Special pilots need to guide toxic cargo ships through Great Barrier Reef, says Australian expert by Katerina Lorenzatos Makris
While calling the recent grounding of a Chinese vessel on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef the result of a “major navigational error,” Graeme Kelleher, former head of the Reef’s Marine Park Authority told Animal Beat he nevertheless supports “the idea of large vessels carrying toxic cargo being required by law to be guided by a specialized marine pilot” through the ecologically sensitive waters.
Environmental protection groups have called for such special pilots, according to an Associated Press article. Government authorities have so far resisted the proposal, arguing that it’s unnecessary since large ships are prohibited in the area.
Toxic cargo ship on Great Barrier Reef (Photo - AP)
“A lateral error of 12 kilometers in navigation is really bad and unusual,” Kelleher said in an email interview, but “if the immense quantity of oil in the ship is discharged into the waters of the Great Barrier Reef it will cause tremendous damage to all aspects of the immediate part of that extensive ecosystem, from the point of release to the shore, as well as for some distance north and south. Restoration will take a very long time—more than a decade.”
“However, if it proves feasible to salvage the ship without a major spill,” Kelleher continued, “and the efforts to do so are enormous and immediate, it is likely to have a beneficial effect in the long term, in that specific action will now be taken to ensure that large vessels in the future will be forced to navigate through the Reef in even closer accordance with the very strict rules than is normal nowadays."
Kelleher added, “It needs to be recognized that those rules are enforced strictly now—this accident is without doubt a major navigational error.”
The Great Barrier Reef “is regarded internationally as one of the best protected reefs in the world,” said Kelleher, “being enclosed in a World Heritage Area and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.”
Kelleher has also served as Vice-Chairman, Marine, of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's World Commission on Protected Areas, and as project manager for various Marine Protected Area projects in a number of countries.
For Kelleher’s thoughts on the importance of the Great Barrier Reef and other reefs around the world, please check this page again in the coming days.
Katerina Lorenzatos Makris is the author of 17 novels for publishers including Avon, E.P. Dutton, and Simon & Schuster, and hundreds of articles for publications such as National Geographic Traveler, San Francisco Chronicle, and Veggie Life. She wrote a teleplay for CBS and short fiction for The Bark magazine. With coauthor Shelley Frost, she wrote Your Adopted Dog (The Lyons Press). Holding a B.A. in Environmental Science Studies and a lifelong interest in animal issues, she spends a lot of her time battling a severe addiction to dogs.
