BRAZIL has sunk a decommissioned aircraft carrier in the Atlantic Ocean despite concerns expressed by environmental groups that the ageing warship was packed with toxic materials.
The “planned and controlled sinking occurred late in the afternoon” on Friday, some 350 km (220 miles) off the Brazilian coast in the Atlantic Ocean, in an area with an “approximate depth of 5,000 meters [16,000 feet]”, Brazil’s Navy said in a statement.
The decision to scuttle the six-decade-old aircraft carrier “Sao Paulo” came after Brazilian authorities had tried in vain to find a port willing to welcome the vessel.
Though defence officials said they would sink the vessel in the “safest area”, environmentalists attacked the decision, saying the warship contained tonnes of asbestos, heavy metals and other toxic materials that could leach into the water and pollute the marine food chain.
The Basel Action Network had called on newly-elected Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva -who took office last month pledging to reverse surging environmental destruction under far-right ex-President Jair Bolsonaro – to immediately halt the “dangerous” plan to scuttle the ship.
The NGO Shipbreaking Platform – a coalition of environmental, labour and human rights organisations – had described Brazil’s planned sinking of the Sao Paulo as potentially a “state-sponsored environmental crime”.
Built in the late 1950s in France, whose navy sailed the aircraft carrier for 37 years as the Foch, the warship had earned a place in 20th-century naval history. The Sao Paulo took part in France’s first nuclear tests in the Pacific in the 1960s and saw deployments in Africa, the Middle East and the former Yugoslavia from the 1970s to 1990s.
