The coils of black hose, drum skimmers designed to collect oil from the ocean’s surface, and orangey-red containment booms all looked out of place on the white sand of Mombasa’s touristy Nyali beach. But on July 9, dozens of emergency responders in red and orange hi-vis gear took over a portion of this beach. They were braving the wind and choppy Indian Ocean waves as they mock up the onshore response to a simulated oil spill at sea.

I research how countries in the western Indian Ocean cooperate to make the seas around them safer, and I was there to observe a field training exercise that brought together around 200 participants from ten coastal and island states for one week in east Africa’s largest port city. Codenamed MASEPOLREX25, it put two types of emergency response to the test.

The first was Kenya’s national-level response to marine oil pollution, guided by its national contingency plan. The second was a regional-level response that can bring in outside help from other nations. The organiser of the exercise, the Indian Ocean Commission (IOC) – an intergovernmental group of Western Indian Ocean islands headquartered in Mauritius – wanted the countries of the region to rehearse a joint response to marine pollution.

The exercise put two IOC-designed regional centres through their paces. Think of them like a pair of regional helpdesks for ocean security, each with a distinct purpose.

The exercise began the day before with a briefing on the marine pollution scenario. The Kenyan authorities had received a distress call from........

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