On Tuesday, the Basque Government, in session of the Governing Council, has launched the Coastal Alert Plan. Researchers at the AZTI technology center have calculated that contaminating plastic pellets can reach the Basque coast in the coming weeks or within a month due to currents. Environment Minister Arantxa Tapia said on Monday that work is being done on the design of “mechanisms of action” before the plastic pellets reach the shores of Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa, the first vice-president, Josu Erkoreka, and the Security Advisor, have been chaired by this bureau.

The aim of the plan is to prevent pellets from reaching the coast and collecting them in advance at sea. They announce “difficulties” because the balls are the size of a lentil, sometimes almost invisible. It is planned to work with the Federations of Fishermen's Cofradías in collecting sea pellets so that they are in charge. The government announced on Tuesday that they will put the possible means and resources for cleaning the ‘pellets’ and have agreed with the Representatives of Gipuzkoa and Bizkaia to work together to clean the beaches if necessary. In addition, they have asked AZTI to monitor the movement of white balls appearing on the Galician and Asturian coast, so that they can be kept permanently under surveillance.

Another Prestige?

Tapia stresses that “in no case is it comparable to the Prestige”. However, the toxicity of pellets shall be measured to detect possible damage to birds and fish and whether it will affect food.

Oihane Cabezas, an AZTI researcher, explains in Eitb that pellets die fish: “They are very similar to fish eggs, so birds and other fish can also swallow. They can be stacked in the stomach and, by ingestion, the stomachs are filled and these animals die because they cannot feed.” It also has environmental damage: “They create a kind of layer in the middle and the flora that exists and cannot make photosynthesis.” Cabezas warns that ‘pellets’ can decrease due to erosion becoming microplastics and aggravating damage.

On 8 December a ship lost cargo in northern Portugal and on 13 December began to appear millions of white plastic pellets in Ribeira, Galicia. Every week the pellets have spread to the Galician and Asturian coast and the ecologists have denounced that the government has not managed the discharge correctly; the Spanish Environmental Prosecutor’s Office has initiated the investigation. Voluntary citizenship is receiving the pellets from the beaches.