Second World War Wrecks Surface As Threat to Pacific Environment

Three years ago, a typhoon over the remote Ulithi atoll in Micronesia not only damaged property but left a strong smell of oil in its wake. Within days, islanders discovered a large slick in one of their fishing lagoons. It came from the wreck of USS Mississinewa, a second world war American oil tanker sunk in the atoll by a Japanese torpedo in 1944 and disturbed by the storm.

Plugging the Mississinewa's leak of about 24,000 gallons of aviation fuel cost the US government $6m (£3.2m), but the local communities fear that another typhoon could be even more catastrophic.

Although 2m gallons of oil was pumped out of the wreck, it still holds a significant amount more.

A study funded by more than 12 Pacific governments has now mapped more than 3,852 mainly Japanese and American ships sunk in the second world war in its waters. They include 23 large aircraft carriers, 213 destroyers, 22 battleships and approximately 50 oil tankers. At least 13m tonnes of shipping was destroyed in the four-year-long war.

Although few of the wrecks have been properly surveyed, scientists say that after 60 years at the bottom of the ocean all will be corroding and that major leaks are inevitable.

The danger, says Asterio Takesy, director of the South Pacific regional environment programme (Sprep), is that they will heavily pollute sensitive lagoons and reefs on a scale that few of the region's im poverished nations are equipped to cope with. Only Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Niue have any equipment to clean up marine oil spills.

Yesterday Mr Takesy appealed to both America and Japan to help impoverished governments clean up the legacy of war.

"Future Pacific island generations will inherit severely degraded marine environments unless concerted efforts are made to improve the way we manage the resources", he told the Pacific islands regional oceans forum in Fiji.

"The long-term capacity of our ocean to support the benefits it provides to global and regional communities is by no means secure".

The full scale of the problem is only now being addressed by governments. Australia's Great Barrier Reef, a world heritage site, is threatened by two large American ships sunk in the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942. The USS Lexington and the fleet tanker USS Neosho between them are thought to contain more than 5m gallons of oil.

More than 150 large ships were sunk close to the Solomon islands, scene of the epic battle of Guadalcanal, and at least 270 in the territorial waters of Papua New Guinea. A further 200 are recorded in the waters of the Marshall islands and Micronesia.

Several local governments in the Solomon islands have reported reefs dying from what they believe is the affect of oil pollution. Requests have been made in the past to both the US and Japanese governments to take responsibility for the safety of the wrecks but, according to Sprep, there has been no official response.

Pacific coastal eco-systems are particularly vulnerable to oil spills because of their small size, limited freshwater availability and rapidly increasing human population.

The problem, however, is not confined to the sea. The Americans and Japanese left great quantities of bombs, abandoned fuel and weapon dumps behind on land. Neither country, according to Sprep, is willing to remove them or make them safe.