The rock of Gibraltar rises to the east, its massive limestone cliffs more than 400 metres above sea level. To the west lies the Spanish port of Algeciras and its nature reserve. Between the two is a gulf barely 7km across where about 30 tankers and liners compete for space. They are moored in the bay waiting. Gibraltar is Europe's top port for refuelling. Located on one side of the strait connecting the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, with more than 110,000 ships passing through every year, it is a very attractive spot, especially since it levies no tax on fuel. Ships filling their tanks here can even dispense with mooring fees. But according to environmental campaigners the outlook is far from idyllic: the Bay of Gibraltar is a disaster waiting to happen. A few hundred metres off the coast of the British overseas territory, a huge oil tanker, the Jacques Jacob, is pumping thousands of litres of diesel fuel into a pipe, which reaches down its hull, over the water and into the tank of a refuelling freighter. The two vessels, moored in the open sea, are only separated by a buoy that acts as a buffer. But at the slightest mishap, a spill is highly likely. Day after day, dozens of cargo ships repeat the tricky process of "bunkering"'. On the Spanish side freighters refuel in dock, but Gibraltar does not have enough space for fuel tanks. So at any given time there are three floating filling stations cluttering up the bay. Authorised by the UK authorities, they are forbidden in Spain. "The risk is too great," says Alfonso Marquina, the harbour master at Algeciras-La Linea. Each of the tankers carries up to 100,000 litres of diesel. "In 2010 a storm tore one of them loose and it drifted for 48 hours. It had 80,000 tonnes of oil in its tanks," says the spokesperson of the Verdemar environmental group, Antonio Muñoz. The organisation has lodged a complaint with the European parliament. Bunkering is legal, according to the international maritime authorities, but it must be carried out "in compliance with strict rules". Minor accidents do nevertheless occur. The Algeciras harbour master has registered four spills since the beginning of the year. In January, the fuel tank on a ship that was filling up overflowed, releasing five cubic metres of diesel. In June, 300 litres of coolant leaked into the sea, and of course there are countless spills involving just a few litres. The Gibraltar authorities dismiss these "minor" events, but they recur so frequently that they probably do more damage to the marine environment than major oil spills. This seems to be endorsed by recent research. In 2007 Carmen Moral Caselles, a marine scientist, presented her findings. "By 2006, four years after the Prestige oil spill off the coast of Galicia [in north-west Spain], the degradation of sediment in the Atlantic Islands National Park had stopped," she explains. "Here, with Algeciras Bay subjected to ongoing industrial emissions and bunkering spills, coastal sediments are much more seriously degraded." At Punta de San García, in the Strait of Gibraltar Natural Park between Algeciras and Tarifa, the pebbles are black, coated with tar from a hydrocarbon spill following a fire in a fuel tank at Gibraltar in June. According to Tony Davis, the director of maritime affairs at Gibraltar, "nearly 100 tonnes of oil are tipped into the sea, but 90% are trapped by barriers and the remaining 10% are soon mopped up". The story across the bay in Algeciras is rather different and the beaches are sticky with tar. "Our environmental protection vessel picked up 40 cubic metres of oil, but Gibraltar only acknowledges that a tenth of that amount was spilt," says Marquina, adding that an investigation is in progress. "Each time there's an accident the authorities spend more time blaming their opposite numbers than actually solving the problem," says Sara del Rojo, head of the pollution campaign at Greenpeace Spain. "Ultimately, pollution becomes a secondary issue." Spain has never recognised the territorial waters claimed by Gibraltar and the tension between the two parties plays into the hands of polluters. Juan Manuel Sanchez, an amateur fisherman, is sick of the damage done by illegal degassing, which covers the surface of the water with an oily film. "This bay has become a toilet for the whole of Europe," he says. Just out to sea from El Saladillo marina the stench is overpowering. The sewage from Algeciras and Gibraltar is pumped straight into the sea. According to Juan Antonio Carrasco, of the local nature preservation organisation (Agaden), the current in the bay helps prevent a real disaster, dispersing the pollution and pushing it out into the strait – into the sea where naturalists watch over dolphins, whales and even killer whales, not to mention thousands of migrating birds and exceptional submarine flora.
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