Cape Town - The Mossel Bay Municipality says teams continued their work on Thursday to remove tar-like droplets that washed ashore and were understood to be affecting a significant stretch of the coastline from Mossel Bay to Wilderness.
The municipality on Thursday morning said following beach closures due to an oil spill earlier this week, clean-up operations continued.
The origin of the droplets is not yet clear.
A flag system has been implemented indicating the status on the contaminated beaches. Green indicates a beach has been cleaned and safe for public access. Orange indicates contamination and cleaning procedures being conducted, while red means the beach is highly contaminated and is a no-go zone.
Four out of the five Blue Flag beaches have been declared green since Wednesday. Dana Bay and Diaz Beach were still classified as orange.
The Garden Route District Municipality’s (GRDM) Joint Operations Centre (JOC) on Wednesday hosted a meeting with key stakeholders to discuss the current state of the small-scale oil/hydrocarbons spill detected in the last few days.
“The key objective is to mitigate the effects of oil droplets on the environment and marine life, as well as to promptly clean the temporarily closed beaches and re-open them before the holiday season.
“Cleaning teams on the ground in Mossel Bay use a water filtration system to float off droplets of oil from exposed areas of sand collected from the affected beaches. This will be duplicated elsewhere where beaches are temporarily affected by the contaminants. In addition to this, estuaries that are currently open i.e. Hartenbos, Kleinbrak, Knysna, as well as Keurbooms, are closely monitored for any droplets,” the GRDM said.
The droplets are notably higher in density during high tide and their size differs per area. The Hessequa local municipality indicated that the ones found at the Gouritz beach were only the size of the head of a match, Bitou Municipality found 5mm size ones and Mossel Bay found larger ones.
“The way forward is for GRDM to have specialists from the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, as well as South African National Parks, do a reconnaissance flight to scan the coastline from Gouritz to Plettenberg Bay. This will assist them to determine the origin of the spill as well as monitoring if any others are still en route to any of the Garden Route beaches,” it said.
Meanwhile, the Southern African Foundation For The Conservation Of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB) said while there are no reports of oiled wildlife, SANCCOB’s response team is on stand-by and is participating as part of the Incident Management Team in the event of oiled sea birds being impacted.
“During this time of year, we expect African penguin fledglings to be swimming in the affected vicinity after leaving the colonies in the Eastern Cape, and we are particularly concerned that these birds could be impacted,” it said.
People are requested to refrain from handling any oiled sea birds. Contact SANCCOB for more information on 021 557 6155.
Members of the public who notice small black pellets on any beach along the Garden Route, can report this to the Emergency Call Centre on 044 805 5071.
Cape Times