Grounded Ship Leaves TBT-based Antifoulant on the Great Barrier Reef: An Overview of the Environmental Response

摘要

The joint-agency response to the Sudbury Reef grounding incident utilized world's best practice approaches to minimize risk to the GBR and facilitate natural recovery of damaged areas. Interactions between management agencies and the owners of the ship have been characterized by strong cooperation and goodwill. The resultant mitigation program may be the first that has attempted to reduce levels of TBT contamination and thereby facilitate natural recovery of a coral reef following a grounding incident. This incident highlights the potential for ship groundings to cause acute and persistent chemical impacts (in addition to the more obvious physical impacts), even when salvage is accomplished without loss of fuel or cargo. The risk of contamination of grounding sites from antifoulant chemicals should be considered when evaluating the impacts of ship groundings, even when spills are avoided. Our experience suggests that mitigation efforts that aim to reduce the levels and extent of contamination can be successful using widely available technologies, and are likely to minimize risk of chronic chemical impacts from residual antifoulants. Monitoring of the long-term success of cleanup operations is a key component of mitigation programs. The results of future monitoring programs will provide the information need to continually and collectively improve capacity to minimize the environmental impacts of future incidents.