Dead dolphin sparks fears after oil spill
Print Edition
A dead dolphin has been found in Bangladesh’s protected Sundarbans delta following an oil spill which has spread over several hundred square kilometers, heightening fears for the area’s rare wildlife.
The Dhaka Tribune newspaper published a photo of the mammal yesterday, saying it was found floating in a canal off the Shela river where a crashed tanker has leaked thousands of liters of oil.
It was not immediately clear whether the dolphin was killed by the spill which officials said now covered up to 350 square kilometers of the vast Sundarbans mangrove delta straddling India.
“According to latest information, the furnace oil has spread to an estimated 300 to 350 square kilometer area inside the Sundarbans,” said a forest department statement late Saturday, updating an earlier estimate from officials of 80 square kilometers.
The tanker hit another vessel and sank on Tuesday in an area of the Sundarbans set up as a sanctuary for hundreds of endangered Irrawaddy and Ganges river dolphins.
Forest authorities said an autopsy would be conducted on the dolphin, reportedly found about 25 kilometers from the sunken tanker, to determine if it died from the spill.
“We’ve sent a team of forest rangers to find out about the dead dolphin. We’ve to conduct a postmortem to know for sure what caused its death,” Amir Hossain, chief forest officer of the Sundarbans, said.
Shipping minister Shahjahan Khan said on Saturday there would be “no major damage.”
But a senior forest official and other experts have called the accident an ecological “catastrophe.”
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