Oil slick threat to Antarctica

Press, 1 March 1989, Page 11

Oil slick threat to Antarctica

NZPA-Reuter Punta Arenas, Chile

A Peruvian research ship that ran aground in the Antarctic was leaking oil, posing the second ecological threat to the continent’s wildlife in under a month, a Chile Navy spokesman said yesterday. “There is a 130 m oil slick floating towards the coast,” the spokesman, Lieutenant Cristian Carbone, said. He said two of the vessel’s four fuel storage tanks had probably been punctured when the 1980ton Humboldt struck a rock off the coast of Fildes Bay on King George Island in South Shetlands on Sunday.

All 64 crew members and scientists were rescued by the British Antarctic boat, Endurance, after an attempt to tow the Humboldt off the rocks failed early on Monday.

Lieutenant Carbone said the ship was listing 2deg. to port but did not appear to be taking on water and was not in danger of sinking.

The Humboldt, which inaugurated Peru’s first scientific station in the Antarctic on Sunday, was carrying 110,000 litres of diesel oil in its tanks.

On January 28 the Bahia Progreso, an Argentine Navy supply ship

carrying 950,000 litres of diesel, ran aground and later capsized in the Bismarck Straits, 400 km south of the Shetlands, raising fear it could cause the worst environmental disaster to date in the Antarctic.

Part of the oil cargo seeped from the wreck, creating a 96km slick which killed an undetermined number of penguins and Skuas. The full extent of the ecological damage has yet to be established by scientists. Lieutenant Carbone said efforts to free the Humboldt from the rocks would have to wait until 30-knot winds abated. He said the Peruvian vessel had gone aground in an increasingly busy shipping route round King George Island, where 10 countries have established research bases, the largest of which is run by the Chilean Air Force.

Peruvian officials, headed by the Defence Minister, General Enrique Lopez Albujar, opened Peru’s Antarctic station on Sunday. It was named Machu Picchu after the ancient Inca city in the Andes.

With the station, consisting of three pre-fabri-cated buildings, Peru hopes to become a full member of the 22-nation Antarctic Treaty Organisation.