Asia/Pacific News
Rena Wreck Studies Have Yielded "Huge Amount" of Bunker Information
Studies of the MV Rena oil spill have produced important new information about bunker spills, a researcher told New Zealand news site Scoop.
Chris Battershill, a marine scientist at the University of Waikato, said research by New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) has uncovered a "huge amount about how heavy fuel oil interacts with the environment."
"Prior to the work of our team nothing was known of how HFO interacted with the environment," he said.
"Now we have one of the most comprehensive sets of information that is relevant to New Zealand and also relevant to real life situations."
Battershill said the findings include ways to determine the age of oil in the sea and how insects and shellfish can help dispose of the fuel.
The studies also confirmed that no foreign species appear to have been brought into the area by a barge that was brought in from Australia to deal with the wreck without being cleaned properly due to the urgent situations.
Battershill said researchers began working immediately after the Rena ran aground on a reef near the port of Tauranga, New Zealand on October 5, 2011.
"The information that we were able to collect is now invaluable in allowing the return to 'normality' to be tracked," he said.
In March of 2013 authorities said one to two tonnes of heavy fuel oil remained in the wreck and would leach out over time.
