Shipping disasters: The Race Against Catastrophe
In the last few days of 2018, as the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, Norway, lay cloaked in the long darkness of polar night, a shrimp trawler called the >F/V Northguider< ran aground off the coast of one of the islands. A gale howled. The engine room flooded with seawater. A Norwegian coast guard helicopter managed to quickly rescue the crew. The ship, though, remained behind, along with the 300,000 liters of diesel oil stored in its fuel tanks. An oil spill in the surrounding Nordaust-Svalbard nature reserve—home to walruses, polar bears, and a wealth of seabirds—seemed all but certain. >click to read< 07:52
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