Oil spill off Moreton Island, Southern QLD, Australia

Last weekend I grabbed a chopper and flew a track over the east coast of Moreton Island off Southern QLD.

A few days earlier, an estimated 200,000 litres of fuel oil spilled from the container vessel "Pacific Adventurer", when 31 shipping containers-full of ammonium nitrate dislodged and fell from the decks in heavy seas,

some of which punctured the ship's hull on two sides.

I've put a google maps track of the flight and some more pictures on my blog for those interested.

That's very disturbing; and in what looks to be quite a pristine place.

Please keep us updated; I enjoyed data about the track you flew-on your blog.

Best, Carol

That's very disturbing; and in what looks to be quite a pristine place.

 

Please keep us updated; I enjoyed data about the track you flew-on your blog.

 

Best, Carol

Hi Carol,

Yes, Mt Tempest on Moreton Island National Park is one of the highest coastal sand dunes in the world. The island was saved from sand-mining in the 70s and is in very good shape. It's a barrier island for Moreton Bay a very important Dugong habitat, the southern-most area in their range. The oil is impacting the seaward coast, not the protected bay side, where the dugongs are luckily.

There are not too many reports of wildlife being impacted, very small numbers of turtles and seabirds have been shown on the news, but I have not been able to get a hold of any real data on that.

Annecdotally the local commercial fisherman are talking of low catches since the spill, and the spill is effecting tourism numbers on the nearby mainland Sunshine Coast (which had beaches impacted by oil too) according to news reports.

The biggest concern was how long it took for authorities to respond. The first person to report the spill was a news helicopter pilot who was out with a crew looking for the missing containers, when the spill was seen and reported. At that stage it was still offshore, but Rogers told authorities that the prevailing wind would push it on to the beaches. Two days later, once it was ashore, the govt eased into action to clean the beaches. All a bit late really.

We started our beach run at the southern extent of the beach impact, and oil was on the beach all the way northern tip of the island, and across the north-facing coast.

Plus from there, northward along Bribie Island and up to the Sunshine Coast beaches were effected all up around 90km from southern-most to northern-most effect. Unfortunately my chopper budget wouldn't stretch to more than an hour, so I couldn't cover the whole spill.

Using the iPhone to create the GPS track in google maps (and on google earth too) is my latest distraction. The app also generates a track file which I can merge with my folder of pics in a program called GPS PhotoLinker.. using the time codes in the track and the time the pics were shot, the program adds lat and long in to the metadata of each pic, and also location info, and altitude too. Cool. Be good if it worked underwater... I don't know if you zoomed in on the track, but if you did, you could see where we did a couple of circuits around a creek mouth etc. Neat.

That is so very sad. I visited Straddie and Fraser while there in January. The Brissy coast is just gorgeous! What are the plans for clean up? Interesting that we did not hear about the spill up here ... even though there were many reminders of the Exxon Valdez spill ... 20th aniversary.

From the reports I've heard (I wasn't there to see anything like Darren was, although my brother was out there helping to clean up the beaches), things are pretty much cleaned up (although if I'm wrong please correct me). Doesn't sound like any of the dive sites were impacted at all, including Finders Reef, our own coral reef off Moreton's northern point.

Not sure if they've found the containers that went overboard from the ship though? Didn't they have some potentially harmful chemicals in them?

Ryan.