Environmental Monitoring Conducted in Lyme Bay Following the Grounding of MSC Napoli in January 2007, with an Assessment of Impact
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Science Series Aquatic Environment Monitoring Report no. 61 Environmental monitoring conducted in Lyme Bay following the grounding of MSC Napoli in January 2007, with an assessment of impact Science Series Aquatic Environment Monitoring Report no. 61 Environmental monitoring conducted in Lyme Bay following the grounding of MSC Napoli in January 2007, with an assessment of impact This report should be cited as: Environmental monitoring conducted in Lyme Bay following the grounding of MSC Napoli in January 2007, with an assessment of impact. Sci. Ser. Aquat. Environ. Monit. Rep., Cefas Lowestoft, 61: 36pp. This report was compiled and edited by Robin Law of the Cefas Burnham Laboratory, Remembrance Avenue, Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex CM0 8HA. A copy can be obtained by downloading from the Cefas website www.cefas.co.uk. © Crown copyright, 2008 This publication (excluding the logos) may be re-used free of charge in any format or medium for research for non-commercial purposes, private study or for internal circulation within an organisation. This is subject to it being re-used accurately and not used in a misleading context. The material must be acknowledged as Crown copyright and the title of the publication specified. This publication is also available at www.cefas.co.uk For any other use of this material please apply for a Click-Use Licence for core material at www.hmso.gov.uk/copyright/licences/ core/core_licence.htm, or by writing to: HMSO’s Licensing Division St Clements House 2-16 Colegate Norwich NR3 1BQ Fax: 01603 723000 E-mail: [email protected] 3 Contents C O N T E N T S Executive summary 5 Background to the incident 7 Rationale for the monitoring programme 9 Water quality monitoring undertaken 10 by the Environment Agency Lyme Bay survey undertaken by 12 the Plymouth Marine Laboratory Commercial fish and shellfish 17 monitoring undertaken by Cefas Seabird necropsies and oil profiling 21 Benthic surveys in Lyme Bay 25 Sublethal biological effects monitoring 30 Assessment of impact 31 Lessons learnt 32 Acknowledgements 33 References 34 Photographs 35 CONTENTS 4 5 Executive summary Robin Law E X E C U T I V E S U M M A R Y On 18th January 2007 the container ship MSC Napoli , out - The monitoring programme which was developed and ward bound from Europe to South Africa in heavy weather, which is reported here was therefore based on three main began to take in water through cracks in the engine room assumptions: walls. The crew abandoned ship and were airlifted to safety, and two emergency towing vessels maintained on station in 1. oil has been lost and may affect the local environment the Western Approaches by the French and UK govern - and so hydrocarbons should be monitored. ments took her in tow. This decision was taken prior to the 2. during the salvage operation any of the chemicals aboard formal establishment of the Environment Group, but various may be lost and monitoring for those compounds may members were consulted. The intention was to tow her to be necessary in water, sediments and biota. Portland Harbour on the south coast of the UK as a place of 3. as Lyme Bay is of major nature conservation importance refuge where problems with the ship and her cargo could be there will be a need to assess the damage to the local tackled in safety. It was considered that to have allowed to flora and fauna. the ship to sink in deep water would lead to a serious risk of chronic pollution with little or no ability to intervene. On the Initially, the Environment Agency augmented their rou - morning of the 20th January the ship suffered a serious tine water quality monitoring programme around Lyme Bay, structural failure and she was beached in Lyme Bay, off both by adding additional stations to improve the data cov - Branscombe in Devon, to prevent her from sinking. The ship erage and by implementing a screening procedure for chem - was carrying 2,318 containers, 159 of which contained more icals in the water samples using coupled gas than 1,600 tonnes of chemicals classified as dangerous chromatography-mass spectrometry. In addition, Defra goods by the International Maritime Organisation and around funded the Plymouth Marine Laboratory to undertake a sur - 4,000 tonnes of oil as fuel. A salvage operation was begun vey of the waters across Lyme Bay at various distances with the aim of removing the oil and cargo from the ship. A from shore (along the 10m, 20m and 40m depth contours) number of bodies (Defra, Marine and Fisheries Agency, to assess the levels of hydrocarbon contamination in sub - Environment Agency, Cefas, Health Protection Agency, surface waters and the surface microlayer. Also, Cefas and Natural England, Devon and Dorset Councils, the the Marine and Fisheries Agency instigated a programme of International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation) assisted sampling commercial shellfish (crabs, scallops and mussels) the Maritime and Coastguard Agency in devising an appro - from Lyme Bay and Portland Harbour. These were analysed priate response. As a quantity of oil and approximately 100 for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, toxic components of containers had been lost during and immediately following oil which can affect the human foodchain and whose con - the grounding of the MSC Napoli , it was also decided to centrations may require fishery closures to be put in place. design and implement a monitoring programme in Lyme Bay Natural England organised necropsies of a proportion of the in order to assess any environmental impact and to protect oiled seabirds which was conducted by members of the the human food chain. British Trust for Ornithology to establish species affected Following an investigation by the Marine Accident and their condition prior to oiling, and Cefas conducted analy - Investgation Branch of the Department for Transport, it was ses of oil from the feathers of a number of birds in order to concluded that faulty vessel design led to the structural fail - confirm that the oil was from the MSC Napoli . In preparation ures. For more detail see NAIB (2008). for analysis of any of the chemicals aboard the vessel if lost, The cargo carried by the MSC Napoli was very diverse, Cefas and the Environment Agency collected sediment sam - including many non-hazardous goods (cars, gearboxes, ples from around the shoreline of Lyme Bay and from the paper, personal effects etc) and a wide variety of hazardous Fleet and Portland Harbour, and the Plymouth Marine materials (including chemicals, solvents, personal care prod - Laboratory also collected surface sediment samples from ucts and pesticides). Of particular concern were the pesti - all the stations of the cruise mentioned above. All of these cides lamda-cyhalothrin, profenofos, glyphosate, sediment samples were stored frozen at –20°C in order that carbendazim, propaquizafop, and dibutyltin oxide and a they could provide baseline data against which any future broad range of other chemical products. contamination by any of the chemicals could be assessed. In addition, the University of Plymouth deployed biological effects monitoring at a number of beach locations in Lyme Bay under an EU-funded programme called FACE-IT (Fast Advanced Cellular and Ecosystems Information Technologies). 6 Y R A M M U S E V I T U C E X E Both the Plymouth Marine Laboratory (seawater) and oil ingestion. See http://www.defra.gov.uk/corporate/vla/ Cefas (shellfish) studies showed elevated concentrations of science/documents/science-end-survrep-qtlyw0107.pdf. PAH only in the area immediately outside the exclusion zone Samples of seawater from the holds and engine room of the established around MSC Napoli . None of the shellfish MSC Napoli were screened for chemicals by the showed PAH concentrations higher than the Food Standards Environment Agency and toxicity tested by Cefas against an Agency’s guideline values (10 µg kg -1 wet weight for alga and a crustacean. These studies showed low concen - benzo[ a]pyrene and 15 µg kg -1 wet weight for trations of chemicals and toxicity initially, which reduced in benz[ a]anthracene and dibenz[ a,h ]anthracene) and so no the holds as container of cargo were removed. Some resid - fishery closures were imposed. Studies undertaken by the ual toxicity remained in samples from the engine room, University of Plymouth showed limited sublethal biological which was open to the sea, probably due to small leaks of effects in limpets from Branscombe, close to the MSC oil from pipework. By the time all of the water was pumped Napoli . Benthic surveys undertaken on behalf of Natural out of the ship so that she could be refloated the level of England found evidence of damage to the benthic environ - toxicity was very low, so there was no concern regarding ment surrounding the MSC Napoli , but it could not be estab - potential toxic impacts. lished that this was a result of the grounding of the vessel. Overall, the impact of the MSC Napoli incident, as estab - Oil spilled from the MSC Napoli resulted in over 3,000 lished during this monitoring programme, was less than ini - seabird casualties. Necropsies of approximately 10% of tially feared from the first study of the hazardous goods these (306 birds) were undertaken in order to assess the manifest listing the chemicals and their quantities carried by impact on populations of seabirds affected. Of these, 168 the ship. Most of the oil fuels aboard were safely tran - were guillemots and 104 razorbills (55% and 34%, respec - shipped and removed and no dangerous goods containers tively). Of the guillemots that could be aged, 77% were were lost into the sea. The concentrations of chemicals that adults, 20% were young adults and only 3% were sub- were released to the water environment during the incident adults.