Colombo: For more than a week, the routine on the beach at Pamunugama in Sri Lanka’s Western Province, 20km (12 miles) from the capital, Colombo, has been the same.
Sri Lankan navy officers arrive in their hazmat suits and start collecting fish eye-like plastic pellets that washed ashore after a fire erupted in a chemical cargo ship on May 20.
The authorities are now bracing for the possibility of an oil spill after the Singapore-registered MV X-Press Pearl sank off the island nation’s western coast, in what is its worst-ever man-made environmental disaster.
Salvage teams attempted to tow the ship out of the Sri Lankan waters following orders from President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
But the crew abandoned the mission after the ship started to sink on Wednesday afternoon. Parts of the ship were visible across the water on Thursday.
