.Commentary by Captain Paul Watson

Dr. Vikash Tatayah, the director of the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation has reported that the oil has encircled the islet like a noose. “It’s a disaster,” Tatayah said. “Never in my wildest nightmares would I have imagined something like this.”It is an ecological disaster but we have not only imagined it, we have seen this happen over and over again for decades and it will continue to happen over and over again for years to come.Sea Shepherd volunteers have responded to these disasters for decades. We were there in the Galapagos in January 2001 when the tanker Jessica ran aground.

Our crews were on the beaches in Prince Edward Sound, Alaska in March of 1981 after Captain Joseph Hazelwood ran the Exxon Valdez aground. Our crews were on the beaches in Brittany in 1999 when the tanker Erica sank dumping 30,000 barrels of heavy oil into the sea.And we were back on site in Brittany just last year in 2019 when the Grande American caught fire and was leaking oil into the Bay of Biscay.And we were in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 when the Deepwater Horizon disaster occurred. That was Sea Shepherd Gulf Rescue, a campaign where we were threatened by the Coast Guard for rescuing animals and birds.

Rescuing and cleaning birds and animals, cleaning the slime from the rocks, sopping up the stinking oil, raking up the tar balls and enduring the stench and the skin irritations, all without compensation from governments or the responsible corporations.And each and every time, we warned that it would happen again. And again and again. And once again the response from governments and the oil companies is inadequate as if the spills are just part of their business.I still remember the words of British Columbia’s Highway Minister in the Seventies, a corporate ass kisser named Phil Gaglardi. This is a direct quote. “Some chick gets a little oil on her bikini and everyone screams pollution. That’s the smell of money buddy and I ain’t met nobody who don’t like money.”

And that is the bottom line: That stench is the smell of money.So what’s to be done about Mauritius? Local people will rise to the occasion and they will get their hands dirty and suffer the health consequences. The Japanese oil company will pay some fines. No one will go to jail. The Japanese government will provide a foreign aid package to Mauritius to shut them up and the oil shipping business will carry on towards another incident that we can’t imagine will happen again.