The Brazilian navy sank an old aircraft carrier carrying toxic substances on Friday, report Brazilian media. The Sao Paulo ends up on the seabed about 350 kilometers from the Brazilian coast, along with the barely ten tons of asbestos that was reportedly on board.
The importance of protecting the oceans has been neglected Greenpeace Saturday. The environmental organization expects that the sinking of the sixty-year-old ship will have a “gigantic impact” on marine life. According to the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S.Paulo Environment Minister Marina Silva also opposed it, but Defense Minister José Múcio Monteiro got his way.
The sixty-year-old ship sailed to Turkey in August to be dismantled there, but Turkish authorities refused because Brazil would not have provided enough clarity about the toxic substances. So the Sao Paulo had to return to Brazilian waters, where it started looking for a place to moor.
‘Completely unnecessary’
That failed: no port wanted the aircraft carrier for fear of the asbestos and other toxins. At the end of January, the Brazilian Navy therefore took the Sao Paulo back to tow it far from the coast. Environmental organizations reacted with shock to that decision. The Shipbreaking Platform, an international organization that tracks end-of-life ships, suspected that the Navy would use a small leak in the ship as an excuse to sink it.
Indeed, the Navy said that “spontaneous sinking” would be inevitable, it writes Folha de S.Paulo, and therefore decided to sink the Sao Paulo despite a bid by a group of Saudi entrepreneurs to take over the ship. “Completely unnecessary”, reacts the Shipbreaking Platform. “They would rather lose millions of dollars and pollute the environment than allow new research into the ship’s contents.”