a cargo ship attacked by houthi rebels
in the Red Sea has sunk It's the first
vessel lost since the Yemen group began
targeting commercial shipping that it
says is linked to Israel the British
owned ruar was carrying more than 40,000
tons of fertilizer when it was hit by a
missile and began taking in water nearly
two weeks ago Yemen's internationally
recognized government is warning that
the sinking could cause an environmental
catastrophe
let's bring in Julian dranti he's the
regional director for Greenpeace and
joins me from the Lebanese Capital
Beirut welcome to
DW so a sunken vessel with more than
40,000 tons of fertilizer we just
mentioned Yemen's government warning of
an environmental catastrophe so just how
bad is
this yeah let me first thank you for
hosting me
well it's a it's a million dollar
question it's very hard to answer this
question because we really need to
understand what the situation is we
don't have firsthand information of what
the cargo is and how it is stored um the
information that we've seen in the news
is that it is most likely ammonium
nitrate and there are a lot of risk
associated with such spill we need to
understand first that ammono nitrate is
a very um is a fertilizer with high
acidity and therefore such risk can
disrupt the pH balance uh of this Marine
ecosystem and cause various effect on
species in the water column uh Global
ocean acidification is a global
phenomena that we are currently
experiencing due to uh excess CO2 in the
atmosphere because of our addiction to
fossil fuel and therefore such Global
phenomena will be exacerbated by by such
spills another important potential
impact is uh the
is that the large influx of nitrogen uh
due to the spill in the Marine ecosystem
will fuel what is called as algal bloom
and this algal bloom will create an
imbalance as well in the Marine
ecosystem and will have cascading effect
throughout the food web and might
therefore impact other species that are
relying on this ecosystem so depending
also on the sea current this alar Bloom
can be can find itself near the coast
and could directly impact the precious
corals of of the Red Sea by blocking
direct sunlight from reaching them so
really in essence a spill of of ammonium
nitrate fertilizer in the sea not only
poses immediate risk of localized
acidification and toxicity but also has
the potential to to disrupt uh the
delicate balance of marine ecosystems
leading to harmful alal blooms and
impacting various species within the
ecosystem so this is clearly a very
serious incident but is there anything
that can be done is there a way to clean
the water or purify it or somehow limit
the
damage so again it's hard to tell
because of the lack information and
that's why the immediate action that
needs to be taken is to provide
immediate access to the ship to the
Shipwreck site uh for an expert for an
expert response team to assess the
situation and swiftly devise and
Implement an emergency plan we need to
understand um so what is the cargo on
board is it only ammonium nitrate are
there other toxic material or other
material in in the cargo how well is the
is the material stored is the material
already leaking can it be retrieved so
many unanswered question that we need
that we need to be answered as soon as
possible that was Julian dranti from
Greenpeace thank you so
much my
pleasure