Sunday 16 August 2020 · below the Index · spike
Wakashio oil spill off Mauritius
Japanese bulk carrier Wakashio grounded off Mauritius in early August 2020 and split in two around August 16, spilling tons of oil and causing environmental damage to local sea life and reefs. The captain was arrested and the shipping company faced compensation claims.
Peak 95.1 on Sunday 16 August 2020. The shaded band is the incident window.
Where the attention came from
Over the whole window this ran Mixed-led; on the peak day itself it read Media-led. When the two differ, the fast signals (social, news) spiked and faded while the slow ones (search, research) carried the tail. Social here is X alone — Bluesky only joins the series from July 2024 — so its level isn't directly comparable with today's series, though its share of this incident is real.
Bar = share of the extra attention over the whole window; the tick marks the share on the peak day alone, where the two differ.
How unusual it was
This was above 86% of all days since 2020.
How far it spread
Stayed in one vessel type — 1 of 6 vessel-type groups drew clearly more readers than usual.
Bars start at 1× — normal readership for that vessel type, the weeks before the incident. Grey = no clear lift. "Over time" shows each group's daily readers through the window; "All 12 articles" breaks the six groups back into their members.
How it was framed the frame glossary →
Lead frame: pollution event. Trade press was 4% of in-scope coverage — the story had left the trade press and gone mainstream. (Historical coverage is scored on headlines only.)
Acting, or acted upon
In 63% of coverage shipping was the thing acted upon rather than the actor; 40% of it was strongly negative in tone.
What the coverage said
- Japanese shipping firm awaits judicial decisions after arrest of captain of Wakashioreuters.com · 2020-08-19
- Mauritius oil spill from Japanese bulk carrier killing marine life, polluting coastline and making volunteers sickabc.net.au · 2020-08-12
- Mauritius seeks compensation from Japanese ship owners as oil spill cleanup continuestheglobeandmail.com · 2020-08-13
- Ship owner says will handle Mauritius oil spill compensation 'sincerely'france24.com · 2020-08-14
- Mauritius oil spill: Cargo ship has split in twocnn.com · 2020-08-16
- Wakashio Ship Owner Promises Compensation for Wakashio Groundinggcaptain.com · 2020-08-13
Gold rule = a national or international outlet, not a trade title.
- social = X only before Bluesky (2024-07-01); not comparable with today's series
- tier C: only a Wikipedia article, GDELT sub-vocabulary term, or social per-term query fired — not yet confirmed as a real maritime incident (Phase C naming/is_maritime_incident does that).
- integrated and peak-day verdicts differ (smoothing artefact likely)
- coverage scored on title only (no excerpt) — measured ~8pp frame precision cost vs title+excerpt (docs/HANDOVER-incidents.md §2.3)
- coverage filtered to articles matching this incident specifically (355/1026 kept) — see coverage.filter.terms
Maritime Attention Index, incident: Wakashio oil spill off Mauritius, peak 95.1 on 16 August 2020. maritimeattentionindex.com/incidents/2020-wakashio-oil-spill-off-mauritius/