{"id":527195,"date":"2010-04-14T07:55:07","date_gmt":"2010-04-14T11:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.earthportal.org\/news\/?p=3284"},"modified":"2010-04-14T07:55:07","modified_gmt":"2010-04-14T11:55:07","slug":"great-barrier-reef-crash-damage-could-take-decades-to-heal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/527195","title":{"rendered":"Great Barrier Reef crash damage could take decades to heal"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Greenwire<\/a>: It could take two decades for marine life to recover from the damage left by a Chinese coal carrier that ran aground on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef<\/a> and left a trail of leaked oil and paint, the reef’s chief scientist said today.<\/p>\n

The Shen Neng 1<\/em> cut into large parts of the shoal, leaving a 2-mile-long scar and smearing paint that may severely affect marine life even if severe toxic contamination is not found at the site, said scientist David Wachenfeld.<\/p>\n

“There is more damage to this reef than I have ever seen in any previous Great Barrier Reef groundings,” Wachenfeld said of the April 3 accident that left the 755-foot shipping vessel run aground on the reef. The ship was successfully removed yesterday after crews spent three days lightening the load by pumping fuel from the ship.<\/p>\n

The damage to the reef was particularly harsh because the vessel was repeatedly pushed up against the reef by the tides and currents, he said, noting that it completely flattened the structure of the shoal in some places and crushed and smeared potentially toxic paint onto coral and plants, as well.<\/p>\n

In some areas, “all marine life has been completely flattened and the structure of the shoal has been pulverized by the weight of the vessel,” Wachenfeld said.<\/p>\n

Scientists with the reef authority are planning to analyze paint left by the ship to see if it contains heavy metals. If it does, Wachenfeld said, it could also prevent new life from colonizing there.<\/p>\n

The Great Barrier Reef is a World Heritage site. The accident occurred in the southern tip of the reef, which is not the main tourism spot (Kristen Gelineau, AP\/San Francisco Chronicle<\/em><\/a>, April 13). – DFM<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Greenwire: It could take two decades for marine life to recover from the damage left by a Chinese coal carrier that ran aground on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and left a trail of leaked oil and paint, the reef’s chief scientist said today. The Shen Neng 1 cut into large parts of the shoal, leaving […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4055,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-527195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4055"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}