If an oil spill happened off the coast of the Algarve, would the region know how to react? The scenario was fictional, but the exercise to combat sea pollution, held on Wednesday and Thursday, 18 and 19 October, in Vila Real de Santo António, tested procedures so that everything is working, in case of need.
The conclusion is that the available means, if that happened, would be enough to "quickly make a first intervention". This was said by Luís Sousa Pereira, general director of the National Maritime Authority, referring to the material that exists in the Maritime Department of the South, such as containment barriers, motor pumps or material for cleaning products.
"The means we have are what we consider necessary for a first containment, whether in a riverside area, along the coast or at sea," he considered. After that phase, “heavier material” could then be moved to help with operations.
In the exercise in Vila Real de Santo António, promoted by the National Maritime Authority, there were five scenarios. The first, on a hypothetical platform offshore by the beach of Monte Gordo, simulated a maritime accident, between two ships, a freighter and an oil tanker, which resulted in a spill of 3 million liters of fuel This number represents, by way of example, about 5% of the total accident with the ship “Prestige”, in Galicia, in 2002, one of the most tragic in memory.
In this scenario, the objective was both to collect the pollutant and to avoid its containment. To this end, there was the help of two tug ships and another that collected the hypothetical fuel spilled… (here simulated by popcorn).
Scenario two, on the other hand, involved an accident with a fishing vessel, in the port of Vila Real de Santo António, which resulted in both an injury and the spillage of 5 liters of diesel. In this case, an attempt was also made to contain the spill with barriers, with a ship collecting what, even so, had spread.
All the other scenarios were a consequence of these first two: three was the cleaning and collection of polluting material that had reached the beach, four was the collection of two animals that washed up on the coast covered in fuel, and five is the closure of the VRSA recreational port. Thus, several occurrences were simulated.
And is there really the risk of having a more serious spill in the Algarve? Vice-admiral Luís Pereira says that the most “important thing is to anticipate and minimize any impacts”. Hence, then, the existence of «materials pre-positioned to act».
As the Algarve is an area where there is intense maritime traffic, with some of the main international routes passing off the Algarve coast, between the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal and Northern Europe, there are risks associated with the pollution of the marine environment, with impacts, if a spill happened, to be strong, namely in tourism.
Also for this reason, the exercise was already "planned for a long time and has nothing to do with private oil exploration initiatives", guaranteed the vice-admiral. "What we want is to rehearse our organization and procedures", he reinforced.
Another of the objectives of this exercise was to bring together several national entities, such as the Navy, the Portuguese Air Force, and the National Civil Protection Authority, namely the District Relief Operations Command of Faro, but also international, such as the Spanish Navy and the Moroccan Navy.
In fact, from these two countries ships come for the exercise. "We need the support of partners," said the director general of the Maritime Authority, giving the example of tug ships.
«That's why we have articulated the exercises so that the procedures are streamlined and not something that happens, and now we're going to see what we do. Everyone knows what to do and which channels they should work on», said Luís Sousa Pereira.
The University of Algarve was also present in this initiative, helping to calculate the pollutant's drift. Joana Cruz, a researcher at the Center for Marine Sciences (CCMar), gave a different look to the report from Sul Informação about this initiative.
Is that, "if an oil spill happens, normally people see animals with oil on top" but in planktonic organisms, which are the basis of the food chain, "you can't see anything". This would, therefore, be a work relevant to the very survival of the marine environment.
Every month, "we do collections here in the Ria Guadiana", he said. In other words, if a spill happened, it would be possible to compare the analyzes of what the water was like before and how it looked afterward.
In the future, said Luís Sousa Pereira, the Algarve will not be chosen for this exercise, but «another area». While this new simulacrum does not take place, far from the Algarve waters, the vice-admiral concluded, with the beach of Monte Gordo as a background: «I am satisfied with what I saw here».
Photos: Pedro Lemos|Sul Informação
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