By Faisal Abu Bakr | 2024-03-14

ADEN -- Following the recent sinking of a vessel carrying more than 20,000 tons of fertilizer in the southern Red Sea, experts from the United Nations (UN) are conducting an assessment in coordination with the Yemeni environment ministry.

The Belizean-flagged, Lebanese-operated MV Rubymar was hit with missiles fired by the Iran-backed Houthis on February 18, which damaged its hull and caused an oil slick from leaking fuel.

The merchant vessel sank beneath the waves on March 2 to the south of the Hanish Islands, a Yemeni archipelago in the southern Red Sea, AFP reported.

The ship's cargo, 21,000 metric tons of ammonium phosphate sulfate fertilizer that is now fully submerged, has raised concern for the threat it poses to marine and human life.

"At this stage there is no immediate danger," said Christophe Logette, director of the France-based accidental water pollution management center Cedre.

Logette is part of a five-member UN team dispatched to conduct an assessment.

"The ship is on the seabed; the hull is in relatively good shape," he said, noting that the main concern is the fate of the thousands of tons of fertilizer.

The fertilizer is in a storage compartment, he said, "and there is no trace at the moment of this product being released into the sea."

There had been "no leak" from the holds containing around 200 tons of propulsion fuel and 80 tons of diesel either, Logette added.

The fear is that if any of the fertilizer were to seep out, it would dump a huge amount of nitrate into the water, causing massive algal blooms that "would choke marine life," he added.

He said the "fertilizer will be wet and so will dissolve very slowly in very low concentrations, with a restricted effect on the marine environment."

Decades-long impact

Rubymar "fully sunk while carrying dangerous chemicals," Abdul-Qadir Kharaz, former head of Yemen's Public Authority for Environmental Protection, told Al-Fassel.

"The fertilizers aren't natural but manufactured," he said, noting that they contain many poisons and "pose grave risks to people's health."

The negative impact of the incident will continue for decades, he added.

Pollution caused by the Houthis' sinking of the ship could include "changes in the seawater characteristics, which will in turn affect marine life and the quality of fish and coral reefs," Kharaz said.

There will be an economic impact as well, Kharaz noted.

"Fishermen are avoiding fishing at this time, and thus their livelihoods, which are limited already, have been affected," he said.

"The economic impact also will extend to the national economy, as many countries will now avoid importing fish from Yemen," he said.

'Complex' contamination

"When we prepared environmental action plans, experts and researchers would talk about the remains of fertilizers that are washed away by rainwater from agricultural land to the Yemeni coast," said chemical engineer Hayat Ghaleb.

"Such remains were classified as a source of environmental contamination affecting the coral reefs," said Ghaleb, former manager of the ozone unit in the Public Authority for Environmental Protection.

Coral reefs are the natural habitat for many marine species, she told Al-Fassel, adding that contamination poses "a direct threat to mangrove environments, a main source of marine diversity in the Red Sea."

"The remains of fertilizers that are washed away by floods and rainwater contaminate the marine environment, yet these can't be compared to the magnitude of the marine pollution caused by the sinking of Rubymar," she said.

The vessel is carrying "highly poisonous fertilizers," she said, noting that chemical spills are "one of the most complex types of contamination."

"The financial cost of dealing with chemical contamination is usually extremely high and requires technological capabilities not available in most developing countries," Ghaleb noted.

Chemical contamination from the sunken vessel also will have an impact on water desalination plants in some coastal cities, she said. "This will raise the cost of processing water, and will make the process very difficult, if not impossible."