Oil spill in Galica

OIL SPILL IN GALICIA

It all began like a temporal that it desvastated Spain in november of 2002, It ended up being the greatest economic and ecological catastrophe in the country.

An old oil tanker, it called Prestige with Bahamas flags, transported  77.000 tonne of fuel from Letonia to Gibraltar due to the heavy storm with waves of six meters and winds of 50 knots; the boat sank down in front of Galician coast. Fortunetely, nobody was injured: the twenty- seven crew-members was rescued while the ship turned up the sea in a shadow.

This temporal opened a hole in the old hull of th Prestige, that this boat hadn’t passed any revision since 1999 but this wasn’t  the cause of the sinking and the ecological disaster. While authorities were trying to move away the boat from Galicia, the oil tanker broke in two. The consequence of this was the oil spill , that there was in the tanks ; A total of 63.000 tonnes were spilled.

There were dozen species of birds, fish, invertebrates and mammals affected. Moreover the plankton had resulted destroyed. In the other hand 2.500 boats and 6.000 fishers  didn’t work and those sectors associated with the sea were affected.

Eventually, the methods of clean up the affected area are: remove  the oil from the sea, with degrade the fuel and bumb the water of the sea. However, it is not possible the full recovery.