Another UK Marine Pollution Event

 

Island nations, with busy ports, have to live with the probability of marine collisions. Globally, between 200 and 300 happen each year. One just occurred, 12 miles off the  UK's Yorkshire coast, It involved the container ship MV Solong and the anchored US-flagged  tanker Stena Immaculate. The collision seems, however, extremely odd. Visibility was apparently fine at the time and modern shipping carries sophisticated warning systems. Stena Immaculate was carrying jet fuel for the American military. Predictably, both ships caught fire and it looked, for a time, as if a major environmental disaster was underway (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/mar/12/captain-arrested-over-uk-ship-collision-is-russian-owner-says). Fortunately, however, the MV Solong wasn't, on this particular trip, carrying sodium cyanide. Most of the jet fuel, that doesn't burn, will evaporate. It could have been very different, if cyanide plus substantial volumes of heavy oils finished up in the local bird colonies and on tourist beaches.