Oil spill reaches coast of Gran Canaria
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Version 0 of 1. More than 120kg of thick fuel oil has been scraped off several beaches on the Spanish tourist island of Gran Canaria , as government officials scramble to contain the spill from a ship that sank more than a week ago. The Russian fishing boat Oleg Naydenov was carrying more than 1,400 tonnes of fuel oil when it sank 10 days ago, about 15 nautical miles south of Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands. On Thursday, Spain’s public works minister, Ana Pastor Julián, said the trawler was currently leaking between five and 10 litres of fuel an hour. The government had sent a robot submarine to examine the wreckage, which located the boat nearly 2 miles below sea level. So far three leaks had been detected in the hull, Pastor Julián said, and authorities were looking into having them sealed as soon as possible. The government was also weighing the technical possibilities of removing the fuel from the ship, she said. After days of oil slicks being seen off the coast, on Wednesday residents and fishermen in the southern part of Gran Canaria reported the appearance of clumps of oil on several beaches, including Veneguera, Tasarte and Taurito. Several Greenpeace members who had travelled to the affected area said the situation could worsen in the coming days. “When we look at all of the areas of contamination and how it has arrived at the coast, we can confirm that this nightmare hasn’t ended, that its likely just beginning and the worst is yet to come,” said Greenpeace spokesman Luís Ferreirim, from the Veneguera beach. On Friday, Greenpeace published images of a bottlenose dolphin whose dorsal fin was covered in fuel. Sseveral oil-covered birds and turtles – including an endangered loggerhead sea turtle – have also been spotted in the last 10 days. “The images speak for themselves and they don’t have any good news to tell,” Ferreirim said. The leader of the Gran Canaria island council, José Miguel Bravo de Laguna, said: “While it’s a serious issue, we have to be careful not to exaggerate things, because we’re in an area that survives, in good part, on tourism and what’s arriving on our beaches at the moment isn’t that alarming.” The regional government of the Canary Islands has not put in place any restrictions on accessing or fishing off the southern beaches of Gran Canaria. Residents of beach towns in the southeastern areas of Tenerife and La Gomera said they were on alert amid concerns that fuel could wash up there. Environmentalists have taken aim at the government’s handling of the crisis from the start, asking why, after the Russian fishing boat caught fire in a Canary Islands port, the government decided to tow the fuel-filled burning vessel out to sea. They have drawn parallels between the situation in the Canaries and the 2002 fuel spill from the Prestige oil tanker, which saw some 60,000 tonnes of fuel enter the sea off the north-western coast of Spain. |