New slicks from tanker threaten Spanish coast

Spain was braced for a deepening ecological catastrophe last night as several secondary slicks of toxic fuel oil from the sunken tanker Prestige churned off its north-west coast, threatening to pile on misery for the region's already blighted fishing communities and coastal villages.

Under cloudy skies, half a dozen specially equipped boats skimmed oil from the ocean, while maritime officials and fishermen deployed more floating barriers between the slicks and the coast.

On shore, several hundred volunteers donned protective white jumpsuits, face masks and gloves, and continued shovelling oily sand into buckets. The face masks and gloves shielded skin and lungs from the sulphur in the fuel oil.

Authorities in Galicia said the new slicks, which were spilled as the oil tanker split in two and sank on 19 November, contained an estimated 9,000 tons of dense fuel oil, more than four times the amount so far scraped from the region's beaches since the crisis began.

In the Atlantic port of La Coruña, Spain's Deputy Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, said a patch of oil measuring 200 yards square was wallowing in choppy seas a mile off Cape Tourinan on Galicia's far western tip, while slicks twice the size lay some three miles off Cape Finisterre.

While a principal pool containing thousands of tons of spilled crude was reported to be drifting around nine miles off the coast of south-west Galicia, Mr Rajoy warned that conditions were "changing every two or three hours", making it difficult to predict if and when it would make landfall. A government team including Mr Rajoy and the environment minister, Jaume Matas, continued to monitor developments from La Coruña as an international flotilla of salvage boats worked offshore to suck up the spilled oil before it reached land.

"There are protective barriers across the river estuaries in the [far western] Pontevedra and La Coruña regions, but the rest of the coast is exposed to the oil," said a Galician regional government official. "But if the slick hits, it will mean a second disaster for the region."

Nearly 7,000 of the region's fishermen and shellfish gatherers have been thrown temporarily out of work by a government fishing ban along the coast, known as La Costa de la Muerte, or the Coast of Death. Apart from the economic cost of the spill, estimated at €42m (£27m), the toll on wildlife is high. The Spanish Ornithological Society (SEO) said yesterday that up to 15,000 sea birds had been "seriously affected" by oil contamination, while Spain's entire population of 11 breeding pairs of common guillemots had been virtually wiped out.

Despite warnings by the environmental pressure group WWF/Adena that high levels of aromatic hydrocarbons in the tarry sludge "could cause cancer", Mr Rajoy said the possibility of falling ill after coming in contact with the spilled oil was "practically non-existent", adding that the oil "does not damage health as long as preventative measures are taken".

Spain's Green Party has launched a lawsuit against two government ministers, alleging criminal responsibility for the disaster. A series of government blunders had turned a manageable situation into one of the world's worst oil spills, it claims.

The suit charges that the ministers erred in ordering the stricken tanker to be towed offshore despite rough seas, rather than seeking to contain the oil and bring the damaged 26-year-old vessel into port.