|
France bans some oysters as oil pollutes coast
6th January 2003
Oil leaks from the cracked hull of the Prestige
BORDEAUX, France (Reuters) -- Oysters and other shellfish farmed in the Arcachon basin near Bordeaux were banned over fears of contamination by toxic fuel oil spilled from the sunken tanker Prestige, officials said.
Seafood industry heads decided they had no choice but to immediately stop the gathering of shellfish in the oil-tainted basin. The sale of oysters and other seafood from the area was banned on Sunday.
"We do not want there to be the slightest doubt about our products," regional shellfish industry head Marc Druart said.
"This has never happened to us before. We want to avoid there being the tiniest drop of oil on our oysters, but our brand is already soiled," he added.
The 26-year-old, single-hulled Prestige, laden with 77,000 tons of oil, sprang a leak in November off the northwest Spanish coast and sank six days later after snapping in half.
High winds have broken up big oil slicks drifting towards France, which have been estimated as covering an area the size of New York City. More oil is seeping out of the shattered hull.
"This is a crisis that will be long-lasting. This is nothing like the Erika disaster," Ecology Minister Roselyne Bachelot told LCI television, referring to a one-off oil spill from the sunken Erika tanker off the Brittany coast in 1999.
She said around 1,000 people -- seamen, emergency workers, volunteers and firefighters -- were now mobilized along the Atlantic coast to help the clean-up operation.
Scores of trawlers were stationed in the Arcachon basin -- which produces some 12,000 tons of oysters each year -- to try and scoop up oil, as two 150-meter-wide slicks made up of thousands of small globs, lurked at the mouth of the basin.
Floating plastic barriers were installed to try to catch the oil before it reached the coast, and a fleet of trawlers battled with rough seas to try and deal with slicks out at sea.
They failed to prevent more deposits of the black oil washing up along 200 km (125 miles) of sandy beaches. France has taken over from Spain in handling the clean-up, with oil now smeared halfway up its west coast, enraging locals and threatening tourism on which the region is dependent.
The French government has forked out an initial 50 million euros ($52 million) to fund the clean-up and has opened a criminal inquiry to establish responsibility for the spill.
Local mayors complained that they would need something like 5,000 troops -- 25 times the 200 mobilized by the government -- and more powerful machinery to cope with the spilled oil.
"We have black streaks in the surf that stink of petrol stations. It's disgusting that tankers are allowed to plough into stormy seas with 10 to 15 meter high swells," said Michel Boye, who runs a bulletin on surfing conditions in the Gironde.
|
