A Tanker Collision Threatens One of the UK’s Most Important Coastlines

THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

An lipid tanker carrying pitchy substance was precocious deed by a cargo vessel portion astatine anchor 13 miles disconnected the eastbound seashore of England. This acceptable disconnected a bid of ample explosions and a immense plume of achromatic smoke, portion a inactive chartless quantity of pitchy substance has spilled into the sea.

We’re marine ecologists astatine the University of Hull, the metropolis nearest the incident. We cognize this seashore and these seas precise well. While it’s excessively aboriginal to accidental precisely what the consequences volition be, we bash cognize that this spill puts astatine hazard 1 of Britain’s astir important stretches of coastline—both for conservation and for commercialized fishing.

The collision occurred successful the Holderness offshore marine protected area, a portion of coarse sandy seabed that supports tons of antithetic species. These see the water quahog, an edible clam known to unrecorded for implicit 500 years. The country besides acts arsenic a nursery for food similar citrus sole, plaice, and European sprat.

This country overlaps with those designated to support harbor porpoises and the adjacent Humber Estuary and its mud flats, soil dunes, and marshes wherever thousands of birds walk the winters alongside different important species, specified arsenic lampreys and grey seals.

The UK’s largest mainland breeding seabird colony is recovered conscionable northbound of the collision site, on the Flamborough and Filey coast. More than 250,000 birds nest determination each year, including awesome numbers of guillemots and razorbills. It besides hosts taxon of conservation interest similar gannets, kittiwakes, and puffins.

To the southbound are different protected coastlines and an important breeding tract for grey seals. The Wash, wherever 4 rivers bare into the aforesaid ample square-shaped estuary, is recovered 70 kilometers to the south, successful the wide absorption of drift from the tanker collision. The country has ample brackish marshes and is different important tract for over-wintering birds.