In the early hours of February 28 2023, 50m motor tanker the MT Princess Empress, carrying 800,000L of industrial oil, suffered engine failure and went down off the coast of the island of Mindoro in the Philippines. Its cargo began leaking into the centre of the Coral Triangle, one of the most precious and biodiverse ecosystems on the planet. As I was diving in the Philippines at the time, I went to the scene of the most-affected village to cover the story. 

by Joel Adams in the Philippines

The name of the village Buhay Na Tubig means “living water”, but here in the worst-affected of the 76 Philippine coastal barangays contaminated by a disastrous oil spill of nearly a million litres, the water now brings death.

Every high tide since the MT Princess Empress sank on February 28, the waves here wash up black sludge which chokes the mangrove roots, poisons the fingerlings and fish spawning grounds, and kills off the livelihoods of the fisherfolk on whom this community depends.

Manuel Fabula, 62, has taken to the ocean every day since he was 15 to provide for his family. The thirteen days he had spent on dry land when we met, since the coastguard’s ban on fishing came into effect, are the longest he has ever gone without a catch - but it will be another six months at least, perhaps a year, before he is allowed back on the water.

“I feel sad, without the sea,” he said. “I feel lonely.”

He says he will farm bananas and coconuts now, in an attempt to replace some of the 5000 pesos (£75) week his fishing brought in for his wife, six children, and granddaughter.

He and others affected by the spill - more than 19,700 families - will also receive rice from the government, three kilos per family of which has been distributed already, but it is an unhappy prospect.

“I want to fish, not this”, he said, indicating the line of people outside the health centre awaiting their allocation.

“I will miss it a lot. Fishing is what I love,” he explained.

Were it not for the black globules coating the roots of the mangrove trees and flecking the rocks, and the ear-splitting headache caused by the oil fumes, Buhay Na Tubig would be a tropical idyll to bring the most cynical Hollywood location scout to tears.

The people here, many of whom have never met a foreigner before, are rightly proud of their breathtaking white sand beaches and delicious banana blossom mash, a local delicacy.

But the barangay’s no-nonsense captain (council chair) Annabel Ferrera Fabula expects it will be a year, perhaps two, until things go back to the way they were.

She said: “The oil has slicked our barangay. Especially when the tide is high it is bad, and especially when it is wavey. The spilled oil goes all over the sea shore.

“Fishing and farming are the only sources of income here. Some from our barangay have gone to Manila looking for a job. Some are rearing pigs now. Now the fisherfolk will live like this, waiting for a food parcel. They must look for jobs.”

Asked whether people are angry, some of the crowd around her start to nod, but the diminutive Mrs Fabula, like many of her countrymen and women, demurs from such strong language.

“I wouldn’t say angry, it is not nice to say. But… emotional. People have strong emotions about it.”

The risk of contamination of the food chain is simply too great, however, for a return to normalcy or to allow fishermen back in their boats: villagers here, as elsewhere, are sick merely from breathing the fumes which blow ashore.

“Many people here are sick - I’m one of them,” said barangay secretary Jeremy Faballore, who has been suffering severe headaches and nausea for more than a week.

“It has been very hard to breathe, in my throat it is very sore,” said health worker Nida Fabello, who has treated those with symptoms including headaches, stomach aches, cramps, eye irritation, swollen throats, dizziness, nausea and vomiting.

Nationwide, thousands of people have been examined for symptoms and 4,200 residents of 11 barangays have already been evacuated to higher ground to avoid inhalation of toxic fumes.

Ten people including a teenage girl have been badly affected so far in Buhay Na Tubig, despite the efforts of coastguard clean-up crews who have made their way to the remote village - accessible only via stony mountain track through thick banana and coconut jungle - every day since the spill.

Wearing full length protective suits despite temperatures well over 30C, they have filled two oil drums and 300 sacks with the sludge and debris collected from this small stretch of shore since the Princess Empress went down.

Exactly why the 50m x 9m motor tanker sank remains unclear.

The ship, owned by Philippine company RDC Reield Marine Services Inc., took on 800,000L - the equivalent of 16,000 car fuel tanks - of industrial oil in Limay, Bataan, which lies across the bay from Manila on the island of Luzon.

Bound for the city of Iloilo on the island of Panay, it took an S-shaped route through the archipelago, traversing the Verde Island Passage and heading clockwise around the island of Mindoro.

At around 2am on the 28th, in rough seas in the Tablas Strait, it foundered. Some reports in the maritime press blamed engine overheating.

The 20 crew on the vessel, launched in 2022, were rescued by a passing cargo ship and the laden tanker disappeared beneath the waves 11 nautical miles off the coast of Naujan (to the north of Pola), according to Coastguard Rear Admiral Armando Balilo.

Initially only the ship’s own diesel fuel, which burns off easily in sunlight without causing serious contamination, appeared in the water.

Mr Balilo told local radio on March 1: “There is no threat yet to the marine resources in the incident area but what’s feared is if the industrial fuel oil spills.”

He warned of an “environmental catastrophe” if the cargo were to leak but said he hoped the coastguard’s preparations were “orderly and enough”.

In the event, the coast guard took a week to locate the wreck, hampered by ongoing bad weather in the Strait, and all the while its consignment of fossil fuel was belching into one of the most biodiverse stretches of ocean in the world.

The Princess Empress now rests an inaccessible 400m below sea level, beyond the reach of divers, and the leak could not be plugged because a Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) could not arrive from China quickly enough. Rough seas also delayed the proper installation of oil booms in offshore waters.

The ship was covered by a $1bn Protection and Indemnity Insurance for “every incident” including an oil spill, Maritime Industry Authority (MARINA) spokeswoman Sharon Aledo told local TV news, adding that it was “incumbent” upon the ship’s owners to claim on the insurance.

The agency has suspended the company’s safety certificate and issued a “show cause” order demanding an explanation of the sinking.

In a closed-door meeting with government officials on March 6 an RDC executive expressed “the company’s commitment to address the cleanup and containment of the oil spill,” according to a company press release, but the ship’s Filipino owner Reymundo Cabial, who with his family owns and runs RDC, has yet to comment and did not reply to requests to be interviewed for this article.

These are the same seas which claimed the lives of 4,385 passengers and crew when the tanker the MT Vector collided with the overloaded passenger ferry MV Doña Paz in 1987 - the worst peacetime maritime disaster in history - and a further 814 lives when the Princess Of The Stars went down during typhoon Fengshan in June 2008.

There are already calls for the rerouting of cargo and oil shipping away from the Tablas Strait and the Verde Island Passage (VIP), an area of exceptional marine biodiversity at the centre of the Coral Triangle, known as the “amazon of the oceans”.

Bounded to the north by the Philippines, to the southwest by Indonesia and to the southeast by East Timor, the Coral Triangle covers only 1.6% of the world’s ocean but contains 76% of all known coral species.

It is also home to 37% of reef fish species, six of the seven species of sea turtle, and the world’s largest mangrove forest.

So while the effects of this spill on coastal communities and their livelihoods will be bad, its impact on sensitive marine ecosystems could be catastrophic.

Buhay Na Tubig lies in the barangay [borough] of the same name, in the municipality of Pola which by unhappy fluke of geography and prevailing winds has borne the worst and densest contamination.

In Pola alone, more than 550 hectares (1,300 acres) of mangrove forests - an area four times the size of Hyde Park - have been affected, and off-shore its seven marine protected areas covering 440 hectares (1,100 acres) lie within the path of the slick.

Nationwide 36,000 hectares (89,000 acres) of coral reefs, mangroves and seagrass could be threatened by the spill, according to marine scientists at the University of the Philippines.

In Pola town where the incident command post has been set up, the province’s risk management officer Vincent Gahol said: “The worst thing is the death of our coral reef and seagrass. Our fish live in these corals and seagrasses and if they die the source of livelihoods of our coastal communities will be affected.

“Our mangroves also have been affected. Aside from being nurseries for fish - grubs and shrimp and fingerlings live in these mangrove areas - they protect us from the strong winds and typhoons.

“The leaves and branches of mangroves are very strong - they are windbreaks, so the small houses of the fishermen are protected.”

The heartbreaking sight of young mangrove saplings suffocated in the thick dark oil which has been left by the receding tide is reminiscent of the swathes of black shoreline and poisoned wildlife left in the wake of the Exxon Valdez or the first Gulf War.

Chris Robbins, associate director of science at the Ocean Conservancy, said: “If this had happened in the open ocean no-one would be happy but there are fewer sensitive habitats and species - here the impacts are disproportionately large because of the immense biodiversity and sensitive habitats.

“So while the amount might not be like the Exxon Valdez it’s enough to rattle this ecosystem to its foundations.”

He explained: “Mangroves and seagrasses are really the aquatic nurseries, especially important for juvenile fishes and invertebrates.

“Mangroves also help stabilise the shoreline, so when you coat mangrove roots in oil and the soil and sediment gets oiled, it can destabilise the root system and make the problem of erosion a lot worse - especially since the Philippines are very prone to cyclones.”

Beyond the shore, marine life from the smallest microorganisms to sea turtles, birds and mammals could be subject to “population-level impacts” from the spill, he warned.

“An oil spill has acute and non-acute impacts on virtually every organism that is exposed to the volatile polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons [PAHs] in oil - anything from microorganisms in the water column all the way to marine mammals.

“The smaller the organism and the earlier in its life cycle, the more acute the impacts. So larval fish, fish embryos, zooplankton, these are the most vulnerable to acute toxicity of these PAHs.

“This is a problem not only for those populations, but you have food web implications moving up through foraging fish, to sea turtles, marine mammals, and birds.

“Those - turtles and marine mammals - are especially at risk because they come into contact with contamination at the surface when they come up to breathe, they ingest or inhale the volatile compounds, and they’re ingesting oil through contaminated prey.”

Malformation and death of baby sea turtles can also occur if eggs, buried on beaches, come into contact with oil-contaminated sand.

Mr Robbins added: “Birds that can’t fly or move, or who ingest it through preening, get acutely sick and die, but there are many sublethal effects - from greater susceptibility to disease, to not having the energy to find prey, or to escape predators.

“There are reproductive repercussions - some may not be able to reproduce as often or at all after exposure - there are developmental abnormalities in the hearts of marine mammals; liver dysfunctions; endocrine disruption.

“There is a whole suite of physiological results from oil exposure in adult sea turtles and birds and sea mammals, and those sub-lethal effects can have population-level impacts.”

The region’s precious coral reefs lie beneath the waves and away from the worst of the spill, which floats on the surface and is washed onto the shore, but they will not escape its effects.

Sunlight hitting oil on water causes the lighter molecules to evaporate, but leaves the heavier components to sink, coating the ocean floor or corals.

“The symbiotic zooxathallae algae can be expelled from the coral when it’s exposed to hydrocarbons, which results in coral bleaching,” Mr Robbins explained.

“And sometimes the heavier materials sink they form asphalt-like tar mats on the ocean floor or on corals and those mats can get stirred up and resuspended and transported to shore during storm events - and the area is of course very active weather wise. Unfortunately oil spills are a disaster that can be reoccuring.”

Given the stakes it is unsurprising there are demands for change, and accountability.

Liza Osorio, legal director at ocean conservation charity Oceana, criticised the boat’s owners for a lack of communication, and called on the government to “hold accountable those responsible”.

She said: “We’d like to call for rerouting of shipping lanes and cargo vessels away from this ecologically sensitive area. But at the moment we’re calling for containment, because the oil spill is spreading.”

Jeff Chen of Greenpeace Philippines compared transporting oil through the Verde Island Passage to “lighting a butane torch and walking slowly through the Louvre - if something goes wrong the consequences are disastrous, and what is lost is irreplaceable.”

He said: “We know recovery and rehabilitation not only takes years, but the conditions before will not be met any more - there will always be an effect of an oil spill in an area. Regardless of the size or the time that passes, those particles will be left there and will affect natural processes in the long term.”

He said the scale and location of the spill put it on par, in terms of impact, with the infamous 2.1m litre spill from the MT Solar 1 off the coast of Guimaras in 2006.

“It’s really turning out to be the worst oil spill the Philippines has ever experienced. And if it continues to move southwest that leaves Tubbataha in its crosshairs - it would be truly unprecedented if it hits a world heritage site.”

The 97,000 hectares (240,000 acres) of Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1993, as a unique example of a pristine atoll reef with a high density of marine biodiversity.

It lies around 300km south-south-west of the southern tip of Mindoro and is in the broad path of the drifting oil slick as forecast by the DNER.

During a visit to Pola on Friday, Oriental Mindoro Governor Humerlito Dolor said he had started the process of rerouting shipping lanes.

He said: “When I met with the coastguard last Tuesday I said to them, ‘How come an oil tanker is passing through Verde Island Passage which is the centre of biodiversity?’ and I told them, ‘Please start drafting new policies for diverting the routes of cargo vessels’.”

He said he would meet with the department of transportation and was hopeful to receive multi-agency support.

But for now across the municipality of Pola, where a ‘state of calamity’ remains in effect, the immediate focus remains on the cleanup.

Twenty residents per barangay will be trained and employed by cleanup specialists Harbour Star - retained by RDC - while others are being taught by government officials how to create makeshift oil booms out of branches and coconut leaves.

But removing oil from beaches is hard manual work, using scrubbing brushes and absorbent pads and backbreaking labour, and each new high tide washes more greasy black slime ashore.

Maam Alamar, who works in the mayor’s office, said: “Every day people come out and clean up, but every day it’s back.

“On the first day people came to clean - the mayor asked for help and lots of people came. But every day when the water goes up, the oil is there when the water goes down. Every day we must clean the same.”

Meanwhile Pola’s popular and energetic mayor Jennifer Cruz, who won the “superstar” tiara at the 2015 Mrs Universe contest in Belarus, has still not heard from the owner and is gearing up to sue.

“He hasn’t come here to ask if we need help. We kept calling them but they never answer our call, it’s upsetting.

“I met the sister in law, and she was offering to donate food - I don’t need that, the government can provide that. I need a concrete plan for Pola.

“How about the mangroves, how about the marine protected areas, how about the people, how about the fisherfolk?

“The sister-in-law talked to me and asked for forgiveness. And forgiveness is okay, I accept it. But the damage is not okay, you cannot forgive that.

“Unless they give us a complete plan for Pola, we’ll sue them,” she said.

Now that seas are calmer - even if tempers are not - an unmanned submarine (ROV) has been sent to the site of the wreck.

Better weather also means the authorities can begin the delayed underwater risk and impact assessment, and start to gauge the scale of the effects of the spill on the region’s precious marine life.

But those on land in Pola don’t need an assessment to know the impact they are facing.

Retired fisherman Percival Rivera, looking out at the orange oil boom floating across the estuary, said: “It’s a big mess. We need a lot of help here.

“Here the sea is our life. All the people here lose everything, because they can’t fish. No fish means no fishermen. No fishermen means no income.

“Why do they have to carry oil through here?” he asked.

The answer to his question will affect millions of living things in this region - from mangrove saplings and coral plankton, to sea turtles and fishermen - for decades to come.