Case Study: MV Treasure, Dassen & Robben Islands, South Africa
On June 23,2000, disaster struck the African penguin colonies of Dassen and Robben Islands off the coast of South Africa. The MV Treasure went down after taking on water and leaked 1300 tonnes of oil into the area that 41 percent of the African penguins called home. In the final tally over 20,000 penguins were oiled and just under 2,000 died.
Given that it was the worst oil spill in South Africa's history, the number of birds that survived was miraculous. This was partly due to the efforts of hundreds of volunteers who individually washed and cleaned the penguins and relocated them while the area was being cleared up.
But the success story in the wake of this disaster was really how homage to Mother Nature and Canada deserves to be made.
In the days that followed the disaster, a company in South Africa called Spill Supply was contacted to help clean up the oil slick that was polluting these nesting sites for penguins. The product they used was called Biomatrix Gold and hailed from Canada. It did wonders in making the best of a bad situation. As Ray Long. President of Biomatrix Gold points out, they had their work cut out for them.
"Their main function was to clean the rocks and to create runways for the penguins to go from the breeding grounds down the water", says Long. "so our product was used to create what they call runways for them. And the product was used to clean all the rocks surrounding the total island area."
What made Biomatrix Gold so effective was its natural ability to soak up oil, an ability largely thanks to the properties of sphagnum peat moss of which its made. "Spagnum moss has a unique root structure called rhizoids," Long explains, " that contain barrel cells-large cells within the structure that have the capacity to encapsulate all the derivatives of crude oil." This occurs after a heat activation process whereby the moss is dried to a point where it's only 10 per cent water- in its natural state it contains 90 per cent. When it gets to this state, it can absorb approximately 10 times its own weight in hydrocarbons."
As Long points out, " it is important to remember that sphagnum moss at a very early stage is a hydrocarbon. Eventually at the bottom of that structure you will get brown coal and black coal that of course are carbons. This is why it works so well with any derivative of crude oil because they are all part of the same family.''
When Biomatrix Gold is thrown onto the sea as it was on Dassen Island (or on land),it will immediately encapsulate the oil, the chemical or whatever-it will take anything except water.
It floats on the water's surface and the product is wicked into the cell structure and it will not release it." says Long," which is very important because if you're going to put it into a landfill you need to know it's not going to end up in the ground water."
What's also great about Biomatrix Gold is that it naturally contains humic acid which Long says is one of the best catalysts you can have in the process of breaking down hydrocardon molecules. With the help of microbes in the soil that produces enzymes, the oil is slowly digested, leaving carbon dioxide, water and fatty acids as by-products-all environmentally friendly. And if that weren't enough, the sphagnum moss behind it all is a renewable resource that gets stronger with each harvest cycle. It may have been the worst environmental disaster for the penguins of South Africa but without the sphagnum moss from Canada, the situation could have been worse. It was made-to-order natural solution to an environmental catastrophe.