FINDING the tanker responsible for an oil spill can be surprisingly difficult. Malaysian officials are wrestling with the problem after a huge spill in a busy shipping route on 25 June left a 5-kilometre slick off the country’s coast. A new software system developed in Australia could soon make the task easier.
To identify the culprit, environmental protection officers usually test the chemical composition of a slick and compare it with samples taken from the tanks of suspect ships. But deciding whether two samples match is not easy, says Brynn Hibbert of the University of New South Wales, who led…
