Fishermen go hunting for oil

Fishermen trying to protect Europe’s richest shellfish beds frantically deployed their nets and other equipment today to scoop thick globs of oil from the sea as slicks from a sunken tanker spread along Spain’s Galician coast.

Meanwhile, a French research submarine was scheduled to make its second dive to confirm preliminary results that there were no new leaks from the wreck of the Prestige , which is lying on the Atlantic Ocean bed 155 miles off the coast.

Dozens of small and large fishing boats were at the entrance of the Rias Baixas gathering the tar-like fuel oil with nets, cranes and other fishing equipment to protect Europe’s biggest shellfish reserve which provides livelihoods for 250,000 families in the area.

At the fishing towns of Ribeira and Aguino, their clothes stained with oil, the fishermen dumped the collected sludge into large containers.

“Every fifty yards you see a slick, it is enough to make you cry. We are resigned to our fate. All we can do is keep fighting,” said one local fisherman who was part of the flotilla.

“The wind is from the west, but we will fight to avoid any single drop of oil,” said Xose Luis Torres, mayor of the fishing village Ribeira and also a fisherman.

As recently yesterday the Spanish authorities had tried to downplay the threat, saying that the Rias Baixas – craggy inlets home to mussels, oysters and other commercially valuable shellfish on the southern stretch of Galicia’s coastline – would not be affected by the oil spill and that only small slicks were floating in the area.

However, a report from the regional government of Galicia confirmed today that there was a slick seven miles off Isla de Ons at the entrance to one the estuaries.

The environmentalist group World Wildlife Fund-Adena in Madrid also warned that the slick was on the brink of hitting Corrubedo, a coastal nature park with large sand dunes, wild flora and fauna, just north of the Rias Baixas.

In other areas of the north-western coast of Galicia, the authorities deployed more floating barriers outside ports and at the mouths of rivers.

Environmentalists and volunteers continued to clean beaches coated by the spill and specially-equipped ships from several European countries continued suctioning the slicks, the main one about 19 miles offshore.

A small French submarine surveyed the wreck yesterday and concluded the ship was not leaking from its cargo tanks, the government said.

The Nautili, best known for finding the remains of the Titanic, was to continue examining the site of the wreck for another week.