MV
Rena Oil Spill Data
OFF
TAURANGA, NEW ZEALAND:
Photo
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12/10/2011
On
Wednesday October 5, a 236 metre container ship - the Rena - somehow
managed to lodge itself at full speed on to the well-marked Astrolabe
Reef off Tauranga.
Tauranga
is in the beautiful Bay of Plenty and its main beaches are Papamoa,
Omanu and Mount Main Beach. Around the Astrolabe Reef are wonderful
fish breeding grounds, rich colonies of lobster, oysters, mussels
and other seafood.
They
are also pristine waters in which to see whales, dolphins, seals
and orca.
Visitors
and locals alike can get out in one of the many charter boats for
some internationally reknown gamefishing.
Now
all of those things are under threat because some moronic cretins
couldn't read a map, or notice the markers, were asleep, bedding
the cabin boy, or just incompetent.
For
from the Rena - which has split in two - hundreds of tonnes of heavy
fuel oil spewed into the ocean.
You
may think I sound angry - I'm so beyond angry because Papamoa is
my beach.
Every
one of its 35,000 residents thinks of it as their beach.
It
was pristine and I would walk on it most days.
Then
it was polluted with heavy shipping fuel - a gluggy, stinky, sticky
mass - and took a massive amount of work to return to a usable state.
For
months it was marbled at high tide with balls of oil.
I
want to talk with the Rena's captain who has pleaded guilty to numerous
charges over the grounding of the Rena. Whatever his penalty it
will not be enough.
As
I talk to this man I will want to ram my fist into his face several
times. I better have someone near me because otherwise I may not
stop.
Anyway,
this is my photo journal of the Rena Disaster and I think you'll
find it a terrible thing to see.
But
there are also positive images - of a conservation worker chasing
down and saving an oil-covered penguin, the cleaning of oil-soaked
wildlife and the hundreds of volunteers who worked exeptionally
hard to lessen the damage done by the Rena.
It
is fair to say that we in the Bay of Plenty have dodged the bullet.
-
Richard Moore
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