This is sickening, and it’s also puzzling. Apparently some 1600-2000 tons of molasses is shipped from Honolulu to Oakland every week. A pipeline broke under the harbor and spilled 233,000 gallons into the water. The stuff is so viscous it sank immediately to the bottom and sucked all the oxygen out of the water, resulting in a huge fish die-off. There’s some hideous underwater video here.
What I’m puzzled by, though, is that I’d have thought molasses was a product of a sugar harvest, and the last sugar harvest on Oahu was in 1996. Not a single news story has yet told me how the molasses that goes into that pipeline was produced nor have I been told from where it comes.
Officials are bracing for the fish die-off to “accelerate” in the coming days, and expect that the 1,400 or so tons of molasses sucking oxygen from the harbor waters could linger for up to a month as tides slowly work to flush the dark, syrupy substance out to sea, Gill said.
[snip]
It’s still too early to say whether Matson will be penalized for the spill, which is unlike anything Oahu officials have ever encountered, Gill said.
Meanwhile, the molasses continued to decimate marine life in the area Wednesday. Health officials have already collected hundreds of dead fish from the ocean, and they expect to collect thousands more before the spill’s effects end.
The environment in Honolulu Harbor and Keehi Lagoon, where the spill is spreading, will eventually rebound and it will recover more quickly than it would from an oil spill or some other toxic substance, said David Karl, a University of Hawaii professor of oceanography and director of the school’s Daniel K. Inouye Center for Microbial Oceanography.
Oh, that’s reassuring. “Coulda been worse! Coulda been oil!”
Why do I not feel any better about this?
That is really strange, I didn’t know that Hawaii sugar harvests stopped so long ago. You’re right as far as I know, molasses is made from sugar harvest…
Actually one of the articles I read said it was worse than oil, because oil at least has methods to clean it. Sec, I’ll go find it…
https://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-molasses-honolulu-20130911,0,4316341.story
“”We’re working with all the local officials, but as the [Hawaii] Department of Health said, there’s nothing you can do to clean up molasses,” Jeff Hull, a spokesman for Matson Inc., the company responsible for the leak, told the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday. “It’s sunk to the bottom of the harbor. Unlike oil, which can be cleaned from the surface, molasses sinks.”
Put another way by Janice Okubo, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Health, “It’s sugar in the water. If you know a scientific way to remove it from water, let us know.” And once at the bottom, wildlife officials said, the sludge replaces the oxygen-bearing seawater that bottom-dwelling fish use to breathe.”