The latest environmental disaster occurred a week ago today. A pipeline running from storage tanks at Hawaii’s last sugar plantation to ships heading for California leaked 233,000 gallons of
molasses into a lagoon, killing thousands of fish and other marine creatures. Roger Smith, owner of
Cool Blue Scuba, dove down, recorded a
video, and describes what he saw:
"
Usually the water has a greenish hue from the algae. But when I dove, it was brown, almost like a cola color. The molasses sunk down to the bottom, and it kind of blanketed everything. It sucks the oxygen out of the water. Every living thing is usually hiding in a hole. But every living thing came out and was gasping to live. Crabs, fish, worms, feather dusters…everything was just laying out in the bottom, just dead. The tbigger fish had died, but they had gone to float to the top. The smaller fish were just on the floor. We saw a couple of small fish that were up on the surface and they were gasping for air, but they didn't look like they were going to live, either. They were up by the surface, but because molasses sinks, they already had it in their system."
Officials have decided to let nature take its course, which will take years.
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