Ocean leaking oil? Or illegal 'oil fleets' dumping oil?

[RyanX]

In this article:

Dead Penguins Washing Ashore With Disturbing Regularity

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/230835-Dead-Penguins-Washing-Ashore-With-Disturbing-Regularity

They relate a number of dead penguins have washed up along the coast of Brazil over the past decade. Biologists seem to think that they died to due an oil spill, but they can't seem to pinpoint it to any specific spill in the region.

So according to one biologist mentioned in the article, he thinks that this must be from oil leaked from illegal oil shipping fleets that operate in the region.

Biologist Maurício Tavares, however, believes that the forces behind the persistent environmental disasters are far more sinister than many might expect -- indicating that they're the result of a clandestine operation to ship oil illegally across the Atlantic.

"These are illegal fleets are that frequently active at sea, but which we cannot detect," Tavares tells Zero Hora. "We received some animals every year. Now, we have many animals all along the coast, revealing that this is not something small."

The Zero Hora link doesn't go to any specific page, so I'm not sure if there's any collaborating evidence for these illegal oil fleets or not. I couldn't find anything on google regarding these illegal fleets, so I'm not sure how valid this explanation is. Maybe somebody out there has seen something on this that I haven't?

Even if there were illegal shipping fleets, it seems unlikely that they would be deliberately trying to dump oil into the ocean, what with the high price that oil fetches these days. Of course, maybe they don't have the most solid ships for transporting oil since, after all, what they're doing is already 'illegal' to begin with. Even so, you wouldn't think that this would accumulate into the mass quantities of oil needed to kill penguins in large numbers on a regular basis. And if these ships are transporting oil from other regions, then why aren't there oil related animal deaths in these other regions too? This explanation by Tavares begs more questions than answers, I think.

In the case that this "illegal oil fleet" concept is completely bogus, maybe the cause of these deaths has more to do with oil venting from the oceans, much like methane does on occasion. We've certainly seen a number of out-gassing events in recent years. Even the BP oil spill may have been made worse by the increasingly pressurized conditions within the Earth itself. In other words, these deaths may not be from any man-made cause, but part of the ongoing Earth Changes the planet is experiencing.

I'm not sure on this one, so I thought I'd see if anybody had any thoughts one way or another... This was the first I've come across the idea of illegal oil shipping fleets in the news, but it's possible I missed it somewhere.

 

[rrraven]

some things don't make sense here
from where does the alleged oil come from and where is it going?
who are the oil producing countries around there?

Venezuela comes to mind even if it is a bit far from Brazil is Venezuela shipping oil across the southern Atlantic? possibly but I am quite sure they do it legally...but to a pro US commentator anything Venezuelan will get the illegal brush

somehow I am reminded of Somalia and its Pirates/civil coast guard
on the one side we hear of evil native Pirates holding honest seamen to ransom
on the other side we hear of locals trying to defend their fishing grounds from multinational exploitation and toxic waste dumping

in conclusion maybe illegal toxic waste shipping and dumping is responsible for the death of the Brazilian penguins and not illegal oil shipping