishing communities whose very livelihoods will be destroyed, because they'll have no fish to catch now," he fumed. It would take the mangroves at least three to four years to recover from the disaster, possibly more, he said. "The scale of the disaster could have been limited had the authorities reacted properly - and if they didn't have obsolete equipment," he stressed. IMMEDIATE AND LONG-TERM EFFECTS "The immediate effect was the mortality of fishes. I saw them with my own eyes: millions of little fish, crabs, shrimps, all of them washed up ashore when the tide receded," Qureshi, a slight, bespectacled man who smoothed his thinning hair before positioning a peaked cap smartly on his head, said. "And what did the authorities do? They used bulldozers and other machinery to cart them all away," he said. "Localised fisheries - shrimp fisheries, shell fisheries, edible fisheries - were all destroyed. There's a whole food chain that has been affected...," the ecosystems specialist explained. "The long-term effect of this is that after two years, your entire fisheries will be destroyed," he warned. "Plus, the east coast - and the west coast - are high-priority areas - ecologically, economically and environmentally, they are highly sensitive areas," Qureshi stressed. The boat speeded up then and Qureshi moved, prudently, to one of the plastic chairs the crew had placed along the sides for their visitors. "The poor green turtles were caught up in the spill and their dead carcasses were dragged towards the Clifton beach, where you could see them lying around," he continued, peering eagerly at the island with the mangroves that had come closer by now. The habitat of the green turtle had to be saved, Qureshi stressed. "They have been coming to nest here for centuries. Even though they have a strong carcass and their shell is quite resilient, if they eat flora coated with oil, the toxicity from the hydrocarbons will kill them." Apart from that, when migratory birds - some of which came from Siberia - entered Pakistan through Balochistan, Karachi's west coast is their first stop, where they bred, fed and roosted, he explained. "Even that area has been affected by the spill. So, even that migratory pattern, a breeding pattern which has been in natural vogue for centuries, has been affected," he said. DAMAGE TO MANGROVES The launch was now approaching the Karachi Port Trust's navigational channel and Qureshi pointed out an island, just barely visible through the early morning haze. "That's Bandal Island. It used to be covered with mangroves. Now there's not a single blade of grass that grows there, because there's no natural regeneration of seedlings. That used to occur every year, but now it won't," he said. Karachi's mangroves were natural shelter banks against wind erosion; when the sand dunes shifted, the mangroves protected the city's entire industrial area and, in fact, the entire city from the devastating effects of wind-blown sand, Qureshi explained. "If the mangroves didn't exist, the entire city would be cloaked with sand and no one would be able to breathe here," he said. A sandy, muddy beach became clearly visible just then and the pilot cut the engine, after quickly putting it into reverse for a few seconds. Silent now, the boat drifted slowly towards the shore, with the only sound that of the waves lapping against the sides of the boat. Qureshi was not done with his lecture. "The mangroves are also physical barriers against cyclones," he said. "Now, because this was the mangrove seeding season, all the seedlings fell into the water and were resultantly coated with oil, so 95 percent of the seedlings were destroyed." The pilot had decided, by then, that this was as far as he would risk taking the boat. The crewman on the bow jumped into knee-deep water, followed by another from starboard and both trudged through the mud-flats that masqueraded as the beach of the little island. They returned a few minutes later and one of them handed Qureshi what appeared to be a handful of beans.

Boulders on Clifton beach still layered from the effects of the oil spill

"No, these aren't beans," Qureshi said, holding his palm out into the sunlight so his visitor could see better. "These are - or used to be - mangrove seedlings. Now, they're as good as dead. See, they're coated with oil. They're dead, they've suffocated because of the thick layer of oil." NO EFFECTIVE CLEANUP Later, Qureshi stood on the sand and peered angrily out towards the sea from Clifton beach which had seen residents of the upscale neighbourhood that lines the waterfront in urban Karachi complaining of respiratory problems, eye infections and other ill effects on health following the spill. Almost a month after the tanker ran aground, health authorities were forced to set up special medical camps, with teams also going door-to-door to help those who could not - or would not - go to the camps. "See this?" Qureshi asked, pointing to a line of boulders clearly stained with the black remnants of crude oil. "This shows just how bad it was - it's been nearly three months since the tanker got wrecked and you can still see how bad the effect of the oil was." He walked quickly towards a waiting vehicle and jumped in. "Just wait till you see what's up ahead," he said grimly. About two kilometres from where he had earlier stepped on to the Clifton beach, the undeveloped sectors ("reclaimed from the sea.") slowly gave way to a very densely populated area. Rows of blocks of flats lined one side of the newly refurbished dual carriageway, but the beach, for decades almost invariably full of picnickers, was empty. Qureshi told the driver to go right up past the oldest blocks. "This is what I want you to see," he said, telling the driver to stop. He walked briskly out towards the sea, stopping short about 10 metres from the edge of the water.

A blue sack, one of many littered along the Clifton waterfront lined with high-rise residential buildings, is said to contain contaminated sand, supposed to be transported to uninhabitated areas - but isn't, according to conservationists

"Look at this," he said, pointing downwards. He dug deeply into the sand with his toe, shovelling small amounts aside. "IUCN did a sample here, to see how badly the sand was contaminated," he said. "We found that the oil has percolated 43 centimeters into the sand. "And do you know what's worse? See those blue sacks?" he asked, pointing to one close by, which lay, tied at the neck, like a gunny-bag. "Those have sand in them. The authorities are supposed to be cleaning this place up. Instead, what they do is either leave them lying around like this, or they simply take all this contaminated sand to areas where poor communities live along the coastline, thinking they won't know and so, they won't be able to complain," he said.