Mauritius racing to contain oil spill as leader wants compensation for heavy environmental damage

Mauritius, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, wants the owner of a stricken Japanese ship that has spilled 1,000 tons of oil into the sea to pay up.

The declaration from Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth comes as efforts were underway Thursday to drain the 500 remaining tons of oil onboard the MV Wakashio, which ran aground on July 25 and is increasingly in danger of splitting in two.

“It's essential that the ship is emptied before it breaks up,” Jean Hugue Gardenne of the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation told the Associated Press. “Quite a lot of oil has been pumped out in the past few days, but we cannot let up. There is so much damage already.”

An estimated 2,500 tons of fuel already has been removed from the ship, stranded on a coral reef at Pointe d’Esny, a sanctuary for rare wildlife. But the oil it has spilled has fouled the country’s coastline and the protected wetlands area, with Jugnauth declaring a national disaster.

Jugnauth says Mauritius will seek compensation from Nagashiki Shipping – the vessel’s owner – but the monetary value is unclear.

Jugnauth’s government is also under pressure to explain why it did not take immediate action to empty the ship when it ran aground. Two weeks later, after pounding by waves, the ship cracked and began leaking.

Environmentalists on Monday warned it could break apart “at any time.”

As a result of the spill, some of the turquoise waters surrounding Mauritius – an island nation off the coast of Africa -- were stained a muddy black, drenching waterbirds and reptiles with sticky oil.

Thousands of Mauritians have been working for days to reduce the damage by making improvised barriers from fabric and stuffed with straw and sugar cane leaves to try to contain the oil's spread. Others have scooped up oil from the shallow waters. It is estimated that nearly 400 out of the 1,000 tons that spilled have been removed from the sea.

France sent a naval ship, military aircraft and technical advisers from the nearby island of Reunion after Mauritius appealed for help last week. Japanese experts have arrived on the island and are assisting the effort. The United Nations is sending experts.


The Wildlife Foundation is alarmed that the oil spill will ruin the work that it has done since 1985 to improve the area where the ship ran aground, Gardenne said.

“We have planted about 200,000 indigenous trees to restore the coastal forest," he told the Associated Press. "We re-introduced endangered birds, including the pink pigeon, the olive white-eye and the critically endangered Mauritius fody to the Isle aux Aigrettes. Now all this is threatened as the oil is seeping into the soil and the coral reefs.”