ME1308: Design and Co-Ordination of the Programme by Cefas
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General enquiries on this form should be made to: . Defra, Science Directorate, Management Support and Finance Team, Telephone No. 02072381612 . E-mail: [email protected] defr~ SID 5 Research Project Final Report • Nole In line with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, Defra aims to place the results I Project identification of its completed research projects in the public domain wherever possible. The 1. Defra Project code I_M_E_1_3_0_8 _ SID 5 (Research Project Final Report) is designed to capture the information on the results and outputs of Defra-funded 2. Projecttille research in a format that is easily Provision of Scientific and Technical Expertise with publishable through the Defra website. A Regard to the Grounding of the MSC Napoli in Lyme SID 5 must be completed for all projects. Bay, Dorset • This form is in Word format and the boxes may be expanded or reduced, as 3. Contractor Cefas appropriate. organisation(s) Pakefield Road • ACCESS TO INFORMATION Lowestoft The information collected on this form will Suffolk NR33 OHT be stored electronically and may be sent to any part of Defra, or to individual researchers or organisations outside Defra for the purposes of reviewing the project. Defra may also disclose the 4. Total Defra project costs IL£__1_3_9L,7_0_2__1 information to any outside organisation (agreed fixed price) acting as an agent authorised by Defra to process final research reports on its 5. Project: start date I__3_0_J_a_nU_a_ry'--20_0_7__' behalf. Defra intends to publish this form on its website, unless there are strong reasons not to, which fully comply with end date 1 31 March 2008 1 exemptions under the Environmental Information Regulations or the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Defra may be required to release information, including personal data and commercial information, on request under the Environmental Information Regulations or the Freedom of Information Act 2000. However, Defra will not permit any unwarranted breach of confidentiality or act in contravention of its obligatioris under the Data Protection Act 1998. Defra or its appointed agents may use the name, address or other details on your form to contact you in connection with occasional customer research aimed at improving the processes through which Defra works with its contractors. SID 5 (Rev. 3/06) Page 1 of 10 6. It is Defra's intention to publish this form. Please confirm your agreement to do so YES [g] NO D (a) When preparing SID 5s contractors should bear in mind that Defra intends that they be made public. They should be wrillen in a clear and concise manner and represent a full account of the research project which someone not closely associated with the project can follow. Defra recognises that in a small minority of cases there may be information, such as intellectual property or commercially confidential data, used in or generated by the research project, which should not be disclosed. In these cases, such information should be detailed in a separate annex (not to be published) so that the SID 5 can be placed in the public domain. Where it is impossible to complete the Final Report without including references to any sensitive or confidential data, the information should be included and section (b) completed. NB: only in exceptional circumstances will Defra expect contractors to give a "No" answer. In all cases, reasons for withholding information must be fully in line with exemptions under the Environmental Information Regulations or the Freedom of Information Act 2000. (b) If you have answered NO, please explain why the Final report should not be released into pUblic domain I Executive Summary 7. The executive summary must not exceed 2 sides in total of A4 and should be understandable to the intelligent non-scientist. It should cover the main objectives, methods and findings of the research, together with any other significant events and options for new work. On 18 January 2007 the container ship MSC Napoli, outward bound from Europe to South Africa in heavy weather, began to take in water through cracks in the engine room walls. The crew abandoned ship and were airlifted to safety, and two emergency towing vessels maintained on station in the Western Approaches by the French and UK governments took her in tow. The intention was to tow her to Portland Harbour on the south coast of the UK as a place of refuge where problems with the ship and her cargo could be tackled in safety. On the morning of the 20th January the ship suffered a serious structural failure and she was beached in Lyme Bay, off Branscombe in Devon, to prevent her from sinking. The ship was carrying 2,318 containers, 159 of which contained more than 1,600 tonnes of chemicals classified as dangerous goods by the International Maritime Organisation and around 4,000 tonnes of oil as fuel. It was considered that to have allowed the ship to sink in deep water would lead to a serious risk of chronic pollution with lillie or no ability to intervene. A salvage operation was then begun with the aim of removing the oil and cargo from the ship. As a quantity of oil and apprOXimately 100 containers had been lost during and immediately following the grounding of the MSC Napoli, Defra decided to implement a monitoring programme in Lyme Bay in order to assess any environmental impact and to provide information which would allow the Food Standards Agency to proteclthe human food chain. The monitoring programme was designed and co-ordinated by Cefas. The cargo carried by the MSC Napoli was very diverse, including many non-hazardous goods (cars, gearboxes, paper, personal effects etc) and a wide variety of hazardous materials (including chemicals, solvents, personal care products and pesticides). Of particular concern were the pesticides lamda cyhalothrin, profenofos, glyphosate, carbendazim, propaquizafop, and dibutyltin oxide and a broad range of other chemical products. The monitoring programme which was developed was therefore based on three main assumptions: 1. oil has been lost and may affect the local environment and so hydrocarbons should be monitored. 2. during the salvage operation any of the chemicals aboard may be lost and monitoring for those compounds may be necessary in water, sediments and biota. 3. as Lyme Bay is of major nature conservation importance, there will be a need to assess the damage to the local flora and fauna. Initially, the Environment Agency augmented their routine water quality monitoring programme around Lyme Bay, both by adding additional stations to improve the data coverage and by implementing a screeninQ procedure for chemicals in the water samples usinQ couPled Qas chromatoQraphv-mass SID 5 (Rev. 3/06) Page 2 of 10 spectrometry. In addition, the Plymouth Marine Laboratory undertook a survey of the waters across Lyme Bay at various distances from shore (along the 10m, 20m and 40m depth contours) to assess the levels of hydrocarbon contamination in subsurface waters and the surface microlayer. Also, Cefas and the Marine and Fisheries Agency instigated a programme of sampling commercial shellfish (crabs, scallops and mussels) from Lyme Bay and Portland Harbour. These were analysed for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, toxic components of oil which can affect the human foodchain and whose concentrations may require fishery closures to be put in place. Natural England organised necropsies of a proportion of the oiled seabirds which was conducted by members of the British Trust for Ornithology to establish species affected and their condition prior to oiling, and Cefas conducted analyses of oil from the feathers of a number of birds in order to confirm that the oil was from the MSC Napoli. In preparation for analysis of any of the chemicals aboard the vessel if lost, Cefas and the Environment Agency collected sediment samples from around the shoreline of Lyme Bay and from the Fleet and Portland Harbour, and the Plymouth Marine Laboratory also collected surface sediment samples from all the stations of the cruise mentioned above. All of these sediment samples were stored frozen at-20'C in order that they could provide baseline data against which any future contamination by any of the chemicals could be assessed. Both the Plymouth Marine Laboratory (seawater) and Cefas (shellfish) studies showed elevated concentrations of PAH only in the area immediately outside the exclusion zone established around MSC Napoli. None of the shellfish showed PAH concentrations higher than the Food Standards Agency's guideline values (10 IJg kg" wet weight for benzo[a]pyrene and 15IJg kg" wet weight for benz[ajanthracene and dibenz[a,h]anthracene) and so no fishery closures were imposed. Studies undertaken by the University of Plymouth showed limited sublethal biological effects in limpets from Branscombe, close to the MSC Napoli. Benthic surveys undertaken on behalf of Natural England found evidence of damage to the benthic environment surrounding the MSC Napoli, but it could not be established that this was a result of the grounding of the vessel. Oil spilled from the MSC Napoli resulted in over 3,000 seabird casualties. Necropsies of approximately 10% of these (306 birds) were undertaken in order to assess the impact on populations of seabirds affected. Of these, 168 were guillemots and 104 razorbills (55% and 34%, respectively). Of the guillemots that could be aged, 77% were adults, 20% were young adults and only 3% were sub-adults. The effects of the removal of breeding adults will impact on the southern populations that breed in Iceland, the F<eroes, Britain, Ireland and France. Analysis of solvent swabs from oiled feathers from 13 birds was undertaken at Cefas, and fingerprinting studies confirmed that the oil on 12 of the feathers was fuel oil from the MSC Napoli.