OT-2 : Ocean Topics BAD news in Galicia

Whistle
1

Day before yesterday, the tanker “Prestige” broke open in two, and understandably sank, with 70,000 tons of heavy petroleum oil byproducts, 100 miles of the Finisterre tip of Spain. This appears to be 2nd or 3rd largest tanker pollution ever (after Torrey Canyon, but before Amoco Cadiz).

Galicia shores first to be already hit by some of the 7,000 tons spilled before sinking.
Presumably, given the depth of the sea, both Prestige’s wrecks will implode open at about 500 ft depth ; the oil should gradually float up while mixing with cold salty water in an unthinnable compact tar foam.
The Portuguese northward drift starts and gets active with winter, to catch this mess and spill it over the shores starting from Galicia and up north as far as Brittany Atlantic islands.

This is alltogether over 80 millions liters gooey poison spread over a major migration route of fish. Galicia and Portugal economies heavily depend on 1) fishing 2) tourism. Both trades will be heavily affected for several years, not to mention the endangered species of fish and seabirds.

Prestige was a tanker belonging to a Greek company, proudly carrying some phoney Caribbean flag, hired by a shady Russian petrol company with an office in London and accounts in Swiss.

World business.

My village Mesquer was recently condemned in appeal and has to pay the lawsuit expenses for suing oil company Total after the similar breaking in half of the tanker Erika. This was Christmas 1999, our gift being ca. 25 000 tons of the same shit which is not to be confused with crude oil and is an industrial byproduct mostly used to make tarmac roads. Whoever hires such a floating bomb is not legally responsible :imp: while the shipowner will just have to file in a bankrupcy to get away from fines.

[ This Message was edited by: Zubivka on 2002-11-21 10:16 ]

2

Yes, what can one say… It’s nasty business. :frowning:

3

I heard a report about this last night. What a sorry business for our celtic cousins amongst others.

But isn’t this happening altogether too often for the authorities (which authorities?) to write all these events off as accidents?

4

That’s just tragic all around. When I think of the damage to that fragile ecosystem…

I don’t think these things are ever accidents. There’s just no excuse. Remember the Exxon Valdez? That captain was drunk as a skunk, and had handed off navigation to a crewmenber who wasn’t qualified to navigate Prince William Sound’s tricky channels. For a long time thereafter, I sang an extra verse to “What Shall We Do With a Drunken Sailor” (“Make him captain of an Exxon tanker”).

I’m sure we’ll find with this spill as well that human negligence is to blame.

Redwolf

5

I can’t not describe the outrage I constantly suppress about crimes committed against the environment.

I drive a propane powered vehicle in an area where there is almost no public transportation. See my website about my vehicle. I walk or ride my bike to everything within ten miles.

We can do something.

see http://www.globalcircle.net

Lisa

6

All the city buses here in Santa Cruz County have switched to natural gas in recent years…a fairly abundant resource in California. There are also a couple of vehicles around here that have been converted to run on recycled vegetable oil (an idea I particularly like because it’s a renewable resource). Gas/electric hybrids, such as the Toyota Prius, are extremely popular here, and we’re beginning to see quite a few of those little rechargeable electric runabouts around town (they’re not very practical for those of us who live in the mountains and surrounding communities, but they work very well for people who live in Santa Cruz proper and do most of their running around in town…especially as the city has recently installed rechargers in the municipal parking garages).

Another thing you’ll see quite a lot of here (thanks to our weather, which makes them really practical for year 'round transportation) is motorcycles and scooters. Gas powered, yes, but using very little fuel in comparison to a car (my husband’s beloved Kawasaki Vulcan can go for two weeks on its five-gallon tank).

We’re also lobbying hard for more bike trails. Lots of people here would love to use their bicycles for commuting, but most of the roads outside the city aren’t really safe for bicyclists, lacking verges and good visibility.

This is something that’s on the top of the mind of everyone who lives on the edge of the beautiful and fragile Monterey Bay Sanctuary. The Sanctuary was formed to keep oil wells and tankers from Monterey Bay’s delicate ecosystem…but we’re constantly aware that the federal government could dissolve that special status in a snap if it suits them. Every time I go down to the Bay and marvel at the wildlife that abounds there, I get the cold shudders thinking of oil slicks fouling its waters.

There ARE alternatives…if people can only be persuaded to use them :frowning:

Redwolf

7

It’s getting worse…

So far, only ca. 300 km (i.e. some 200 miles, Soypant :wink: ) of Galicia have been soiled.
New oil emerged from the location of the wreckage, i.e. the tanker halves probably did implode.

I’m getting worried since our French meteo + oceanographic “authorities” asserted the risk of spilling on our shores is minimal. I translate like with the Erika : isles of Re, Yeu, Belle-Ile should get their goo delivery in time for Christmas.

All this assumes the spilling will quietly transit along the Portuguese drift, and not hit Portugal, and that we’ll have steady SW winds all winter… Like 15 out of 18 big multihulls in the Rum Race just proved last fortnight, by either capsizing or being torn in three separate hulls.

[ This Message was edited by: Zubivka on 2002-11-22 18:34 ]

8

It’s a bad thing, this oil-spill business. . .

My wife worked full-time for ten years as a wildlife rehabilitation expert, and spent the last five of those (she’s recently taken a job with Guide Dogs for the Blind) working with an organization that primarily did oil-spill response. Whenever an oil-spill occurred, anywhere in the world, these folks (paid and volunteers) would go there and set up shop and steel themselves for weeks – or sometimes months and months – of collecting, cleaning, caring for and, when lucky, releasing wildlife, mostly birds. That organization is almost certainly already in Europe, setting up response centers and beginning their work.

I was a volunteer with this group for several years as well, and have had the (non)pleasure of working for twenty hours a day as a steady stream of oil-soaked birds, hypothermic because the oil destroys their waterproofing, often suffering chemical burns, were brought to the cleaning stations. A large number of them die, or must be euthanised due to the extent of their injuries, but many can be saved.

Assuming, of course, that the oil spill can be contained and cleaned up so that the birds have someplace to be released, once they’re healthy again. . .

Birds tend to be the worst-affected wildlife in oil-spill disasters for a number of reasons. So many seabirds are endangered or threatened, or even if common are found in very concentrated numbers in small areas, which means that a single oil spill can wreak havoc on an entire population, or even an entire species.

My fervent good wishes to our Galician friends; I hope the weather helps to send the oil away from your coasts, and that your wildlife, people, and landscape are able to avoid the worst outcomes.

–Aaron

9

We were all on the beach 3 years ago, in winter, trying to catch the goo almots bare handed as best we could. Rubber boots and gloves were cracking dry after a few hours from the chemical residues. None of us thought of wearing paper gas masks.
For 5 months I could not see a live seagull, and crows I had never seen there before took over the vacated beaches…
Our village was the only one to maintain its lawsuit against Total, and lost twice so we have to pay for all the cleaning expenses. Plus lawyers :angry:
Refinery nearby still stocks all what was collected, can’t crack it, which I hearsay may end up buried on our own communal soil…

Now, this year, we’re seriously wondering if we’ll budge to collect anything. Each time such a thing happens, volunteers do all the job, state does nothing. A bit like charity replacing social politic in the US, but this is not our culture. So we may get tougher than suckers this time.

If we react tougher, maybe this time Europe will pass the bill banning all tankers without a twin hull. These got mandatory in the US since Exxon Valdez, but not here. It’s the 2nd time in 3 years a tanker plain breaks in two because of a standard winter gale where some our kids go out sailboarding, not some tropical typhoon.
Maybe our bloody aircraft-carrier ship will get useful missions monitoring the whole bloody traffic instead of helping to bully third-world nations for more oil…

[ This Message was edited by: Zubivka on 2002-11-22 19:30 ]