Oil slicks in Iranian waters raise environmental damage concerns

Near dolphin-shaped island

One slick has appeared off the southern tip of Qeshm Island, the large dolphin-shaped island in the Strait of Hormuz close to Iran’s coast, pictures from Copernicus’s Sentinel-2 satellites showed.

Wim Zwijnenburg, an environmental open-source researcher at Dutch peace organisation PAX, said the dark colour in parts of the slick indicated it was heavy fuel oil, while a lighter diluted slick stretched around 160 km.

A dark, bubbling liquid was spotted washing ashore on the beaches of Suza on Qeshm Island, contrasting with the turquoise water surrounding it, in a video posted on August 11 and verified by Reuters.

"This is the biggest one that I've seen in recent months, really since the conflict between Iran and the US began," said John Amos, CEO of SkyTruth, which uses satellite imagery to detect oil spills, calling it "a major incident".

A second slick was spotted near the smaller Sirri Island in the centre of the gulf about 100 kilometres southwest of Qeshm and home to some Iranian offshore oil and gas production, satellite showed.

The satellite imagery of Qeshm Island was taken on August 10 and that of Sirri Island on August 13.