War wrecks not covered by international agreements. Largest ship grave in front of Honiara
BY JOHN HOUANIHAU
In front of Honiara lies Solomon Islands’ largest number of World War II wrecks beneath the Iron Bottom Sound sea, posing a huge environmental disaster risk.
But, to date, there is no international agreement to address this risk in the case that the oil products contained in the wrecks start leaking.
Paul Irving, marine pollution officer for the PAC Plan Resilience Project from Secretariat for the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP), raised the concern to Island Sun in an exclusive interview this week.
“3,500 World War II wrecks in the Pacific still have oil on them, and it’s a big and difficult problem to deal with. Solomon Islands has a lot of them,” said Mr Irving.
He said that the wrecks are now at least 70 to 80 years old since they sank.
“The oil was a cargo because they were a tanker, or whether the oil was fuel. Some of those ships might start to leak a little bit of the oil inside of them, and the question becomes, is what do we do with that?” he said.
He stressed that international agreements do not cover War wrecks.
“There’s no international agreement like you have with oil tankers or cargo ships now. I think the Solomon government should be engaging in international discussions about whether there could be a new international instrument or a new international organisation to start dealing with the problem of potentially polluting wrecks,” he said.
“It’s a difficult problem. The difficulty comes from the fact that the ships are also war graves. Some still have the original cargos, which might mean ammunition, tanks, bullets or explosives. So, they’re not safe. And so, it’s a real big problem,” he said.
“Any oil inside them held by the steel will start to bubble out when it rusts. That is nasty oil. It’s World War II-quality fuel and World War II-quality crude oil,” said Irving.
He said that most of the wrecks are Japanese, and there’s an issue of who owns them.
“The model that I look at and think is so successful is the organisation that deals with landmines. After a war, the landmines get left behind, and the people who have to face those are the local farmers and the local population. So, several countries have come together and said, we’ll help clean it up.
“It’s not being done fast because it’s a big job. I think the same needs to be done with potentially polluting wrecks, where there’s an international agreement, a coalition of countries that have the expertise and perhaps the history, Japan, the United States, UK, Australia, who have that history associated with these wrecks, could come together and be helpful,” said Irving.
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