Fresh slicks of black, viscous oil continued to wash up on to the beaches of north-west Spain yesterday as the fuel left behind by the sunken tanker Prestige began to spread south down the coast.
Satellite pictures showed a thick trail of oil snaking out to the coast near the port city of La Coruna from the spot, just over 200 kilometres from the shore, where the tanker finally went down on Tuesday.
The oil reached beaches near the sea loch at Corcubion, south of Cape Finisterre, yesterday morning. Seabirds could be seen drenched in oil at the loch yesterday.
A second slick was reported to have hit beaches further north near Caion, on the stretch of Spain’s north-west shore which has become known as the Coast of Death. The amount of oil spilt is believed to be as much as 12 000 tons, from the ship’s total load of 77 000 tons, and the beaches have been the subject of an intensive clean-up operation in recent days.
With fierce gales breaking up the oil, some experts said that the danger to the shellfish-rich sea lochs further south was diminishing. But that did not stop fishermen in the region frantically harvesting as many mussels and clams as possible.
The situation was made worse by at least one tanker which took advantage of the Prestige disaster to wash out its own tanks off La Coruna. Satellite pictures showed a long, thin stream of oil in the wake of a vessel, and fishermen reported finding globules of oil surrounded by a white froth.
Another ship, loaded with caustic soda, was being towed into La Coruna port after its engines failed yesterday. Demands have been growing for tankers with dangerous cargoes to be forced to sail further away from the north-west corner of Spain, the site of three tanker disasters in 25 years.
Spain’s deputy prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, said yesterday that the load of 65 000 tons of fuel oil taken to the sea bed by the Prestige was likely to stay there. ”Everything points to the fact that… it will solidify, and there will not be any more spillages,” he said.
At the Mar de Fora beach near Finisterre, blackened waves pounded the picturesque half-moon bay after the oil made landfall overnight. Sludge covered about 10 metres of sand after the tide had gone out and rocky areas either side of the beach wore a 15-centimetres coat of oil.
A Danish pilot who had sailed aboard the Prestige told his country’s Jyllands-Posten newspaper that the vessel was not seaworthy before it ran into trouble 21 miles off the Galician coast.
”The ship should not have been allowed to sail,” Jens Jorgen Thuesen said. ”The radar and the anti-collision equipment were not functioning properly.”
A spokesman for the Liberian company which owned the vessel denied the allegations.
The Spanish government said that it would sue the company for damages estimated to be in excess of 30-million pounds.
Fishing in the area, which was banned earlier this week, usually generates about 220-million pounds annually.
The Spanish newspaper El Pais claimed yesterday that not enough specialist ships were available to deal with the slicks, and that other equipment was in short supply. It also ridiculed the clean-up operation, claiming that it lasted only the time that a government minister and attendant TV cameras spent at the scene. – Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001