Environmentalists were enraged when two American jet fighter planes accidentally dropped four unarmed bombs into the famous Great Barrier Reef Marine Park in Australia while having a training exercise last week, as reported by the Associated Press.
The two American jets, dubbed as AV-8B, were launched from USS Bonhomme Richard, an aircraft carrier. Both were carrying an inert bomb for practice and an explosive bomb that is unarmed and laser-guided. The incident occurred in a place that is listed as a World Heritage site off the coast of Queensland.
The four bombs weighed a total of 4,000 pounds or 1.8 metric tons. They were said to be dropped in that part of the water which is more than 50 meters away from the coral to somehow lessen the possible threat to the reef. None of the dropped bombs exploded.
Originally, the fighter jets that came from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit planned to drop the bombs on a specified bombing range located on Townshend Island. However, the plan was aborted when the jet controllers evaluated the area to be unclear of hazards.
The pilots eventually jettisoned the bombs as an emergency response since they were running low on fuel and had difficulty in landing while carrying a heavy bomb load.
The emergency occurred during the second day of the Talisman Saber which is a biennial joint training exercise that runs for three weeks and participated by around 28,000 military personnel from both the U.S and Australia.
The incident is now being investigated through collaboration between the U.S Navy and Marine Corps and Australian authorities. So far, it is still unclear if the bomb dumping indeed poses a threat to the environment.
Larissa Waters, Australian senator and spokeswoman of Green Party on the issue of the Great Barrier Reef, described the bomb dumping incident in an environmentally sensitive area as an outrageous act and definitely unallowable.
Billed as the largest network of coral structures in the world, the Great Barrier Reef measures more than 3,000-km long in the northeast coast of Australia and provides home to a huge number of marine lives.
