How serious is the oil spill caused by Japanese cargo ships hitting rocks off the coast of Mauritius?

The oil spill of Japanese cargo ships off the coast of Mauritius is a great disaster to the coastal ecology and tourism of Mauritius.

The short-term harm of crude oil leakage is firstly the harm to marine animals and ecology. Crude oil will trap a large number of seabirds in oil pollution. Once the feathers of seabirds are stained with oil, birds can't fly away, so they get stuck in the oil, or suffocate or drown. Of course, seabirds are more likely to die of poisoning. Similarly, marine creatures trapped by crude oil, such as seals and turtles, will try to jump out of the water again and again to get rid of the oil on their fur. However, due to the extensive pollution area and serious oil pollution, they will eventually struggle and sink to the bottom of the sea and die. Large marine animals such as walruses and whales also face the same fate. Once trapped in the oil slick, most animals will die within days or even hours.

With the increase of polluted area and crude oil leakage, the disaster situation may further expand. For example, toxic compounds such as benzene and toluene contained in crude oil may enter the food chain, from lower algae to higher mammals and humans, which can be protected from poisoning through the food chain. Surviving species may also undergo genetic mutations in the future and pass them on to countless offspring.

The impact on the food chain can be shown as follows: after the ocean is polluted by crude oil in a large area, bacteria, plankton and other organisms foraging on the seabed will devour the oil, and then these organisms will become food for small fish, crabs and shrimps, and then these small fish, crabs and shrimps will be eaten by fish, dolphins and whales such as larger red snakeheads. Crude oil poisons can be enriched into larger and higher-end organisms through this food chain. On the one hand, toxic substances may kill these creatures after concentration; On the other hand. If these creatures become seafood for human consumption, they will also poison people. This practice is inevitable because the Mauritian coast is an important seafood producing area in China. The harm of food chain to people is mainly manifested in the enrichment of poisons, which harms people's liver, intestine, kidney and stomach, mutates human tissues and cells and causes cancer. Of course, the further expansion of crude oil pollution will also cause more serious and sustained damage to ecology and environment. After mixing crude oil with seawater, it changes the physical and chemical parameters of seawater, such as the color and transparency of seawater, thus changing the original habitat and growth environment of marine life, forcing them to either migrate or stay in place for poisoning. On the other hand, a large area of crude oil floating on the sea surface reduces the energy of solar radiation entering seawater, blocks the interaction between seawater and air, and causes seawater hypoxia. It directly affects the photosynthesis of marine plants and the circulation of the whole marine food chain, thus seriously destroying the normal ecological balance in the marine environment and leading to the death of fish and shrimp due to hypoxia.

Mauritius is surrounded by coral reefs, with diverse landforms, long and narrow plains along the coast, plateau mountains, mountainous and isolated peaks in the middle. After the oil spill pollution, the thriving coral reefs here are also facing survival threats. If coral reefs are destroyed, the ecological harm will be greater and more marine life will disappear, because these beautiful coral reefs are the habitat of many marine life.

Of course, another disaster of oil spill is the direct impact on the local economy. Undoubtedly, this oil spill will not only greatly reduce the local fishery output value, but also have a negative impact on the local economy. Tourism along the coast of Mauritius will also be greatly affected.