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It was late evening Jan. 16 when the Ecuadoran-registered tanker Jessica struck a reef outside the appropriately named Wreck Bay, off San Cristobal Island in the Galapagos. My ship, the Sirenian, arrived shortly after to find the tanker wallowing on the reef, a jagged rock piercing its hull, seawater gushing into its engine room. Its tanks were still intact.
It was obvious, however, that the ship was doomed. It could not be pulled off the reef without sinking, and it was just a matter of hours before the battering swells would rupture its thin, single-hulled skin. Only a few millimeters of rusty steel stood between the pristine waters of the Galapagos Marine Reserve and 160,000 gallons of diesel fuel, and 80,000 gallons of the heavier, more environmentally hazardous bunker fuel oil.
I was at the scene with Sea Shepherd Conservation International, a marine-wildlife conservation organization that helps enforce international environmental law. When my crew and I, along with the Galapagos Park Rangers, boarded the Jessica, we discovered that its captain didn't have proper charts for the area. (A few days later a naval investigation found that the captain had mistaken a buoy for a lighthouse.) The tanker had been en route to Baltra, the official offloading port for the Galapagos Islands, but had been rerouted by Petroecuador to refuel an ecotourism boat that uses bunker fuel.
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As soon as the Galapagos National Park director heard that the Jessica had hit the reef, he immediately called for help from the U.S. Coast Guard. While we waited for it to arrive, my crew and the rangers agreed that it was imperative to begin pumping out the fuel. But before we could get started, a local official informed us that the oil was the private property of Petroecuador. Any attempt to remove it would be considered theft by both the Ecuadoran Navy and Petroecuador.
The U.S. Coast Guard was ready to tackle the spill. Unfortunately, it would be four days before it could do so. This was because, as I understand it, the Ecuadoran government refused to guarantee the estimated $600,000 the U.S. government requested.
While the two governments bickered over the bill, my crew and the park rangers stood helplessly alongside the battered and groaning Jessica, until its hull began to ooze oil. The creeping slick of diesel was soon punctuated by thick ebony bunker fuel. It was not long before the first endangered lava gull was spotted, beating its wings as it attempted to escape from the lethal glue. By the time the Coast Guard finally arrived, it was too late. The oil was in the sea.
In the end, thanks to a hot sun that evaporated the diesel, and favorable currents and winds that redirected the bunker fuel, the damage was far less than what could have occurred. The Galapagos, perhaps the most fascinating ecosystem on the planet, had just escaped a very close call.
However, the lesson was clear: the world does not take the threat of oil spills seriously. If we did, we would have been prepared. In fact, we have never been prepared.
This was the fifth spill that Sea Shepherd has been involved with in little more than a year. In December 1999, the Maltese-registered oil tanker Erika fouled the beaches of France. Dozens of volunteers worked for weeks to clean oil-soaked birds. The same month, a Russian tanker spilled 900 tons of gasoline along the coast of Turkey. Our volunteers flew to Istanbul to help authorities rescue wildlife.
Last January, a ruptured pipeline sent more than 300,000 gallons of crude oil into Guanabara Bay near Rio de Janeiro. Sea Shepherd responded with a marine-mammal rescue-and-rehabilitation team, and drafted the first Brazilian training program for oiled-wildlife rescue. We stepped in again in July 2000, when the rupture of another pipeline leaked more than a million gallons into a tributary of the Iguacu River in Parana State.
In each of these cases it appeared to me that local authorities were both ill equipped and unenthusiastic about tackling the disaster. By the time government agencies had sorted through the political, legal and financial red tape, the oil had already claimed large numbers of birds and marine mammals.
Protesting against the oil companies won't solve the problem. As long as the world is dependent upon petroleum, oil spills will be inevitable.
It is my objective to create an internationally recognized coalition of oil producers, who have money, and conservationists, who have the passion and the initiative. Together we could organize airborne teams equipped with wildlife-cleaning equipment and emergency pumps that could reach any spill or potential spill within 12 hours.
Another spill will happen again soon. What we have learned from the Jessica disaster is that if a biological treasure house like the Galapagos is not safe--then there is no safe place.
We need to be prepared next time.
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