The situation is improving in Corsica.
Oil pollution at sea, which threatened the eastern coast of the island on Saturday, has moved out to sea where navy ships are carrying out recovery operations.
It is probably due to illegal degassing of a ship.
“We are more reassured at this stage because the drift keeps the pollution away from the coast. We have very fragmented pollution which is now about ten kilometers offshore, ”said frigate captain Christine Ribbe, spokesperson for the maritime prefecture of the Mediterranean, on Saturday evening. "But you have to be very careful, because the situation can change depending on the drift and the currents".
Beaches closed, fishing prohibited and deployment of significant coastal protection resources on land and at sea: from the night of Friday to Saturday Corsica was preparing with concern for the arrival of heavy hydrocarbons on the sandy beaches of the coast eastern.
"We hope to avoid pollution, but it will be complicated," lamented Francis Giudici, the mayor of Ghisonaccia, one of the threatened towns and whose beaches have been closed.
“There is a lot of anger.
It is not a small degassing ”, this illegal process at sea by which ships drain the gases from their hydrocarbon tanks, he added.
“We didn't need that at the start of the season.
"
The Polmar-Terre coastline protection plan remains active
Spotted Friday during a military air exercise off Solenzara, in the east of the island, the pollution (a black line in the blue waters of the Mediterranean) reached very quickly up to 800 meters from the coast.
The presence of heavy hydrocarbons, the dissolution of which is difficult, and the extent of the two oil slicks prompted the authorities to launch the Polmar-Terre coastline protection plan on Saturday, which also includes action on the coasts.
It remains maintained.
The prefect of Haute-Corse, François Ravier, has prohibited access to the beaches for some forty kilometers.
The gendarmes asked the bathers to leave some of them and signs indicating “swimming prohibited-maritime pollution” were affixed.
Fishing is also prohibited in these same sectors.
Despite the remoteness of the slick, significant resources are still deployed, in particular two chartered support and assistance vessels (BSAA), "Pioneer" and "Jason", of the French Navy from the Toulon naval base ( Var). With their personnel specialized in the fight against pollution, they recover part of the hydrocarbons, indicated the maritime prefecture.
An investigation was opened and entrusted to the maritime gendarmerie, explained Dominique Laurens, the prosecutor of Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône), responsible for maritime pollution cases on the French Mediterranean coast. "Degasing hydrocarbons at sea is a pure act of ecological delinquency," denounced the Minister for the Ecological Transition, Barbara Pompili, who went there with the Minister for the Sea, Annick Girardin. “We arrived here determined to find those who degassed savagely. I said earlier,
they are thugs.
And they will have to be treated like thugs, ”hammered Annick Girardin. Three ships whose presence in an enlarged area around the pollution require investigations to be carried out, ”indicated Colonel Jean-Guillaume Remy, commander of the Mediterranean group.