An environmental emergency has been declared in the northwestern and northern parts of Spain. Millions of plastic granules have washed up on the shores from a container that sank into the sea from a cargo ship.
Ribeira / O Grove
Spanish Ruth Carames participated with his family in a seemingly desperate clean-up job on the coast of his native Galicia last weekend.
Millions and millions of plastic granules have washed up on the beaches of the northwest corner of Spain from a container that sank into the sea.
The Caramés family of four used tea and flour sieves and dustpans as tools when they sifted plastic pellets from the beach sand.
“We saw in the news that the beaches were full of plastic grains, and the administration did not have enough means to combat this. Residents started organizing through social media,” biologist Ruth Caramés told HS last Saturday in the coastal municipality of Ribeira.
Ruth Caramés, spouse Sino Seco and daughters Urxa, 10, and Xoana7, had arrived after an hour's drive, when the authorities of Ribeira had asked the local people for help.
Average occurred on December 8 off the city of Viana do Castelo in northern Portuguese waters. Six cargo containers fell into the sea from the Toconao cargo ship sailing under the flag of Liberia. They sank to an estimated depth of 2,000-3,000 meters, about 40 nautical miles from the coast.
One of the containers was full of pellets, which the plastic industry uses to make drinking water bottles, the company told Trade Winds. The cargo intended for a Polish plastic company was on its way from Spain to Rotterdam from the container port of Algeciras.
More than 25 tons of 4–5 millimeter grains, which were packed in an estimated thousand sacks, sank into the sea with the container. In addition to pellets, dozens of sacks have washed up on Galicia's beaches so far.
Galicia and Asturias and Cantabria declared the second most severe environmental emergency last week and asked the Spanish central government for help. The Spanish prosecutor's office is investigating the accident.
Galician teacher Sino Seco and daughters Xoana (left) and Urxa volunteered to clean up the beach in Barreiras last Saturday.
CHILLING heavy rain whipped faces on the natural beach of Barreiras and the wind tore through the trees. However, the storm did not slow down the squatting and packing crowd, because they felt the task was important.
Numerous municipalities, professionals recruited by the autonomous region and hundreds of residents have been cleaning the beaches of Galicia for several days since the Epiphany weekend.
The winter's strong sea currents have transported translucent pale pellets from the accident container. They could already appear in small numbers on the beaches of northern Portugal, the Basque Country and France.
In Spain, it was speculated that after last weekend's storms, larger piles of plastic grains could flood the beaches.
The plastic granules were separated from the sand by washing them in water at the Galician beach of Barreiras in northwestern Spain.
Toconao reported the accident to the Portuguese and Spanish authorities.
The containers belong to the Danish company Maersk, which chartered the ship. According to it, there was no dangerous cargo in the containers.
The mayor of Ribeira, Luís Pérez Barral (second left), and Manoel Santos of the environmental organization Greenpeace, who is holding the map, guided the people who arrived at the cleaning stations on the beach of Barreiras last Saturday.
The people of Talkoo picked their fingers, brushed, sifted and rinsed on the beach strip of Barreiras in the emergency operation of the province of A Coruña.
According to the organizers, the broken northern shore of Majakkaniemi was covered with hail last week. On the night before Saturday, however, the brisk sailing had taken most of the pellet clusters as they went with the low tide.
“It's almost like looking for a needle in a haystack,” Ruth Caramés updated. It was at this point that it was difficult to see the grains among the seashells and white pebbles rustling underfoot.
Ruth Caramés had, among other things, a strainer as a work tool.
The cleaning scouts had brought supplies from home recommended by the organizers, such as rubber gloves, dustpans, brushes and strainers of all sizes. Hard and light crumbs resembling cooked rice stuck to them. On behalf of the municipality, saavs were distributed, and the balls that floated on the surface of the water were washed into them.
Ruth Caramés and Sino Seco said they were amazed at how slowly news of the accident trickled out. They first received information about the pollution on social media and alternative news platforms.
According to its current information, Seco assesses the environmental damage as serious but not a major disaster. Different animals such as birds and fish could mistakenly eat plastic granules.
“The pellets break down into smaller and smaller microplastics. They are transferred to animals and pass through, for example, fish into the food chain,” reflected Sino Seco, a teacher of Galego, the native language of the Galicia region. Urxa and Xoana received an environmental education, which their parents now feel is painful, about the marine plastic problem plaguing the Atlantic coast.
GALICIAN The shipwreck of the Greek-owned oil tanker M/S Prestige off the coast in a storm in November 2002 has been etched in the minds of the population of 2.7 million.
Tens of thousands of tons of Russian heavy fuel oil spilled from the Prestige into the sea. The environmental disaster, one of the worst in Europe, damaged the coast for 2,000 kilometers from Spain to France and Portugal. The oil ruined Galicia's fishing industry and the thriving shellfish and shellfish farming in the fjord-like bays.
A shudder would strike the leaders of Saturday's cleaning operation Manoel Santosiawhen he heard the tidal wave of pellets.
“I immediately thought it was another disaster,” Santos described to HS while guiding the volunteers on the wet beach.
Greenpeace coordinator, biologist Manoel Santos.
Guys often touch Galicia, according to Santos, because the coast is followed by a busy cargo ship route called the Fisterra Corridor. Around 40,000 ships sail the route every year. The rugged coast is jagged, and storms raise the waves to wild heights.
Ribeira is the “ground zero” of the pellet crisis in Spain. Here, on December 13, a local resident noticed the first plastic bags washed ashore.
“In the last week of December, continuous streaks of white hailstones began to appear on the beaches. I've never seen anything like it,” Greenpeace's local coordinator and biologist Manuel Santos described.
Many are now talking about the environmental disaster of Prestige's black and plastic granules' white. Santos emphasized that the oil disaster and the pellet crisis cannot be compared to each other.
So far, no one can predict how many pellets are floating in the waters and where they will eventually land.
“We have only been able to recover a tiny amount,” Santos said. “For the next weeks and months, and probably even years, we will collect these when they come back from above.”
Cleaning workers on the beach of Barreiras.
SPANISH rescue professionals and politicians have debated among themselves the question of how the pellets can be collected most quickly and efficiently. Galicia asked for help from eleven rescue ships, an airplane, two helicopters and a diving robot. Fishermen in the Basque Country are considering whether plastic granules can be caught with special nets, the Portuguese news agency Lusa reported.
The container accident has raised criticism of the slow response of regional decision-makers in Galicia to emergency measures.
“The regional administration activated the emergency rescue plan really late. We should have people at our disposal right away to protect beaches with sensitive natural values”, Ribeira's municipal manager Luis Perez Barral said on leave of hail washing.
Luís Pérez Barral, mayor of Ribeira.
The mayor of the municipality, Pérez Barral, believes that there is a “really tough battle” ahead for compensation for the environmental damage. Lessons were learned from Prestige's ten-year-long court battles, he said.
“I don't think anyone is to blame in the true sense of the word, because it's an accident,” says Pérez Barral.
Fish– and shellfish producers are not yet able to assess how the plastic crisis will affect the economy. Others of them are confident that consumers across Spain and Europe will be able to enjoy local produce without worry thanks to strict controls.
Representatives of the industry are planning a demonstration in Santiago de Compostela for next Sunday, O Grove municipality's environmental technician Francisco Meis Duran said.
He presented a clam port, where boats equipped with a winch and metal baskets floated at anchor. “The livelihood of many families relies on mussels. It is also the backbone of the Galician economy,” he said.
Francisco Meis Duran says that the pellet accident also has a certain benefit:
“The news has made people realize the amount of marine plastic that arrives on our shores every day, every month, year after year.”
Environmental technician Francisco Meis Duran believes that the pellet accident has shocked people.
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