
OSLO — As many as 200 oil-stained birds have been found after an
Icelandic cargo ship ran aground last week and began leaking fuel inside
Norway's only marine natural reserve, authorities said Sunday.
"Yesterday
I saw around 50 injured birds... And today I would say I saw maybe 100
to 150 more," Egil Soglo of the Norwegian Directorate for Nature
Management told AFP Sunday afternoon.
"We have so far collected
around a dozen dead or dying birds that we have put down. We have
received the green light to put down more, but have not really started
with that yet due to the difficult weather conditions," he added.
The
Godafoss container ship was carrying a total of 800 tonnes of fuel when
it struck a rock on a well-indicated reef late Thursday near the mouth
of the Oslo Fjord shortly after leaving port in the southeastern town of
Fredrikstad for Helsingborg in southern Sweden.
The ship, which
was carrying 439 containers, including two filled with 12 tonnes of
dynamite, was on Sunday still leaking oil into the Ytre Hvaler marine
park, home to a wide variety of sea birds, marine life and large
cold-water coral reefs, authorities said.
"The cold weather is
challenging the oil clean-up after the Godafoss accident. Ice, fog and
temperatures down to around 20 degrees Celsius below freezing (-4
degrees Fahrenheit) are complicating the work," the Norwegian Coastal
Administration (NCA) said in a statement.
It noted that ice was drifting into the oil booms and filling them.
The
NCA said the fuel had reached the fragile shoreline in several places,
and that it was still flying helicopters and planes over the area to get
a better idea of the extent of the damage.
The dynamite had by Sunday morning meanwhile been removed from the ship.
The
Ytre Hvaler park, which was created in June 2009 and stretches across
354 square kilometres (137 square miles), is Norway's only marine
natural reserve and is located not far from the Swedish Kosterhavet
marine national park.
The Swedish coast guard, which was helping
with the cleanup, said late Saturday about 50 cubic metres (1,766 cubic
feet) of oil had so far been removed.