Oil slick comeback triggers panic

With the change in the ocean current, the oil slick that had appeared last month as a result of a collision between two cargo ships, has reappeared in parts of North Chennai coast between the worst affected Ramakrishna Nagar Kuppam and Ennore port creating panic among the local fishermen.

After claims by the state government and the coast guard that 95 per cent of the oil spill had been cleared, fresh deposit of oil slick has made its way on the shores of Eranavur Kuppam and Annai Sivagami Nagar in last four days.

A team of over 15 contract workers has been engaged by the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board to clean up the newly deposited slick along the Eranavur Kuppam coast. “The clean-up work will take at least five to six days to complete, as we have to wash oil off the rocks as well,” said one of the supervisors.

The oil slick washing ashore in the newer areas in Ennore coastline might be due to change in the ocean current towards the north, TM Balakrishnan Nair, head of Indian National Center for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), told DNA. He said INCOIS stopped running its oil spill trajectory model after it was informed that all the deposits had been cleared. “Maybe patches of oil remained, and with change in the current movement towards the north, it (oil slick) is now moving towards the north,” he said. They will soon run the trajectory model to find out the extent of movement of the oil slick, he added.

Prof Dr S Srinivasalu, director, Institute of Ocean Management, Anna University, said that there is nothing to panic about the fresh deposit of tar balls as it “is a general and regular phenomenon after an oil spill”. “Oil breaks into small pieces and becomes tiny tar balls. With the current pattern, they join. The small microparticles will join and become a macroparticle, which joined with other macroparticles forms a colloid. They will be a larger body and they will be again transferred towards north because of the current. These particles will not have any spreading velocity, and again will be deposited over the place,” he explained.

Fishermen say their lives are yet to return to normalcy. “Our livelihoods have been severely affected. Almost four weeks after the incident, people still fear that fish might be contaminated and are not buying,” said Saravanan of Eranavur Kuppam. If oil continues to wash ashore, it would mean an economic disaster they’ll have difficulty recovering from, he said.

After two ships carrying crude oil and LPG collided off the Kamarajar Port Ltd (KPL) at Ennore on January 29 resulting in an oil spill, the Indian Coast Guard led a multi-agency clean-up operation with the help of volunteers from several departments, students and fishermen to remove the sludge washed ashore at Ramakrishna Nagar Kuppam near Eranavur. The oil sludge, which mainly washed ashore at Eranavur, travelled over 200 km southwards at Cuddalore a few days ago.

According to the Coast Guard, 187 tonnes of sludge oil, 109 kilo litres oil mixed with water and about 81.5 metric tonnes of sand mixed oil have been recovered. They are being treated by the bio-remediation process at Ennore port with help from Indian Oil Corporation Ltd.