Salvage Workers Search Shipwrecks for Oil, Oceans and Decades Apart

As a salvage team labors to remove oil from a foundering container ship off New Zealand, workers 6,800 miles (11,000km) away have been exploring the underwater resting place of another shipwreck – one that occurred 70 years ago.

In December of 1941, the S.S. Montebello was one of the largest oil tankers in the world: a steel-hulled, three-masted behemoth stretching 440 feet (134m) and weighing 8,272 tons. She steamed across the seas between Siberia, British Columbia, Hawaii and other Pacific ports transporting oil, and had just taken on 3,089,982 gallons of crude and 104,034 gallons of bunker fuel in Port San Louis, Calif. when six miles from shore she was struck by a torpedo from a Japanese submarine. The S.S. Montebello sank in 900 feet of water – taking her cargo with her. But the incident was kept quiet: the US had just entered WWII and officials didn’t want the public to know enemy forces had attacked so close to the mainland.

As oil from the Deepwater Horizon leak washes ashore in Louisiana, what was to many an abstract possibility has become all too real.

Through a series of 39 images published Monday, The Big Picture offers a glimpse of the situation on the ground.

The U.S. Dept. of the Interior has issued it’s first permit for new drilling in the Gulf of Mexico since last year’s Deepwater Horizon incident, and the winner was BP — the same company ultimately responsible for the explosion aboard the offshore drilling rig that killed 11 and led to the discharge of 4.9 million gallons of oil into the Gulf.

The Bay of Plenty is on the East coast of the North Island in New Zealand. Tauranga is in the middle of this area and is an amazing, beautiful place to live, with miles of white sandy beaches. We have lots of people who come here for the holidays because the climate is so good, as well as for the beaches and fishing.

A couple of weeks ago, a huge container ship, the MV Rena, ran aground on the Astrolabe reef about 7km north of Motiti Island, off the Tauranga coast. A lot of oil has leaked out onto beaches and into the sea.

“Coal pollution is killing Americans,” said Lynn Ringenberg, MD, of Physicians for Social Responsibility which co-released the analysis. “It is America’s biggest source of toxic air pollution. Air toxics from coal-fired power plants cause cancer, birth defects, and respiratory illness. Just one of those air toxics, mercury, damages the developing brains of fetuses, infants, and small children. It robs our children of healthy neurological development and native intelligence.

The states on the “Toxic 20” list, starting with the worst, are:

1. Ohio    
2. Pennsylvania    
3. Florida    
4. Kentucky    
5. Maryland    
6. Indiana    
7. Michigan    
8. West Virginia    
9. Georgia    
10. North Carolina
11. South Carolina
12. Alabama    
13. Texas    
14. Virginia        
15. Tennessee
16. Missouri
17. Illinois
18. Wisconsin
19. New Hampshire
20. Iowa

Oil Refinery