Officials in Spain have extended a ban on fishing and shellfish harvesting as far south as Portugal as thick fuel from a sunken oil tanker spread out across the Galician coast.
Spain also kept vigilant watch over another ageing tanker, loaded with heavy fuel oil, that was banned from French waters yesterday and escorted further out into the Atlantic.
And France began preparing an emergency plan to rescue its coasts from the northward creep of pollution from the Prestige, which dumped between 10,000 and 20,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil into the sea off Galicia before sinking on November 19th.
Officials stressed the ban was extended "as a precaution" in light of the spread of slicks that have coated hundreds of kilometres of some of Spain's most picturesque coastline and badly affected the fishing- and tourism-dependent local economy.
Locals who depend on the sea for their livelihood and who have been robbed of lucrative holiday sales will be compensated around €40 a day by the state, but the loss in earning is a blow for a sector that raises €475 million a year for the region, 10 pe rcent of its total output.
Spain dispatched its naval frigate Balearesmake sure the 24-year-old Malta-registered Enalios Titanstayed out of its waters. The ship, en route from Latvia to Singapore, is carrying 87,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil - the same product involved in the Prestigedisaster, the French navy said.
AFP