Ships recover part of oil tanker spill

Storms off Spain’s north-western coast abated today, allowing specialised anti-pollution ships to vacuum some of the oil from the tanker Prestige that sank last week.

However, a precautionary ban on fishing was extended to cover 310 miles of affected coastline.

“Three ships from Spain, the Netherlands and France are working about 90 miles off Cape Finisterre where the slick has broken up into smaller fragments”, said Antonio Carro Morano, spokesman for the Interior Ministry in the city of A Coruna.

Ships from Germany, Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands are due to join the clean-up effort this week to collect the oil that has washed up on the shores of the north-western region of Galicia for a week, causing grave environmental damage and crippling the fishing industry which is vital to the region’s economy.

Meanwhile on land, workers and volunteers from environmental groups were still cleaning beaches.

The tanker broke in two and sank last Tuesday, taking most of its fuel oil to the ocean floor about two miles below the surface.

But 1,245 tons of oil have so far been picked up from Spanish beaches, out of the 11,000 tons that the government estimates leaked from the tanker. Environmental organisations claim it spilled twice that much.