Death Coast

[wilson@mail.utexas.edu]

I found this article in Time magazine which gives an update on the Prestige oil 
spill that took place several weeks ago.  The spill has has only gotten worse 
since then and is said to have the possibility of a detonation (consisting of 
55,000 tons of thich fuel oil).  This would ultimately lead to the worst marine 
disaster the world has ever seen.  Officials from France and Portugal have put 
workers on high alert because of the fast moving oil slicks could hit their 
coast within the next day or two.  Tankers are working to clean up as much oil 
as possible but it hasn't been enough.  This spill has become so notorious that 
European officials are pushing for a ban on aged tankers.  Here it is.

-Mark Wilson

Death Coast

  On the floor of the north Atlantic, in the frigid depths off Spain's craggy 
Costa da Morte (Death Coast), sits a time bomb. The Prestige lies in shame, 145 
nautical miles off the northwestern state of Galicia, and its remaining cargo — 
at least 55,000 tons of thick fuel oil — could detonate in days, weeks or 
months into a great black tide of viscous goo, unleashing one of the worst 
marine disasters ever. But if King Neptune is kind, the sunken tanker may just 
sleep, its cargo solidified, having done all the dirty work it will ever do. 

Its work so far has been dastardly. Some 400 km of ecologically sensitive 
Galician shoreline, home to the region's critical fishing industry and a 
variety of exotic seabirds, are already coated in the gunge that began leaking 
from the single-hulled Prestige when it foundered in huge waves and gale-force 
winds on Nov. 13. When the Greek-owned tanker finally broke in two and sank, it 
took with it the livelihoods of 5,000 people who depend on small-scale fishing 
in the area. Spanish officials, who have banned fishing from El Ferrol and A 
Coruña in the north to Cape Finisterre in the south, estimated last week's 
damages at $42 million and climbing. Now the worry is that fierce storms still 
churning in the Atlantic will push the spill's other oil slicks toward the 
shore. 

"They call this the Death Coast. It couldn't be more appropriately named," says 
Juan Antonio Toja, head of the fishermen's cooperative in the village of Laxe. 
Long a graveyard for ships, the area has now seen three major oil disasters 
since 1976. Toja's depressed mood matched that of his neighbors, among them the 
owners of three small boats who had gone out to fish beyond the exclusion zone. 
There, in the dark, the men were terrified to find themselves surrounded by "a 
raft of a gluey substance that glistened in the moonlight," says one of the 
fishermen, Manuel Toja. "It was so thick we felt we were stuck in it." Back in 
port — with their nets, buoys and lobster traps ruined by oil — their meager 
catch was rejected by the health authorities. 

While waves, winds and oil churn off shore, storms also are raging in 
government and shipping industry offices on several continents, where 
politicians and businessmen argue about who is to blame for the demise of the 
26-year-old Prestige, which was en route from the Latvian port of Ventspils to 
Singapore with a cargo of 76,972 tons of Russian fuel oil. "The ultimate story 
will be why, why, why?" says Stewart Wade, spokesman for the Houston, Texas-
based American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), which inspected and last certified the 
tanker as seaworthy in Dubai last May. "This ship never should have sunk, and 
the spill should have been contained." 

The crew's deliberate flooding of empty tanks on one side of the hull to get 
the ship back in an upright position created far too much stress, says 
Wade. "After that, the final sinking could be easily predicted. Its death 
warrant was signed." And the Spanish authorities, he contends, exacerbated the 
effects of what should have been a minor oil spill by refusing to give the 
damaged vessel permission to dock in a sheltered area. "It leaked over 290 km 
of coast instead of in a small bay in which it could have been contained," he 
says. 

ABS, says Wade, has reviewed its records on the Prestige and "can find nothing 
in the paper trail that would raise any cause for concern." The Rotterdam 
Harbor Authority's chief inspector, Henk ten Hoope, agrees. In a September 1999 
inspection, he found "nothing wrong with the ship's structure," he says. "As 
far as we were concerned, it was perfectly seaworthy." Shipping sources in 
Athens — base of the Prestige's registered owners, Mare Shipping Inc., and 
manager, Universe Maritime Ltd. — call the vessel "a good ship," and add that 
Captain Apostoulos Mangouras is experienced and had a clean record. (He has 
been detained in Spain for alleged environmental offenses and failure to 
cooperate with coastal authorities in a timely fashion.) So why did the 
Prestige sink? Theories include the extreme weather conditions, a collision 
with floating debris, structural problems, metal fatigue and miscalculations in 
the salvage effort. The Dutch salvage firm Smit, which handled the attempted 
rescue of the ship, is locked in a battle of words with Spain. "We asked to tow 
the ship to a safe place on the Spanish coast, where we could repair it in calm 
waters," says a Smit spokesman. "But the Spanish authorities refused." The 
Spanish say they feared damage would be greater if the leaking vessel — 
chartered by Swiss-based Crown Resources AG, part of the Russian-owned Alfa 
Group — was brought closer to shore. 

The breakup and sinking of the Prestige — after its 27-man crew was airlifted 
to safety — has also renewed debate over single-hulled ships. "With a double 
hull, when a ship is damaged there is an extra layer of skin to prevent the 
cargo from escaping," notes Unni Einemo of the specialist website Tankerworld. 
Under a package of E.U. directives approved two years ago, in the wake of the 
1999 Erika oil spill off northwestern France, single-hulled vessels are to be 
phased out by 2015. But oil companies and shippers still use the old vessels 
because they are cheaper to lease. Last week, E.U. transport Commissioner 
Loyola de Palacio — a Spaniard — called on member states to quickly enact 
individual bans on single-hulled tankers in European waters. 

Efforts to clean up the benighted coast have been hindered by poor weather. The 
work has rapidly become an onshore mop-up exercise rather than an offshore 
recovery, partly due to the nature of the oil. With a consistency like that of 
chewing gum, the oil is stubborn and impervious to dispersants — the first 
choice in dealing with spills — which break the oil up into small droplets that 
are further dispersed by the waves. Lacking sufficient floating barriers, local 
fishermen have been using their own boats and nets — and even telephone poles 
as booms — to try to prevent the goo from reaching beaches and ports. 

Given the nasty weather, many in Galicia can only watch and wait for now, 
hoping that the wind and wave patterns will soon shift, sparing further damage 
to wildlife, fisheries and coastline. The Portuguese pray that the black gunk 
will not reach their shores; environmentalists hope it also will miss Spain's 
Las Islas Cíes national park, the Aquarium Finisterre complex and other areas 
of great biodiversity. Out at sea, meanwhile, slicks break up and recongeal, 
changing in size, shape and number, making it difficult to gauge the exact 
scale of the spillage. 

The cleanup will be paid for by the ship's insurers, as well as a fund 
established in 1992 by the major oil companies to deal with just this kind of 
accident. While the E.U. has not yet determined how much its contribution to 
the cleanup will be, fisheries Commissioner Franz Fischler promises that Europe 
will not let Spain's fishermen down. 

The villagers, who are being given j30 for each day they are unable to fish, 
aren't reassured. "We can't predict the long-term damage," says Juan Antonio 
Toja. "It will probably mean the end for many families." Mending fishing nets 
with her sister, Nieves Charlín, another Laxe resident, mused that their 
husbands and brothers "won't be needing these for some time." Worried about 
making ends meet, Manuel Toja reflected sadly that "Papa Noël will not come to 
visit my daughter this year."