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
Media-led, both over the window and on the peak day. 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 84% 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.
Bulk carriers is a small readership base — normally about 403 readers a day, so a few hundred extra makes a large multiple.
Readers here means readers of the Wikipedia article on each vessel type — the same source as the Research signal, not news coverage — so an incident can dominate the news without moving this panel. 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 64% of coverage shipping was the thing acted upon rather than the actor.
How the coverage sounded
Coverage ran 74% negative overall; 41% strongly so.
Each article is scored on a five-step scale from strongly negative to strongly positive; the bar is the share of coverage at each step.
Sample of the headlines
- 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
- Japanese shipping company says Mauritius government has requested compensationreuters.com · 2020-08-14
- Stricken bulk carrier off Mauritius tipped to break up in the coming hourssplash247.com · 2020-08-12
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
- Registered in a single underlying series only — one vessel-type article, news term or social query — and never moved the Index itself.
- The coverage panels count only articles matched to this incident specifically.
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/