Ocean Befouled With Oil

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32351, 17 July 1970, Page 19

Ocean Befouled With Oil

(N.Z. Press Assn — CopyrtghtJ BRIDGETOWN (Barbados), July 14. Thor Heyerdahl and his crew found the Atlantic Ocean so befouled with oil during their recent voyage that at times it was impossible to bathe. United Press International has reported. The explorer will tell a United States environmental sub-committee about it. Heyerdahl said yesterday that he would go to Washington, early in August, at the request of the subcommittee, to testify about the pollution he encountered in the 3275-mile voyage of his papyrus boat Ra II from Safi, Morocco, to Bridgetown. The vessel arrived last Sunday night. “We encountered something similar last year when we followed a more southerly course, but this year it was more excessive,” Heyerdahl said. “Everyday, our Moroccan crewman, Madani Ouhani, collected and catalogued samples. We do not know whether the pollution was from tankers flushing their tanks at sea or other causes, but it is a serious matter which deserves study. “We have already advised : the United Nations as the appropriate body to study the problem, and I welcome this : new opportunity to bring attention to the situation,” he said. The Norwegian ethnologist reported not only oil but many cases of floating cans and cellulose drifting in : mid-Atlantic on his first voyage last summer. Scien- ’ tists said later the cellulose was the remains of toilet paper. Heyerdahl said that the floating clumps of oil appeared almost every day and made morning bathes “unpalatable.” The papyrus boat which Heyerdahl and his seven-man crew used to navigate the Atlantic—to try to provfc that the ancient Egyptians could have done it 4000 years ago—is in dry dock for i inspection of a thick layer j of sea life which attached ; itself during the 57-day ■ voyage. “Ra II will later be lowered i into the water again without ' deck gear to restore the ' shape of the reeds (papyrus) and then be hauled out for ' loading aboard a freighter for Norway, for installation in a new wing of the Kon-tiki Museum in Oslo," Heyerdahl said. The museum was originally built to accommodate Kontiki, the raft on which

Heyerdahl in 1947 drifted 4300 miles from Callao, Peru, to Tahiti, in an attempt to show that Polynesia could have been settled by South American natives.