Rome Newsroom, Aug 14, 2020 / 09:31 am
After a damaged ship leaked more than 1,000 tons of oil off the coast of Mauritius, the Bishop of Port-Louis is worried about the consequences for local fishing villages who depend on the dying sea life in the island's coral reefs.
"Many families are afflicted by a lingering stench; fishermen and all those who earn their living on the sea, suffer particularly," Cardinal Maurice Piat said in a diocesan statement Aug. 11.
All Mauritians have been touched by the "ecological disaster," Piat said, adding that the communities in Mahébourg, Rivière-des-Créoles, and the villages of the east coast of the island have been particularly affected.
The oil spill came from a Japanese cargo ship that ran aground on a reef in late July, cracking its hull. On Aug. 13 the Mauritian Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth said that almost all of the remaining oil has now been removed from the damaged ship.