Prestige: Sea Alarm - Response in Spain
When the tanker broke up, it was clear that seabirds and mammals were going to run the risk of being oiled by the heavy fuel oil from the Prestige. Galician coasts are a waypoint, as it were, for migratory birds and they are also a haven for international bird sanctuaries including RAMSAR. Galicia also harbours colonies of otters, dolphins and sea turtles.
Birds were being oiled and started being washed up on the beaches only a few days after the accident. Galician authorities and NGOs involved in the rescue plan were assisted on the spot by international experts. The IFAW emergency rescue team set up a care centre for the birds at Pontevedra in southern Galicia to clean and rehabilitate the birds. The German organisations « Blue Sea project » and « Olvogelhilfe » and people from the Nantes School of Veterinary Medicine were jointly involved in setting up emergency care centres at strategic locations in northern Gallicia. A representative of the LPO (French Ornithological Society) helped to organise rescue and collection teams on the beaches. Collection and analysis of dead birds was entrusted to SEO Birdlife (Spain) with the help of two international experts, Kees Camphujsen (NL) and Martin Heubeck (UK). Bird cadavers were sent to La Coruna for autopsy. Transport facilities were provided by the Forestry Commission and the Galician Junta that was in charge of all of the response operations as it had set up a bird treatment and rehabilitation centre to the south of La Coruna.
Sea Alarm provided on the spot assistance to responders as to how to care for the birds and optimise the rescue operation. ITOPF, the underwriters and the IOPC Fund approved this initiative. The main problem during the Prestige spill was that there was no pre-set plan for caring for wildlife. Indeed the Junta did set up an organisation to delegate powers to the organisations working in the field, but there was no unit in charge of co-ordinating the efforts and communication.
Source:
Cedre.
Consequently and despite the willingness of responders , the teams worked in isolation most of the time which meant that many of the birds being taken to Pontevedra arrived too late to be cared for as there was no co-ordination of the rescue effort. A real contingency plan has to be designed in advance in order to organise efficient response both from the technical and the financial points of view.
In
actual fact, many European countries do not have this kind of plan
and Sea Alarm has launched a project to devise an international
guide to plan response operations designed to care for polluted
wildlife victims. This initiative is being funded by IPIECA, BP
and Total. Once IPIECA has published the guide it will become a
joint resource for all to use in a bid to remedy this situation.
Last update: April
2004