The wreckage area of Greater America in the Bay of Biscay continues to be monitored three months after the crash, the Atlantic Maritime Prefect said on Friday, noting that no new pollution had been reported.
“We continue to monitor the area of the sinking, as well as the drift of the bodies of water which had been polluted,” Vice-Admiral Jean-Louis Lozier told some journalists, adding that one of these masses of The water, monitored via satellite, had recently arrived near the Spanish coast, but no pollution had been reported.
“We warned our Spanish counterparts, but we found nothing,” he said, not excluding the possibility that oil pellets could one day soil the coasts.
“None of the monitored water masses has approached the French coasts for the moment,” he said, but “I cannot exclude today that one day or the other balls will not will not arrive on a beach “, he admitted, estimating that with time this probability would” decrease “. “If dumplings were to arrive, it would be in extremely limited numbers,” he noted. The area is monitored by satellite, but also by air.
The Grande America, which left Hamburg (Germany) and bound for Casablanca (Morocco), sank on March 12, 333 km west of La Rochelle with 365 containers on board, 45 of which were listed as containing hazardous materials, more than 2,100 vehicles, as well as 2,200 tonnes of heavy fuel oil in its bunkers. Its 27 occupants had been rescued.
The wreck, which rests at 4,600 meters deep, was inspected in April by a remote-controlled robot (ROV) on board a ship chartered by the owner of Grande America, the Italian company Grimaldi. Several light hydrocarbon leaks were observed, before being plugged by the underwater robot.
Before that, several tens of tons of heavy fuel oil in solid form, and several tons of water polluted by hydrocarbons had been recovered from the surface of the water.
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