Beach clean-up of ‘oil spill’ tar
GLOBS of tar that washed up on the shores of the TRNC, threatening endangered turtle species, have been cleared up, the Tourism and Environment Ministry announced on Tuesday.
The sticky substance, believed to have come from an oil spill off the cost of Israel last month, was cleaned from Alagadi beach by a team of workers.
“Since this area is under protection, Environmental Protection Department staff constantly inspect and clean the region,” a spokesperson said.
“Due to this spill inspections will be increased and cleaning work required by possible new spills will be carried out by Environmental and Protection Department personnel.”
Earlier the Society for the Protection of Turtles (Spot) warned residents that washed up tar had been accumulating on northern coasts in the last couple of weeks.
Tar had also washed up on beaches in Girne and the Ronnas bay of Karpaz, posing a threat to protected sea turtles, but also to humans.
Other animals will be harmed if they come into contact with tar which “sticks on the skin or the fur, immobilises the animals or makes it very hard to stabilise their body temperature” Spot warned.
Pictures have been circulating showing washed-up birds in the eastern Mediterranean covered in tar. In another incident, oil was detected in the lungs of a dead whale that washed up on a beach in Israel.
“Oil is mostly afloat, therefore, animals such as marine turtles that have to come to the surface to breathe, or sea birds that have to spend time on the water surface” are directly affected, Spot said.
“When accidentally consumed or inhaled, oil can harm animals either by poisoning them or causing difficulty with their breathing.”
Israel observed the impacts of the spill in the first week of the incident, which then spread to Lebanon and the rest of the Mediterranean.
Israeli beaches were shut down after the incident, which caused 200km of coastline to be covered in tar. More than 1,000 tonnes of tar were estimated to have washed onto Israel’s Mediterranean coastline within the last month, with the country’s officials describing it as an environmental “disaster”.
On Wednesday Israel’s Environment Protection Ministry declared the emergency “over”, reports said, although clean-up operations were continuing.
The ministry reportedly accused an Iran-linked tanker for the incident, after initial suspicion that a Greek tanker was involved, adding political tension to the investigation into the incident.
Referring to the possible source of the oil spill, Spot said “it is now forbidden to share any information on the ships that were suspected” in order to prevent “unfair judgment”.
Residents should notify Spot if they discover tar on a beach. Spot said it is working with the relevant bodies and will organise beach clean-ups given that “some of the most important nesting grounds of the Mediterranean are on our island”.
The organisation warned that any tar should be cleaned up immediately, because rising temperatures will melt it.
Hasibe Kusetoğulları, head of the TRNC’s Environmental Protection Department, told Cyprus Today that personnel regularly checking the specially protected areas informed her that tar was first seen on the country’s beaches a few weeks ago.
“This is not surprising, our beaches, especially the Ronnas beach in Karpaz, often become an international rubbish dump due to their location in the middle of international ship[ping lanes].
“The writing on packaging indicate that most of this activity is Arab-based, so an oil spill like this will show up on our beaches.
“The Tourism and Environment Ministry is following the situation closely. . . These beaches are very valuable for our country. The nesting season for sea turtles begins in May.”