A Ghost in the Mangroves: 5 Years on, the Scars of the Wakashio Still Haunt Mauritius

It was the phone call Vikash Tatayah never expected to make. With the world gripped by a pandemic and Mauritian airspace locked tight, the conservation director at the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation (MWF) found himself pleading with friends in the UK for a private jet. The cargo? Thirty vulnerable lesser night geckos facing an oily execution.

Five years later, those geckos—and their descendants—have finally returned home.

But as they settle back into the limestone crevices of their native islets, they return to a coastline that remains a crime scene.

The Reckoning that Never Came

In July 2020, the MV Wakashio, a massive bulk carrier journeying from China to Brazil, struck a coral reef barrier off the island’s southeastern coast.

By early August, the vessel began to weep; approximately 1,000 metric tons of fuel oil bled into the turquoise waters, eventually splitting the ship in two.

Today, the 30 square kilometres of slick may have vanished from the surface, but the trauma persists.

Experts warn that the fuel oil, which still saturates the earth around the roots of the Pointe d’Esny mangroves, could linger for decades.

To many locals, the environmental recovery feels less like a success story and more like a quiet burial.

Conservationists and fishers alike accuse the government of allowing the disaster to fade from the public consciousness with precious little scrutiny.

“Bloody Hell, It’s in Our Backyard”

The Wakashio was a “workhorse” of global trade, carrying nearly 4,000 metric tons of fuel oil and diesel. When it hit, the threat was existential for Mauritius’s unique biodiversity.

“I thought, bloody hell. It is in our backyard,” Tatayah recalls. The spill sat on the doorstep of three ecological crown jewels:

• Blue Bay Marine Park: A renowned coral hotspot.
• Pointe d’Esny Wetland: A Ramsar-protected site rich in mangroves.
• Ile aux Aigrettes: A nature reserve housing some of the world’s rarest species.

The rescue mission was a race against a creeping black tide. While the lesser night geckos were flown to the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust in Jersey, other species faced an uncertain fate.

On Ile aux Aigrettes—where the “Sentier of the Dodo” serves as a grim reminder of extinction—residents like “Big Daddy,” a century-old giant tortoise, and the endemic pink pigeon watched their sanctuary come under siege.

Even a cricket, then unknown to science, had to be rushed into the records. Tatayah urged researchers in France to describe the species immediately, fearing it might vanish before it was even named.

Unanswered Questions

Despite the return of the geckos in 2025, the air in Grand Port remains thick with unanswered questions. Fishers still argue that swift action to remove the stranded ship could have prevented the leak entirely.

Perhaps most haunting is the memory of 50 dolphins that washed up dead days after the spill. Reports linked the deaths to a hydrographic survey conducted at the request of the shipowners’ agents, yet a definitive sense of accountability remains elusive.

As Mauritius continues to sit on a major global trade route, the stench of the 2020 disaster may have dissipated, but the anxiety has not.

For a nation that has already seen the dodo pass into legend, the oily residue in the mangroves is a stark reminder of how fragile “paradise” truly is.

The Iridescent Scar

THE STENCH is the first thing that hits you. For Vikash Tatayah, it was the smell of a “petrol station” wafting over the jetty at Ile aux Aigrettes.

For Sandy Monrose, living a stone’s throw from the Pointe d’Esny waterfront, it was an invasive, oily odour so thick she feared lighting a match might blow her house to smithereens.

Five years on from the grounding of the MV Wakashio, that acrid perfume has largely vanished from the tourist beaches.

But in the swampy mangroves of Vieux Grand Port, the ghost of the Japanese-owned bulk carrier remains stubbornly, physically present.

A Cocktail of Contamination

The Wakashio was no ordinary shipwreck. It was running on “very low sulphur fuel oil,” a relatively new compound supplied by British giant BP.

While the lighter elements evaporated into the atmosphere within hours, the heavier sediment sank into the very soul of the island’s ecosystem.

Alan G. Scarlett, an environmental geochemist at Curtin University, led one of the few independent studies into the disaster.

His team’s findings, published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin, confirmed that the chemical signature of the Wakashio’s oil is still trapped in the mangrove roots.

“Once it’s buried in the sediment,” Scarlett warns, “it can stay there for decades.” In June 2025, a plastic spoon dipped into the muddy goop of the mangroves still brings up an iridescent, fuel-scented sludge—a grim souvenir of 1,000 metric tons of spilled oil.

The “Homemade” Defence

The response to the disaster was, by British standards, remarkably unorthodox. While a country like Australia would have cordoned off the area with military precision, the Mauritian government—hampered by COVID-19 lockdowns—left the front line to the locals.

Fishermen and residents waded into the surf with homemade booms, desperate to “protect our sea.” Yet, this civilian heroism came with a hidden cost.

Sandy Monrose recalls the heartbreak of having to anchor those booms with rocks placed directly onto the delicate corals.

Furthermore, the human toll remains unmapped. “We are still worried about our health,” Monrose says. “We didn’t have any tests. Nothing has been done.”

The Mystery of the 50 Dolphins

Perhaps the most harrowing chapter of the Wakashio saga is the “Grand Sable strandings.” Days after the forward section of the ship was scuttled in August 2020, around 50 dolphins and melon-headed whales washed up dead.

Initial theories blamed the explosions used to sink the bow, but a government-appointed expert group has pointed to a more clinical culprit: sonar.

A hydrographic survey, requested by the shipowners’ agents and conducted by a government unit on 22nd August, is now cited as the “probable cause.”

The multibeam echosounders likely caused ear damage, disorienting the creatures until they crashed against the coral reef barriers.

An Ecosystem in Retreat

For Serge Simon Vurdapa Naicken, a fisherman of 50 years, the sea he once knew is gone. He points to the proliferation of algae around Ile aux Aigrettes—a “tombstone” for dead coral.

Combined with a massive bleaching episode across 2024 and 2025 caused by rising sea temperatures, the Wakashio may have been the final straw.

“It is not the same,” Naicken says quietly. “I don’t think the ecosystem will recover.”

As the island nation counts its losses in MUR and environmental health, the Wakashio serves as a sobering lesson in the true price of global trade—a price that Mauritius is still paying, one scoop of iridescent mud at a time.

THE OFFICIAL LINE in Mauritius appears to be that the Wakashio disaster is a closed chapter. But for the people of Pointe d’Esny and the conservationists still scrubbing iridescent sludge from the mangroves, it feels as though the government has quietly allowed a national tragedy to vanish into the Indian Ocean mist.

“It’s like nothing happened,” said Sandy Monrose, a local resident whose life was upended by the 1,000-tonne spill.

Five years on, her sentiment is the island’s unofficial refrain. Despite the passage of time, clarity on the spill’s long-term impacts remains elusive, and fishing communities continue to wait for adequate compensation.

The Wi-Fi Signal that Cost a Coastline

The facts of the grounding are as absurd as they are tragic. The MV Wakashio was a Panama-flagged vessel—a “Flag of Convenience” that allowed its owners to bypass stricter regulations.

In 2021, a Mauritian court sentenced the captain and first officer to 20 months for endangering navigation. Their motive? They had brought the massive bulk carrier within five nautical miles of the shore, desperate to catch a Wi-Fi signal.

However, the “criminalisation of seafarers” has drawn fire from the Seafarers International Union, which suggests crew members are often used as “bargaining chips” while irresponsible shipowners hide behind complex registration systems.

While a government-appointed Court of Investigation report—released in October 2025 to almost no fanfare—confirmed human error, it also pointed to a deeper rot: institutional and regulatory failures in coastal surveillance and emergency response.

“Nobody Gives a Damn”

The lack of global outcry remains a sore point. Alan G. Scarlett, an environmental geochemist, suggests the silence was partly by design to protect the tourism industry.

“A spill of that size in Europe or America probably would have got a hell of a lot more publicity,” he remarked. “In a small island in the Indian Ocean, I’m afraid nobody gives a damn.”

Indeed, while the bow of the ship was scuttled shortly after the crash, the stern remained lodged on the reef for a further 18 months before it was finally dismantled.

For locals like fisherman Serge Naicken, the delay was unforgivable. “The government took a lot of time,” he says. “The spill could have been prevented.”

The Silver Lining: A Cricket and a Carry Case

Amidst the bureaucratic silence, there are flashes of scientific and ecological triumph. The “shy crickets” of Ile aux Aigrettes, once facing extinction before they were even known to man, were fast-tracked into the history books.

In 2021, they were officially named Makalapobius aigrettensis, a species now permanently linked to the Wakashio disaster in scientific literature.

The most heartwarming news, however, comes from the air. In 2025, an “assurance population” of lesser night geckos began their journey home from Jersey Zoo in the UK.

Transported in carry cases maintained at a snug 25°C, 57 eggs were returned in January, followed by another 142 in December.

These geckos represent a vital injection of genetic diversity for a local population that has been decimated by ingesting oil through the food chain.

Bracing for the Next One

Mauritius remains on a maritime “highway,” a vital link between East Asian manufacturing hubs and Western markets. The risk, conservationists warn, has not gone away.

There is, at least, some evidence of learning. The government has begun establishing Particularly Sensitive Sea Areas (PSSAs) to restrict ship movements and has partnered with the Japanese aid agency JICA to improve disaster readiness.

“Mauritius is now a bit better prepared,” says Vikash Tatayah of the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation. “So that’s probably the silver lining to the cloud.”

Whether that preparation is enough to stop the next Wi-Fi-seeking tanker remains the multi-million-rupee question.

Source: Mongabay