In the late 1950s, on the Thames, near the London suburb of Battersea, a motorboat carrying two hundred tons of oil sank. Hundreds of swans floating in the river were soaked in the oily black liquid. The birds were in danger of death.
Rescue operations were initiated by the Animal Welfare Society and the River Police. Boats and boats scurried along the Thames, driving the birds to the shore, where rescue workers were already waiting for them. They pulled the birds out of the water and sent them in ambulances to the clinic. But many swans could no longer be saved by trying to peel the feathers, the swans had swallowed oil and were now dying.
The survivors were treated with a special apparatus that sucked oil from their feathers. Then the birds were given a soap bath, but despite all the efforts and efforts of people, one hundred of the 350 birds died.
The Norwegian traveler Thor Heyerdahl, the head of scientific expeditions on the papyrus rafts "Ra-1" and "Ra-2", wrote that during the journey for 43 days (over 4350 kilometers) he sailed on an oiled ocean. Moreover, water pollution was often very high. The oil film, two centimeters thick, covered an ocean area of five hundred square kilometers. Then the oil spread even wider.
On busy sea routes, you can often find ships that are noticeably different in appearance from all the others. They have a long hull and a relatively small superstructure above the deck, usually offset to the stern. These are tankers designed for the transportation of oil and oil products. Among them, there are real giants with a carrying capacity of hundreds of thousands of tons.
Tankers often make their voyages without calling at associated ports. Sailors, in terms of the duration of their stay at sea, may well rival the whalers of the old days, who did not leave the deck of their boats for months. And why would the sailors of the tankers go ashore ?! Onboard desalination plants produce up to forty tons of fresh water per day, provisions are delivered by helicopters more than once during the journey. Thus, the sailor of the supertanker sees the monotonous expanses of the ocean almost all the time of the voyage. Of course, there are movie shops, swimming pools, bars to brighten up the crew's cut off from the outside world.
Unfortunately, despite the state-of-the-art equipment and technology, tanker accidents cannot always be avoided. Authors A. S. Monin and V. I. Voitov wrote the book "Black Tides", which is a kind of encyclopedia on this topic. In particular, they tell about the tragedy of 1978 that took place on the resort shores of France. The supertanker Amoco Cadiz took on board one hundred thousand tons of light Arab oil and 123 thousand tons of light crude Iranian oil on the Iranian island of Khark in the Persian Gulf. He followed to the Dutch port of Rotterdam. At about noon on March 16, the navigator of the watch reported to the captain that the ship was not steering well. At this time, the supertanker, approaching the entrance to the English Channel, was still in the outer part of the Bay of Biscay (it was his sailors who call it the "Bag of Storms"). Here a storm was raging with a force of no less than ten points. Huge waves washed over the deck, trying to overturn the steel hulk.
The repair mechanics called by the captain found a problem in the hydraulic steering system and assured that they would quickly fix the problem. But time passed, and it was not possible to fix the problem. Actually uncontrollable "Amoco Cadiz" continued its crazy voyage in the stormy ocean. Near the island of Ouessant, the heavily loaded supertanker finally lost its course and began to turn around.
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The seriously worried captain of the Amoco Cadiz, Pascal Berdari, contacted the shipowners by radio and informed them of the ship's plight. This conversation was overheard by a radio operator from the powerful West German rescue tug "Pacific".
Rescue tugs of Western countries usually sit in an "ambush" in areas dangerous for seafarers in the hope of receiving a large bonus for saving a ship in a wreck. And the area off the northwestern coast of the Brittany peninsula is notorious among sailors because of the numerous underwater rocks and shoals. It is not surprising that it was here that the Pacific rescue tug was located.
The captain of the tug reported to his owners about the plight of the Amoco Cadiz and set off to approach the tug. Another rescuer, the West German tug "Simeon", was also sent there.
The captain of the Pacific called the captain of the Amoco Cadiz over the radio and offered a rescue contract. However, Pascal Berdari replied that so far there are no grounds for such a contract, ordinary towing is another matter. While the bargaining was going on, "Amoco Cadiz" even closer to the underwater rocks off the island of Ouessant. Having estimated the distance, Berdari felt the hopelessness of his position and agreed to the contract. With great difficulty in stormy weather, the Pacific took the supertanker in tow and held it against the wind and waves for almost three hours, after which the towing end burst. It took another three hours to make a new ending. During this time, the uncontrollable "Amoco Cadiz" has already come close to the rocks. And when the other end broke, as if it were just a thin thread, the supertanker was carried to the rocks.
There was a terrible grinding sound, and the supertanker sat down on the rocks. Violent waves shook the hull of the ship, tightly captured by the underwater trap. The captain of the Amoco Cadiz ordered a distress signal with flares, but it was too late. The Amoco Cadiz heeled slowly and sagged aft. Huge waves dominated the deck, crashing against the superstructure. The air was filled with a fog of freezing spray.
Rescue tugs and fishing seiners and boats that approached the tanker were powerless to do anything to save Amoco Cadiz. With the help of French helicopters, an operation to rescue the crew began, and all of its members were rescued.
On the morning of March 17, an empty supertanker broke at the superstructure. Oil poured into the sea, quickly spreading west and southwest towards the coast. According to rough estimates of specialists, by the end of the day, eighty thousand tons of it had flowed out. The French and British governments took emergency measures and sent warships here with chemicals that concentrate and precipitate oil. On the night of March 18, when the wind began to subside, the Darina tanker approached the Amoco Cadiz to pump the remaining oil, but all attempts to do so were unsuccessful. Meanwhile, the "black tide", rolling onto the coast, covered the beaches and polluted the coastal cliffs. In the village of Portsall, from where the three decks towering above the water are still clearly visible, the pipe and the superstructure of the supertanker torn by the ocean, the fishermen stared numbly at the brown oil film,swaying in the ocean, and on polluted shores.
The proposal to set fire to the oil with napalm was rejected immediately, as the buildings on the shore could have suffered from the fire. Moreover, no more than twenty percent of the oil can be removed in this way, moreover, heavy fractions are formed, which will settle to the bottom. In the first days after the disaster, pollution control was carried out only with the help of detergents and sorbent granules. Thousands of volunteers and military units dredged oil all along the polluted coast. More than ten miles long floating booms were erected along the coast, but they did little to help. It was estimated that by noon on March 21, more than 170,000 tons of oil had flowed into the sea.
The next day, March 22, the storm began to subside. Taking advantage of the improved weather, specialists landed on the Amoco Cadiz and tried to patch up the holes or at least organize the pumping of the remaining oil. However, these operations also failed. So, practically all 223 thousand tons of oil, not counting the stock for the tanker's own needs, ended up in the ocean. Journalists called the accident with "Amoco Cadiz" the disaster of the century. Indeed, the amount of crude oil spilled in the ocean was significantly greater than in all previous supertanker crashes. Since the disaster happened very close to the coast, and the winds in March were constantly blowing from the west, the entire coast of Brittany was significantly affected by the "black tide".
Experts subsequently found that due to the low viscosity of the oil and the significant content of light fractions in it in the stormy sea, they settled to significant depths before evaporating in the atmosphere. Later, when the winds changed to more southerly, the oil slick broke off the coast and sailed towards the Channel Islands.
To determine the size of the disaster and damage from it, a special research program was organized. The first part of it was devoted to the collection, identification and counting of dead invertebrates, fish and birds. Special attention was paid to commercial objects - algae, crustaceans, fish (primarily from the cod family) and oysters. The head of the research group Hess (USA) later admitted that they had "never seen biological damage in such a huge area in any of the previous oil pollution."
Two weeks later, the crude oil completely dispersed in the stormy ocean. Marine organisms were especially severely damaged in the tidal wave and in shallow water. The oil also had a devastating effect on seabirds - more than 4,500 dead birds were collected. Auk was particularly affected. Bird watchers fear that the impact of oil pollution will affect bird populations far beyond the immediate disaster area.
Commercial fishing in the area of oil pollution resumed only a month later. The fishermen gave part of their catch to biologists for research, and they discovered the presence of oil on the gills and tissues of many fish. Its influence also affected the lobsters: their caviar was underdeveloped due to the high content of hydrocarbons, although the lobsters themselves seemed quite edible.
The accident of the supertanker Amoco Cadiz led to what was perhaps the biggest environmental disaster of the time, caused by an oil spill at sea. In coastal waters, on the coast, in bays, bays and estuaries, numerous representatives of flora and fauna perished. But this was an area with a developed fishing, fish-breeding and oyster industry, which gave France more than a third of its seafood. In addition, Brittany plays a significant role in the French tourism industry. Not only fishermen, seaweed pickers and oyster plantation workers lost their livelihoods, but also hotel owners and employees, traders and businessmen. Subsequently, one old fisherman said: “No one can say how many years it will take for everything to be the same - five or fifty. All life in the sea perishes. For us, this is a complete ruin. No one else will see the famous Portsallian fish.”
The famous explorer of the seas and oceans Zh. I. wrote about the harm that oil pollution inflicts on all living things. Cousteau. He undertook a special study of the coral jungles of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, and his conclusions were very sad. In his book The Life and Death of Corals (with F. Diole), he wrote: “The inhabitants of the coral world differ from the rest of the marine fauna. They are more vulnerable and die much sooner due to human intervention, because, unlike seals and elephant seals, they cannot escape, they cannot take refuge in the abandoned corners of the planet. Butterfly fish living among the reefs are sedentary, as are the animals sitting there, building banks and atolls. Acroporas, porites, tridacnes, spirographis are attached animals, and they die there,Where live.
But even if seals and sea lions can swim away somewhere far away, they do not always manage to do it. After the oil spill of one of the tankers ("Arrow") off the coast of Scotland, a kilometer from the coast, several blind young seals were found that could not find their way to the ocean. Oil covered their eyes and nostrils. And after the supertanker crash in the Santa Barbara Strait, many sea lion cubs died after swallowing oil. Dolphins thrown by the sea with oil-clogged blowholes were found on the shore.
The number of birds that have become victims of oil pollution is also very large. Oil is absorbed into their plumage and makes it heavier. Birds can no longer fly and even swim with difficulty. In addition, oil, filling the space between the feathers, in which air is usually trapped, breaks the thermal insulation. This leads to hypothermia, as a result of which the bird dies.
Feeling oil on its plumage, the bird gets scared and begins to dive, which leads to even greater plumage pollution. Because of this, their plumage loses its water-repellent ability, and then the birds tend to maintain a high body temperature using food reserves. The consequence of this is their sharp depletion. At the Cape of Good Hope, scientists have discovered contaminated penguins, whose weight has become half that of normal. In addition, if in 1960 the total number of spectacled penguins here was one hundred thousand individuals, now there are not even half of them left.
From the book: "HUNDRED GREAT DISASTERS". N. A. Ionina, M. N. Kubeev