Wreckage of dhow no real cause for concern

The wreckage of a dhow, a coasting vessel of Arabia, East Africa, and the Indian Ocean, which sank just off the coast off the southern port city of Karachi early in the week, and the resultant oil spill, which forced the closure of a popular commercial beach for three days by local authorities, was no real cause for concern, according to an environmentalist. A Ghana-registered dhow named Al Garhoud, which was bound for the oil-rich emirate of Dubai, sank in deep waters, about 30 nautical miles from Karachi, after developing engine trouble on Monday. All 11 crewmen were saved by Pakistani maritime authorities but the abandoned ship soon broke apart under the heavy pounding of coastal waves and the wreckage was found washed up along a beach that serves an up market seaside residential area, forcing administrators to close the beach for three days while environmental bodies assessed the damage caused by the boat’s fuel. “It is not really cause for concern,” Dr Ejaz Ahmed, the deputy director of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Pakistan, told IRIN from Karachi. “It was a small ship, medium-sized, which was just carrying cargo,” he added. Karachi authorities told newsmen on Tuesday that the beach had been closed to the public simply so that the wreckage of the boat, as well as its cargo of hay bales, could be removed from the beach. Government health and environmental experts also surveyed the area to ascertain whether local residents faced any health risks and, despite the fact that provincial Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) told local newspapers that oil had been detected some three to four feet deep in the beach’s soil, it was determined that there was no immediate threat to people. Ahmed agreed, saying it appeared that “no significant damage had occurred”. “Basically, the oil that was spilled was the boat’s own diesel. But the quantity isn’t enough to cause any concern,” he stressed, adding that a special WWF team had also carried out a survey which reported no “alarming elements” in either the water or the beach. The dhow’s sinking came barely a year after the Tasman Spirit, an oil tanker carrying close to 70,000 mt of crude oil, sank just off the bustling Karachi coastline, affecting more than 35 square km in the sea because of the spillage of half of the tanker’s contents, according to environmentalists. A coastal ecosystems specialist at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) told IRIN that the spillage of nearly half the Tasman Spirit’s oil cargo into the sea was an “ecological, environmental and economic disaster” which would cause Karachi’s rich mangrove forests “at least three to four years to recover,” apart from affecting forest fisheries and causing marine biodiversity to stand in danger of being destroyed.