From cleaning birds to beach patrols, volunteers tell what they saw and did after Singapore oil spill (VIDEO) (2024)

• There has been a wave of volunteers getting out to help with the recent oil spill that happened at Pasir Panjang Terminal
• Ms Grace Fu, Minister for Sustainability and the Environment, said that volunteers may be involved in the final phase of beach clean-up operations
• Five volunteers told of what it was like on the ground in the first week patrolling the beaches
• The Animal Concerns Research and Education Society was involved with stabilising and cleaning up a kingfisher

SINGAPORE, July 1 — Expecting to pick up debris and dead animals coated with oil after the recent oil spill, Bernard Seah who volunteered to be at East Coast Park last Saturday (June 22) was instead tasked to just patrol the beach with 20 other volunteers and to cordon off affected areas.

Driven by his love for turtles, the 55-year-old wildlife conservationist and photographer has been a staunch member of biodiversity beach patrols for the last seven years, and had just recently patrolled the same beach on June 15 shortly after the oil spill at Pasir Panjang Terminal occurred.

At the time, the oil had yet to reach East Coast Park, but he was shocked to later find out what had happened on the news. “Oh gosh, this had to happen right at the start of nesting season. Are the turtles going to be fine?” he wondered at the time.

Like more than 2,000 other people who responded to a call by the National Parks Board (NParks), Seah put his hand up to join what was becoming a mega effort to save Singapore’s beaches and fauna from the pollution.

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However, he recalled that there was an uproar among passionate volunteers in the various nature group channels that he followed. They were eager to rush to the scene, only to be told by the authorities to wait for further information.

“There was a common sentiment of ‘I want to help, why don’t they let me help’.”

Despite the enthusiasm from those who were raring to do more, Seah, who is an experienced volunteer during such clean-ups, said that everyone understood the bigger reason why they wanted to volunteer — to protect the environment.

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“The heavy lifting had to be left to the professionals. We (volunteers) had to take a backseat,” he said, adding that they had to manage their expectations given that containing the pollution was not a straightforward affair.

The oil spill on June 14 involved a collision between the Dutch-flagged dredging boat Vox Maxima and Singapore-flagged bunker vessel Marine Honour, causing oil to leak into the waters in the south of Singapore.

The public was told to stay away from some beaches due to harmful fumes, but at the same time, NParks asked for volunteers to sign up on its website on June 15.

The call received an overwhelming response: By the next afternoon, more than 1,500 people had signed up, as tidal currents caused the pollution to affect the shorelines at East Coast Park, Labrador Nature Reserve, Marina South Pier, Sentosa Island and the Southern Islands.

A week later, the pollution has mostly been contained mainly due to the efforts of professional contractors.

Posting on Facebook, Grace Fu, Minister for Sustainability and the Environment, said on June 25 that oil deposits and contaminated sand have largely been removed from the affected beaches and teams are moving into the next phase of the clean-up, which may take another three months to complete.

For this final phase, volunteers may be involved in beach clean-up operations to remove tar balls, which are small blobs of coagulated oil mixed in sand, Fu added.

For volunteers such as Seah and other community groups who have been eagerly waiting for more action, they told TODAY that they stand ready to be called upon again.

Looking back at the efforts over the past two weeks, TODAY spoke to volunteers as well as organisations such as the Animal Concerns Research and Education Society (Acres), an animal protection charity, on what it has been like on the ground during the clean-up efforts so far.

Calls started coming

When news broke that there was an oil spill, Kalai Vanan Balakrishnan, co-chief executive officer of Acres, said that he expected animals to be stranded but was unsure of where the oil would spread.

“The MPA (Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore) was saying the situation was contained. At that point, everyone just assumed that it was contained,” the 38-year-old said.

However, the situation, as they found out later, was decidedly not so simple, he added.

Volunteers and staff members at Acres had to quickly prepare to receive stranded animals as well as to man its public helpline to receive more calls.

So far, the organisation has treated two kingfishers, and also received reports about monitor lizards, otters and other kingfishers that were affected by the oil spill.

The first kingfisher was dropped off on June 15 at Acres’ facility at 91 Jalan Lekar near Chua Chu Kang by a member of the public. The bird died the next day.

Acres was alerted of a second stranded kingfisher at 4pm on June 17 through a call from Lazarus Island.

Two of its volunteers, Tan Hui Min, a neuroscientist in her early 30s, and Venkateshwaran Veersingam, 33, who is not employed, were about to end their volunteer shift at 5pm when they were notified.

They rushed down to Marina South Pier to pick up the bird at 4.30pm. The caller had made arrangements with a ferry company so the volunteers knew who to approach at the pier.

Tan said that the bird was immediately handed over on arrival for treatment. It was cushioned with a nest made of newspapers and given a heat mat to stabilise its condition.

“The bird made it to Acres in 25 minutes, still alert,” Tan added.

She still vividly remembers when she first saw it: “Head to tail, it was coated in oil. It was hard to see the original colour of the feathers under all that blackness.”

Once its condition stabilised, the kingfisher had to undergo several baths, which involved the efforts of two people, including Kalai.

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The co-chief of Acres said that the kingfisher was stressed, but his team tried to mitigate this by covering its eyes.

“There is no such thing as calming down a kingfisher. You just have to do it as quickly as possible,” he said, adding that he was not optimistic of the bird’s survival at first.

“This second bird (we received) seemed worse in terms of oil (covering it), so I wasn’t really thinking it will make it... but somehow it managed to pull through.”

Another Acres volunteer, consultant Julie Edgley, 50, assisted Kalai in the cleaning process and was familiar with collared kingfishers, which are known to have stark blue and greenish-blue feathers with bright white underparts.

The bird is now doing well, but Mrs Edgley recalled her shock when she first saw the bird at the facility without a kingfisher’s well-known vibrant plume.

“Even after two cleaning sessions, the kingfisher was still completely black,” she said, adding that she felt sorry for applying pressure on the bird to remove the oil from its feathers.

“It was only after the third cleaning that some of the blue colouration started to appear.”

‘You can smell it’

At the affected beaches, volunteers spoke about how taken aback they were to see the scale of the pollution.

Chung-Wing Ko, 25, a doctorate student doing ecology at the Nanyang Technological University, said that it was “jarring” to see the oil washed up at East Coast Park with her own eyes during her patrol on June 17, even though she had read about the pollution on social media.

“You can’t see it in the water but you can smell it,” she recalled, adding that the smell spread as far as the entrance of the park.

It took her almost two hours to get used to the smell. Thankfully, she said, the smell did not stick to her as she had been instructed to walk further inland.

“I thought, wow, how was anyone (park goers) sitting there for hours?”

While she and two other people were patrolling, they found a dead toad coated in oil that had hardened, which she suspected had suffocated it since toads breathe through their skin.

She recalled picking up the carcass with her gloves to dispose of it.

For Seah, one positive takeaway from the volunteering experience was that despite having to face some uncooperative park goers, he was heartened that there were many people like him who were willing to spend time and effort to protect Mother Nature.

Reflecting on the volunteer patrol assigned by NParks to keep curious onlookers away from the polluted areas, Seah said that he was extremely touched by the two foreign workers who were partnered with him.

“They are not even permanent residents, but they wanted to help,” he said.

“It is heartening to see people from all walks of life want to help out with the situation.”

As for his beloved turtles, Seah said he was glad that he did not see any dead turtles and looked forward to seeing them during their nesting season. — TODAY