Dead dolphins: Government refuses to make scientific report public
Traces of oil found in some dolphins but minister rules out oil spill as cause of mass stranding
Hello and welcome to this issue of our newsletter. Every week, Ariel and Khalil, writers based in Mauritius, investigate the impact the oil spill is having on the country and its people, politics and nature.
Scientific analyses made on the corpses of several of the 52 dolphins found dead off the coast of Mauritius a few weeks following the oil spill have produced results. But the government decided not to communicate them to anyone – not to the public, not even to independent marine scientists.
We only know of the results because Sudheer Maudhoo, the Minister of Blue Economy, was asked in parliament to provide an update on the necropsies. His response is literally all the information the public has regarding the analyses.
In this issue
The shipping industry gets green light to continue polluting
Citizens finally cleared three months after arrest without warrant
The other Mauritian oil spill gets international coverage
This is what Maudhoo said (translated here from French):
Aliphatic hydrocarbons were detected in samples taken from eleven dolphins.
But he added:
The primary cause of death of the melon-headed whales is barotrauma, which means that their body tissues were damaged by a difference in pressure. This phenomenon could have been kickstarted by a number of factors including sonars, airguns used by the oil industry, underwater earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
So Maudhoo concedes that oil was indeed found in some of the dead dolphins but he dismisses it as a possible cause of death, blaming barotrauma instead.
Five things to look into here:
1) Is it fair to rule out the oil spill as a cause of death?
The short of it is that we don’t know because the government has not released results from analyses that can, for all intent and purposes, rule out oil toxicity as a cause of death (tissue toxicity chemical analyses, etc). Which begs the question: why does the government not just release oil toxicity results if those results can back up Maudhoo’s claim that the oil spill was not the (primary) cause of death?
2) Is barotrauma a plausible cause of death?
Yes. The state of at least some of the dead dolphins found on Mauritian shores seem to be consistent with barotrauma: presence of gas bubbles in tissues, etc … Barotrauma is caused by abrupt changes in ambient pressure which can rupture, among other things, lung tissues, consequently allowing air to seep into surrounding spaces (hence presence of gas bubbles). Some mass dolphin strandings have been caused by barotrauma.
3) Maudhoo mentions sonars – they caused a mass stranding in Mauritius in 2008, could they have caused this year’s mass stranding?
Maybe … In 2008, a mass dolphin stranding occurred in the same area of Mauritius. The cause? Sonar of a vessel off the north-west of Madagascar.
Were sonars used in the vicinity of Mauritius around the time of this year’s mass stranding? In August, Mauritian newspaper l’express cited a source who had told them that the Wakashio salvage operation used sonars profusely to determine possible locations for the sinking of the grounded vessel. (l’express did admit that they could not independently confirm the information.) The front part of the vessel was scuttled two days before the first sightings of dead dolphins.
Linking use of sonar by the salvage operation to barotrauma would be enough to attribute the mass stranding to the Wakashio catastrophe. Unfortunately, such a link cannot be made by necropsies.
4) Should we trust Maudhoo?
No. It’s true that his claims cannot be disproved but the government’s refusal to make the results public (or even just available to independent scientists) will only breed suspicion and distrust. As it should. It is hard to understand why the government wouldn’t publicise the report if they backed Maudhoo’s claims.
5) Will the lack of transparency come back to bite them?
Independent scientists did take samples from the corpses following the mass stranding and have sent them to multiple labs abroad for testing. It’s unlikely that the government will be able to suppress the release of results from those tests.
The latest
⚫ The shipping industry just got the green light to keep polluting
There was at least some hope this week that the shipping industry would be forced to take stock and adhere to a greenhouse gas emissions reduction target that’s in line with Paris Climate Agreement goals. Instead, the shipping industry got the go-ahead to INCREASE their emissions for another decade or so. FYI: the shipping industry emitted more than 1 billion tonnes of CO₂ in 2018 alone – that’s more than the aviation industry.
The International Maritime Organisation (IMO), a UN agency, is meant to regulate the global shipping industry but this week’s meeting between its 174 member states was evidently a massive f* you to the environment and all of us living on this planet, especially the most vulnerable.
To be honest, the news is sadly of no surprise. Just consider the fact that the IMO did not set meaningful emissions reduction targets until only two years ago, more than two decades after being requested to do so under the Kyoto Protocol.
Implementing regulation is, granted, more complex than is sometimes portrayed. The power differential between regulators and the capitalist elites who profit from the shipping industry is as vast as the footballing abilities of Messi and myself. The shipping industry is, after all, at the basis of global economies and capitalism – merchant ships transport 11 billion tonnes, or 90%, of goods every year.
So, yes, it’s hard for regulators. That is not to say that regulation cannot happen. But it does mean that the power differential needs to shrink for any regulation to actually happen. And I think one way to shrink it is by making the elites personally liable for the destruction they cause. There is a global movement that’s pushing for just that, and I wrote about it for this newsletter a while back. Only when they are faced with jail time will the elites actually have an incentive to regulate, stop polluting and “do no harm”.
More: An explainer-type article in The Conversation full of numbers about the shipping industry, written a week before the IMO meeting. (Full disclosure: I work at The Conversation.)
⚫ Two citizens arrested without warrants finally cleared
Thirteen weeks. That’s how long it took Josué and Jonathan Dardenne to be formally cleared following their arrest without a warrant (!!!). During those thirteen weeks, the brothers spent time in jail and went through some dark times.
Jonathan recounts how it’s been especially tough for his daughter: “It wasn’t easy for my daughter at school where they ask her what’s up with her dad.”
The police arrested the Dardennes a few weeks after the ecocide when civic protests were at their peak. They were arrested following an alleged incident involving Josué and Jonathan and a supporter of the MSM, the party in government, while two ministers from the MSM appeared in court for alleged negligence related to their handling of the Wakashio grounding and subsequent ecocide. The police prevented the brothers from seeing their lawyers for several hours following their arrest. They spent at least one night in jail. The police later conceded that it had arrested the brothers without warrants. The brothers have always denied all charges.
It took way too long for justice to prevail. The silver lining, I suppose, is that this case is a reminder that the Mauritian justice system, despite attempts to subvert it, remains independent, unlike too many of the country’s institutions.
More: A harrowing account from the brothers of their night in jail and what really happened on the day of the “incident” (in French and Creole).
⚫ Oil spill gets international coverage on the back of this newsletter
In last week’s newsletter, Ariel wrote about another oil spill that happened in Mauritius – this time on land. 15 cubic meters of heavy oil (although Le Mauricien newspaper is quoting much larger volumes) leaked from pipelines and storage tanks just one kilometre or so from a bird sanctuary. On the back of the newsletter, Bloomberg published this piece giving the story international coverage.
More: This.
Thank you, as always, for allowing us in your inbox. – Khalil.
P.S. Compare Maudhoo’s list of possible causes of barotrauma to this line from the Wikipedia entry for barotrauma: