The commercial diving team yesterday plugged a hole from which the oil was leaking, before the arrival of a vessel to start pumping out the bunkers. Dispersants were deployed and containment booms set up around the ship.
The the Counter Pollution team of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, which is steering operations, has stated that the amount of heavy oil that escaped from bunkers was 'small'. Most of the pollution, now ceased, was relatively light oil and sludge from the engine room, which was 'breaking up and dissipating'.
By this morning, no slicks were reported to have come ashore. But, although the oil-pollution threat is receding, short-term repercussions have included dead conger eels, bass, pollack, wrasse, triggerfish and whiting washed ashore. More than 1000 oiled seabirds are being treated by the RSPB.
Two dead dolphins have been washed up at Chesil Cove, near Portland, and one at Swanage. But none was covered in oil and it is not clear whether their deaths were connected with pollution from the Napoli.
Much detritus has been left by the widely publicised beach wrecking (and subsequent headache for the Receiver of Wreck), a portion of which may have been washed away on the tide to settle on the seabed. By this morning, however, the area had been sealed off and machinery was being brought in to start cleaning up.
Out on the water, pumping of the Napoli's bunkers is expected to take a week, after which a craned barge will remove containers over several months. Of some 2000 aboard, 63 were washed away. It is not clear whether all came ashore or whether some may be floating in the English Channel, posing a hazard to smaller vessels.
Containers removed, it will be decided whether the ship will be moved or broken up on site. 'It's very damaged and the likelihood is it'll be broken up,' Doug Lanfear, of Blue Turtle Dive Charters in Lyme Regis, told Divernet.
'A portion of the wreck would remain and could become a dive site, but generally there's not much diving around Branscombe. Shore diving is at Babbacombe and boat diving is mainly on wrecks south and east of Lyme, mostly eight to nine miles out.'
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