Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

There is no threat of oil con­t­a­m­i­na­tion in Ch­aguara­mas from the car­go ves­sel Hein, which is still par­tial­ly sub­merged af­ter it ran aground on the south­ern side of Monos Is­land.

The in­ci­dent ini­tial­ly raised con­cerns about a po­ten­tial en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter but au­thor­i­ties and mar­itime pro­fes­sion­als yes­ter­day con­firmed that the ves­sel is not cur­rent­ly leak­ing hy­dro­car­bons in­to the sea.

The in­ci­dent oc­curred on Tues­day morn­ing, af­ter the cap­tain no­ticed that the ves­sel was list­ing to one side. He steered the ship in­to Tur­tle Bay at Monos Is­land to pre­vent a more se­ri­ous out­come.

Since the ground­ing, sev­er­al agen­cies, in­clud­ing the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs and the T&T Coast Guard, have been on the scene.

A barge equipped with a crane is as­sist­ing in of­fload­ing the car­go in an ef­fort to re­float the ves­sel.

The chal­lenges faced by the ves­sel were high­light­ed by Gary Aboud, cor­po­rate sec­re­tary of the en­vi­ron­men­tal group Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS).

“The cap­tain should be com­mend­ed,” Aboud said yes­ter­day.

“He did the right thing by in­ten­tion­al­ly beach­ing the ves­sel to avoid dis­as­ter. There was a mi­nor spillage from the bilge yes­ter­day, but it was min­i­mal com­pared to what could have hap­pened.”

Aboud said five gov­ern­ment agen­cies, in­clud­ing the EMA, IMA, Min­istry of En­vi­ron­ment, and Mar­itime Ser­vices, re­spond­ed to the in­ci­dent.

While ap­pre­cia­tive of their pres­ence, he em­pha­sised the need for con­sis­tent and de­ci­sive ac­tion in re­sponse to broad­er en­vi­ron­men­tal threats.

This comes just a week af­ter oil was found in derelict ves­sels at Es­mer­al­da Bay, Ch­aguara­mas. With the as­sis­tance of FFOS, a team of 21 mar­itime pro­fes­sion­als, in­clud­ing en­gi­neers, cap­tains and aca­d­e­mics, launched an ur­gent tech­ni­cal re­view. The team is prepar­ing a pre­lim­i­nary re­port as­sess­ing the risks, es­ti­mat­ed oil vol­ume on­board and strate­gies for safe­ly sal­vaging that ves­sel.

“We have a mis­sion. It’s am­bi­tious and cost­ly tens of mil­lions of dol­lars but achiev­able with gov­ern­ment and cor­po­rate sup­port,” Aboud said.

“The oil must be re­moved safe­ly, and the ves­sel re­pur­posed. But those re­spon­si­ble for il­le­gal dump­ing must al­so be held ac­count­able.”

Com­ment­ing on re­cent of­fers of sup­port, in­clud­ing one from the Scrap Iron Deal­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion, Aboud said there’s “def­i­nite­ly a role for them in the above-wa­ter sal­vage work.”

“But un­der­wa­ter re­cov­ery and lift­ing of wreck­age re­quire high­ly spe­cialised equip­ment and ex­per­tise. The ques­tion is: what val­ue can they bring to the more com­plex parts of the op­er­a­tion?”

Mar­itime Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T pres­i­dent Jesse James al­so ex­pressed ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the of­fer but point­ed out that na­tion­al oil spill pre­pared­ness re­mains in­ad­e­quate.

“My heart skipped a beat when I saw the video. We thought it would have been a ma­jor dis­as­ter,” James said.

“For­tu­nate­ly, that didn’t hap­pen. What we saw on-site was very en­cour­ag­ing, no vis­i­ble oil, good con­trol, pro­fes­sion­al re­sponse. But what if it had been worse?”

He added: “On pa­per, there’s an oil spill plan but in prac­tice are there booms ready to de­ploy? Are gov­ern­ment agen­cies lo­gis­ti­cal­ly ca­pa­ble of re­spond­ing quick­ly if this had been worse? We need those an­swers now, not af­ter a cri­sis.”

Cap­tain Ronald Wilde, a re­tired mar­itime nav­i­ga­tion pro­fes­sor with 30 years at sea and 19 years as a mas­ter, pro­vid­ed a tech­ni­cal as­sess­ment af­ter in­spect­ing the Hein.

He con­firmed that the in­ci­dent had the po­ten­tial to es­ca­late but was con­tained due to the cap­tain’s prompt ac­tion.

“Beach­ing it when the car­go shift­ed was ab­solute­ly the right de­ci­sion. That’s ex­pe­ri­ence and in­stinct work­ing to­geth­er. The ship could have cap­sized,” he said.

While com­mend­ing re­sponse ef­forts, Wilde warned that fu­ture in­ci­dents might not be as for­giv­ing.

“We dodged a bul­let here but next time we might not be so lucky. We need to tran­si­tion from be­ing re­ac­tive to proac­tive. That means reg­u­lar checks, up­dat­ed spill re­sponse plans, and gen­uine pre­pared­ness.”

The Hein is ex­pect­ed to ei­ther re­sume its jour­ney or go to dry­dock for in­spec­tion and re­pairs.