Two slicks have appeared in Iranian waters, satellite imagery and video verified by Reuters show, as tit-for-tat attacks on oil tankers and other vessels by Iran and the United States spark concerns about environmental damage to the Gulf.
A potential environmental disaster is already unfolding off Oman outside of the Strait of Hormuz where a grounded tanker, the Caroline Bezengi, is leaking Russian crude oil in a protected marine area and has created a massive slick some estimates put at 2,000 square km.
The Caroline Bezengi incident has not been linked to the Iran war.The two latest slicks are inside the Gulf.
One slick has appeared off the southern tip of Qeshm Island, the large dolphin-shaped island in the Strait of Hormuz close to Iran’s coast, pictures from Copernicus’s Sentinel-2 satellites showed.
Wim Zwijnenburg, an environmental open-source researcher at Dutch peace organisation PAX, said the dark colour in parts of the slick indicated it was heavy fuel oil, while a lighter diluted slick stretched around 160 km.
A dark, bubbling liquid was spotted washing ashore on the beaches of Suza on Qeshm Island, contrasting with the turquoise water surrounding it, in a video posted on August 11 and verified by Reuters.
“This is the biggest one that I’ve seen in recent months, really since the conflict between Iran and the US began,” said John Amos, CEO of SkyTruth, which uses satellite imagery to detect oil spills, calling it a “a major incident”.
