Oil slick from bombed Iranian ship threatens protected wetland | Oil spills
An oil slick from a stricken Iranian ship threatens to contaminate one of the Middle East’s most important wetlands, analysis of satellite images suggests, making it one of several spills posing a risk to the livelihoods of Gulf coastal communities.
The Shahid Bagheri, a drone carrier, began dumping heavy fuel oil into Iranian territorial waters near the Strait of Hormuz after being hit by a US warplane during the first days of the US-Israeli attack on Iran.
With Iran still under heavy bombardment, no one could begin cleaning up the oil spill and the oil moved slowly west toward the Hara Biosphere Reserve, the largest mangrove forest on the Gulf coast.
The Shahid Bagheri, described as “one of the most conceptually important ships” in the Iranian Navy, is a container ship modified to include a short runway for launching drones. Its fuel load was likely significant: the IRGC said it had a range of 22,000 nautical miles and could go a year between refuelings.
It was bombed by US military aircraft on March 6, in an attack depicted in a social media video posted by the US military. Since then, it has been stranded in the shallow waters of the middle Khuran Strait, a narrow and ecologically important channel between the Iranian mainland and the island of Qeshm.
By March 18, the oil had traveled 16 miles southwest, toward Hara, according to Tim Richards, a retired satellite remote sensing consultant who is one of several analysts tracking the progress of the oil spill. He said the oil spill could be the most ecologically significant in the region since the first Gulf War.
Circular currents sweeping across the strait where the converted container ship was moored caused the oil to move slowly.
“The traffic [of the current] “It’s that water comes into the gulf around the northern part of the strait, from the Indian Ocean,” Richards said. “And then it crosses the Khuran Strait, where the ship is and where the mangroves are. “So there is a general progression of water towards the west despite the coming and going of the tides.
On March 27, rainfall appeared to wash sediment into the strait, into which oil began to mix, Richards said. “On the 28th it appears to have traveled an additional 20 km, but it is possible that it went much further given the acceleration of the Bandar-e Pol Strait and the flow of water caused by the rain on the 27th.”
The impact on Hara, an important ecosystem for migratory birds and critically endangered turtles, as well as many species of fish and shellfish, could be significant. The region’s fishing communities depend almost entirely on the sea for their livelihood.
This oil spill is the largest currently in the Gulf. The United States sank a number of Iranian ships early in the war, while Iran hit a number of container ships and tankers with drones and missiles to control its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
Wim Zwijnenburg, an environmental analyst who has compiled a database of harmful environmental incidents caused by the war, said he had also recorded three small spills off the coasts of Iraq and Kuwait, as well as another in the Strait of Hormuz from a sunken container ship. The US torpedo attack on the Iranian navy ship Dena, off the coast of Sri Lanka, also caused a spill which was dealt with by Sri Lankan authorities.
The environmental problem could get worse, Zwijnenburg said. “If you keep shooting at the oil [and] chemical tankers, at some point you will create a disaster if things go wrong. So it’s generally a bad idea to fire missiles and drones at oil tankers and chemical tankers. I think that so far the environment has escaped disaster from all these attacks.
