X-Press Pearl fire (2021)
The fire and sinking of a container ship off Sri Lanka in 2021, started by a known acid leak and followed by the worst plastic pollution in the country's history.
The X-Press Pearl was carrying nitric acid whose leak had been reported several days before the fire, and two ports had refused to unload the container in question. The fire, which broke out at anchor off Colombo, destroyed the ship, which sank two weeks later and spilled its cargo. The most lasting pollution came not from fuel oil but from industrial plastic pellets, which no international convention then required to be declared as dangerous goods. The case exposed the chain of responsibility in carrying dangerous goods: the shipper's declaration, the master's decision, the ports' refusals, the coastal state's oversight. For protection and indemnity clubs, it opened a pollution dispute without an obvious cap, since the pellets fell under neither the oil regime nor the hazardous substances one.
On May 20, 2021, the X-Press Pearl caught fire off Colombo with 1,486 containers on board, 81 of them dangerous goods, and sank on June 2; about 1,680 tonnes of plastic pellets fouled the Sri Lankan coast, and the International Maritime Organization then began revising the IMDG Code for such pellets.
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