'Significant' Damage to Barrier Reef From Grounded (Chinese coal) Ship..

Source: Yahoo News

- K&R

Call me ignorant but WTF is a Chinese coal freighter doing on the Barrier Reef? Does this smell like an "accident?"

It was taking a shortcut it shouldn't have been taking. The contact with the reef was accidental in as much as it was unintended.

There has been talk for some time of requiring a pilot anywhere inside the reef and passing through it. Perhaps it will happen now.

I like the idea of requiring a pilot or pilot tug ANYWHERE where there is any risk whatsoever of grounding. Not just where there are special interests or specific risks.

Under-crewing is a major problem in the shipping industry, and the effects of exhaustion on safety are rarely worried about.



The route past North-West Island is perfectly simple, FFS its a 12 mile wide channel. It isn't a difficult piece of navigation. Definitely not pilotage waters.

Australian Marine Conservation spokesman Darren Kindleysides said despite claims the Reef was easy to navigate, the incident indicated the potential for disaster was too great for authorities to ignore.

"The grounding of the Shen Neng 1 shows the Reef is not protected adequately from shipping," Mr Kindleysides said.

"This incident must spur the Government to ensure the Reef is better safeguarded from the growth in shipping traffic that has resulted from the resources boom in Queensland."


http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/barrier-reef-shortcut-taken-by-shen-neng-1-not-illegal/story-e6freoof-1225851118267


This isn't just some bit of navigable water. It's so close to the Reef that any major accident has the potential to cause great damage. The govt must introduce much tighter restrictions on shipping in that area, and if it means making it mandatory for pilots to guide shipping through there, so be it.

Sure, its easy to put a pilot on a ship when its in the harbor. Most pilots sail from the pier to the sea-buoy and take a pilot boat back, or vice-versa. That's easy to do, you have to go maybe a few miles in calm port waters.

To put pilots on the reef passage would mean they are meeting and leaving the ships over 100 miles from the port of loading, more if you close the Northwest Island channel and force all vessels to take the roundabout route indicated on that map I posted. That's almost a day of sailing, so you'd need two or three pilots for each ship to cover the watches. Or, alternatively, the massive expense and potential for disaster of a helicopter. Being a pilot is one of the most dangerous jobs in the shipping industry as it is, with a route like this you'd be seeing fatigue and fatalities, as well as massive expense. "Humongously impractical" are the nicest words I can use to describe the proposal.

All for an area that is not navigationally difficult. Pilots aren't infallible either- guess who crashed the Cosco Busan?

Here's the ATSB Report by the way.
http://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/investigation_reports/2010/mair/274-mo-2010-003.aspx

Thanks again...

Three people have been charged with steering a cargo ship through a protected part of the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia.

The men, from Vietnam and South Korea, will appear in an Australian court on Monday, accused of taking their coal carrier on an unauthorised route.

The route crossed one of the world's most valuable marine wildlife reserves.

In a separate incident last week, a Chinese vessel ran aground on the reef and began leaking oil.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8613890.stm

:wtf: is are these ships doing in these waters???

Two years or so ago another ship, the Cosco Busan, sailed into the Bay Bridge in San Francisco Bay, resulting in an oil spill that effectively canceled the local crab harvest. Anything to save a few minutes.

You might have noticed that hundreds of cargo ships sail under the bay bridge every month.

I have conned simulations of the run out of Oakland in heavy fog- its eminently doable when all your equipment is working. The pilot on the Busan made the poor decision of setting out with a faulty radar and an electronic chart he was unfamiliar with. But then again the pressure to perform is massive when the ship loses millions of dollars for every hour its sitting at the pier.

They're not supposed to have been anywhere near where they ran aground on the Reef...

...all this in addition to the toxins smeared on the ship's hull.

It only spilled two tons of fuel out of a 980 ton tank. They got very lucky and this is a very minor spill. Less than the Busan, which was itself minor.

It's more like four tons, though I think yr missing the point of this entire thing. It's the damage that's been done to the Reef that's the problem, and the only reason the spill wasn't bigger was thanks to the quick response of authorities who tried to minimise what damage was done to the Reef...

btw, that poster you were replying to was correct with what they said:
Marine scientists say the reef around Douglas Shoal faces a very slow recovery from the grounding, which gouged a three kilometre long and 250 metre wide section of the shoal.

Divers, sonar equipment and cameras towed behind a research ship will carry out the first comprehensive assessment of the damage.

The Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), which is leading the investigation, has dispatched a team of marine scientists on one of its research vessels.

They are expected to start their investigation tomorrow.

The team will determine the full scale of the physical damage and how much toxic anti-fouling paint has scraped off the hull of vessel and become embedded in the reef.

Dr Andrew Negri, who is leading the four-day investigation, said a multi-beam sonar would be used to map the sea floor and reveal the scope of any structural damage to the reef.

Dr Negri said when complete, a report would be sent to government and other agencies involved in managing the reef.

"We'll be developing a very fine, detailed map of the top of the reef. That'll tell us the exact extent of the physical damage that's happened to the reef," Dr Negri said.

He said given the movement of the vessel over the shoal, a large area could be contaminated with toxins used to inhibit the growth of marine organisms that attach themselves on ships' hulls.

"The paint is designed to stop the settlement of small marine creatures on ships' hull, but it can also stop the settlement of organisms like corals," Dr Negri said.

He said if the paint was densely smeared across the reef it would probably be removed by hand.

But if it was finer, and spread over a larger area, a type of underwater vacuum could be used.

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/oil-fouls-second-island-20100414-sdia.html

the tearing up of the reef, the paint from the side of the ship in the water, the oil from the ship on the beach, and the coal...

talk about a major enviro-disaster! thy name is CHINA!