THE LAST OF PRESTIGE

The ship Odin returned to La Coruña port last week with the last of the oil that was left in the tanks of the Prestige, which sank off the coast of Galicia on November 19th, 2002, polluting about 3,000 kilometres of coastline and killing about 300,000 seabirds, making it one of Europe's worst wildlife disasters. The Bahamas-registered Prestige, which was carrying 77,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil, started to sink about 250 kilometres from the Spanish coast after its hull cracked in a storm. Its Greek captain tried to make it to the shore but the Spanish authorities forced him to take the ship further out to sea. It was realised afterwards that it would have been easier to contain the damage if the captain had been allowed to go ahead with his original plan. The disaster happened just when local fishermen should have been out catching the shellfish, octopus and crab which sell like hot cakes over the Christmas period. Hundreds of them joined the thousands of volunteers from all over Spain who flocked to the area to clean up the oil as it washed ashore. It was a long slow process but the beaches were eventually cleaned, the fishermen were able to get back to work early in 2003 and by that summer, holidaymakers were returning to enjoy the region's beautiful unspoilt beaches. Foreign experts were brought in to plug up the leaks one by one and a few months ago, work began on removing the oil still in the Prestige's tanks. Ironically, the stretch of coastline most affected by the spin has been known for centuries as the "Coast of Death" because of the many shipwrecks that have occurred there.