Germany recently just lost nearly 9,500 litres of diesel in Antarctica — and the Weddell Sea is now paying the price.
In January, seven shipping containers were staged a few hundred metres from the coastal edge of Germany’s Neumayer Station III. One of them held Arctic diesel. Four carried non-hazardous waste. Two more housed a generator with fuel and a worker shelter. However, a week-long blizzard led to a 500×300 metre slab of ice to drift into the Sea with seven containers aboard. Satellite imagery, that looks almost like a white paper with a few ants on it, confirmed the presence of these containers.
In order to retrieve the containers, glaciologists were tasked with assessing whether it would be safe to conduct an operation. Initial assessment showed that some areas of the iceberg were stable enough to allow an exploration team to land on the iceberg. Helicopters then collected nearly 1 tonne of equipment, including three drums filled with about 580 litres of Arctic diesel, as well as gas cylinders and batteries.
However, the iceberg’s instability forced only a partial salvage from the floating mass. The rest was impossible to reach without putting human life at risk. Soon after, as per ABC reports, the rest of the containers sank to the seabed. The working assumption now remains that the diesel container was either ruptured on impact or imploded under pressure on its way down.
The incident was formally disclosed at the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting in Hiroshima. Its implications are considered dire.
German officials in Antarctic said lessons have been learned after the incident. In order to reduce the risks of such loss of cargo, containers will be stored at a 5000m distance from the ice shelf edge. However, the current ecological impact is massive and hard to quantify.
Arctic diesel is lighter and more volatile than heavy fuel oil, it can evaporate faster in open water. However, Antarctica’s extreme cold suppresses bacterial degradation sharply so the fuel is likely to remain in the system for a longer period of time, officials suggest.
