SOVEREIGN Base Area (SBA) and Cypriot authorities were shown to be no closer to solving the recurrent Curium beach poo mystery, after the matter resurfaced in parliament this week.
Green party member George Perdikis asked Agriculture Minister Demetris Eliades for an update on the testing process – which has yet proven inconclusive.
“I am trying to pressure the government into investigating the issue of this unidentified material,” Perdikis told the Cyprus Mail yesterday:
Eliades said that tests carried out by the Genetics Institute were so far inconclusive, and according to an SBA spokesperson yesterday, the samples had been forwarded it on to the United States for further testing.
There are several theories about the origin of the substance on Curium beach.
Chief among these is that it is turtle poo.
After a spate of re-appearances last year, SBA staff inspected local village facilities and ships entering Limassol to ensure they had not been illegally discharging at sea.
SBA administrative secretary James Gondelle said: “Nothing untoward was discovered… The Cyprus Tourism Organisation conducted samples of the water at Curium and these established that there was no hazard to health.”
Gondelle added: “Most reassuringly perhaps, further laboratory tests in Nicosia indicated that the matter was not in fact human. Based on similar experiences in Hawaii, speculation at the time suggested it was from turtles.”
The SBA environmental team has also conducted its own tests, which support the theory that this is turtle-poo, since the material is composed entirely of vegetable matter, contains organisms not found in mammals and has only appeared during the turtle breeding season.
Gondelle said: “This… lends credibility, however incredible it may sound, to the notion that this is indeed from turtles. Scientific investigations will continue and we will ensure that the results are publicised as soon as they are known.”
However, Perdikis is not convinced, since the DNA in the samples sent to the Genetics institute was destroyed and so the origin could not be verified.
He maintains that the waste could be human in origin, and he suggested that if it is not from the SBAs, it could be processed and dumped waste from cruise ships.
According to the environmentalist NGO, the Ocean Conservancy, a typical cruise ship with 3,000 passengers and crew can produce 255,000 gallons of wastewater and up to 30,000 gallons of sewage every day.
And while Gondelle said last year that onboard waste was broken down into dust sized particles, the NGO said some cruise ships are permitted to discharge raw sewage and some other types of waste into oceans beyond three miles from shore.
The Cyprus Mail was unable to reach any cruise line operators for comment yesterday.
