Took a trip down the coast in the Konkan region. I had been there several years ago. Drove down to Diveagar, Kondivli, Harihareshwar and Velas beaches. Other than the Kondivli beach, the other beaches are still not fully recovered from the oil spill of 2010-11. In fact I had to scrub our feet with soap to get rid of the muck that stuck to it at Diveagar.
This beach used to be have white sand. Closer examination shows the muck due to the oil pushed ashore from the sea.
Doing some digging I found the oil spill in the Arabian sea as below. The numbers are estimates of minimum and maximum metric tonnes.
| Mumbai oil spill / MV MSC Chitra and MV Khalijia 3 |  India, Mumbai, Arabian Sea |
7 August 2010 – 9 August 2010 | 400 | 800 | [75][76][77] |
| Mumbai-Uran pipeline spill | India, Mumbai, Arabian Sea |
21 January 2011 | 40 | 55 | [72][73] |
Velas beach is an isolated beach and a turtle sanctuary and not easy to reach. I was hoping for a pristine experience and I found more oil damage.
The beach was not as bad as Diveagar, but still sticky gooey stuff on the ground.
What to do?
There are multiple methods available for cleaning up oil on beaches. Here is a snippet from NOAA.
The future is what the locals make out of it and support is required from the government agencies.
Mukund's Blog 