Oil Slick in Queensland

I can well imagine the French would have a lot of practical advice to give us in terms of cleaning the massive oil slick off the Queensland coast. Floods, fire, drought and now this. One massive environmental disaster after another. The French have spent hours and hours cleaning slicks off their Atlantic coast and have learnt a lot from it. At this stage we cannot use volunteers because of possible harm to them. We do have strong biodiversity and crisis management teams and basically we have a very logical and sane approach to these matters. Volunteers would want to help because we are all too well aware of how much long term harm can come from a spill that size and then the containers of fertiliser at the bottom of the ocean. We have wonderful beaches and we do take responsibility for things such as this . The difficulty has been in assessing the amount of damage because the initial information wasn't accurate. Cyclone Hamish had damaged the ship, which , once in harbour , was found to be more damaged than reported. We have to get a lot of expert advice and help quickly because that environment is now badly polluted. The wild life will be suffering. Those working in the area will have to guard themselves against skin damage and respiratory problems. Those working with the wild life will exhaust themselves so there may be a place for volunteers down the track. The shipping company is trying to play a part in this and, in the end the legal aspects of it ,will be sorted out. In the short term time and expertise are of the essence and people are having to get down there to clean it up. It would be nice if we could just suck it all up and then dispose of it safely. The cleaning of a beach is painstaking . The need to regulate shipping off our coast is now even more important. The climate? Not much we can do about that. We can , however, pool our resources globally because so many countries are suffering similar disasters and combined experience and knowledge would be of great advantage.