This article is re -publish of The conversation under a Creative Commons license.
An oil tanker that wears ray fuel was recently hit by a cargo ship while anchoring 13 miles from the east coast of England. It has set up a series of large explosions and a large plume of black smoke, while an still unknown amount of ray fuel wasted in the sea.
We are marine ecologists at the University of Hull, the city closest to the incident. We know this coast and these seas very well. While it is too early to say exactly what the consequences will be, we know that this dump is jeopardizing one of Britain’s most important coastlines – both for conservation and for commercial fishing.
The collision occurred in the Holderness Offshore Marine Protected Area, an area of coarse sandy sea floor that supports many different species. This includes the Ocean Quahog, an edible mussel known to live for over 500 years. The area also serves as a nursery for fish such as lemon sole, plaque and European sprat.
This area overlaps with those designated to protect the harbor porpers and nearby estuary in the Humber and its mud apartments, sand dunes and marshes where thousands of birds spend the winters along with other important species, such as lambs and gray seals.
The British’s largest seabird colony in the UK is found just north of the collision site along the flamborough and Filey Coast. More than 250,000 birds breed there every year, including impressive numbers of guillemots and razor. It is also host to conservation species such as Gannets, Kittiwakes and Poffertjies.
In the south are other protected coastlines and an important breeding ground for gray seals. The wax, where four rivers are empty in the same large square estuary, is found 70 kilometers to the south, in the general direction of the power of the tanker. The area has large salt marshes and is another important place for birds that winter too much.