Coast Guard going hitech to fight oil spills

With oil spills from sunken and grounded ships posing a danger to India's marine environment, the Indian Coast Guard is procuring three state-of-the-art multi-purpose pollution control vessels being built at a cost of over Rs 350 crore.

"These vessels will help the Coast Guard tackle and mitigate the effects of environmental disasters caused by oil spillage in a big way," said inspector general of Coast Guard A Rajasekhar.

These vessels are 100 metres long and over 12 metres wide and can carry 100 people on-board. It can also carry helicopters.

"The three vessels are being specially built to respond to tackle maritime disasters such as large scale oil spills from tankers or fire on-board the vessels," Rajsekhar said.

These vessels are dedicated pollution control vessels which can collect 600 tonnes of oil.

Though there are several pollution control vessels, what makes these vessels special is that these vessels have Sweeping Arm Mechanisms through which it can collect large amount of spillage and take it out. Oil spills have the potential to cause enormous damage to the marine environment.

For instance the Exxon Valdez oil spill was one of the largest man-made environmental disasters ever at sea, seriously affecting plant and wildlife.

The oil tanker Exxon Valdez had departed the Valdez Oil Terminal, Alaska, on March 23, 1989 with 53 million gallons of crude oil bound for California. The ship struck a reef on March 24, 1989 discharging 11 million gallons of oil in the sea killing thousands of marine animals and sea birds.

"Procuring these hi-tech vessels could help the Coast Guard avert such disasters in case of oil spillage. These vessels are being built at ABG Shipyard, Surat, and the first vessel is likely to be ready by March this year," Rajsekhar said.

The pollution control vessels will have an Integrated Platform Management System resulting in all the equipment being integrated and remote controlled. The vessels will also have capability of fire-fighting.

One of the main tasks of the Coast Guard is to ensure vessels do not pollute while endeavouring to preserve marine environment by carrying out surveys besides creating awareness of marine environment protection.

This year a total of 12 vessels were badly damaged in the choppy sea in 12 persons died. These vessels were either grounded or sunk.

Most of the vessel mishap takes place during the monsoon when the weather is bad and the sea is stormy.