The doctor in Biology, research professor and head of the National Reference Laboratory for bivalve mollusc diseases, Antonio Figueras, was director of the CSIC’s Institute of Marine Research, located in Vigo, when the tar arrived on the Cíes coast. There he participated in the cleaning work on the Cantareira beach (“the best thing a scientist could do on that date”, he assured in an interview at FARO in Vigo on December 7, 2002). After the Government made the decision not to bring the ship closer to the coast, Figueras was called to form part of the Scientific Advisory Committee for the catastrophe of the Prestige. He would be the only Galician in the hard core of that group, whose main lines of investigation are still posted with 15 reports on a website. A biologist without mincing words.
– Let’s be honest, was that Committee useful for anything?
–You can download all the reports written by the CSIC; the website is still up. I shared them with the members of the Committee. There the decision was made to extract the fuel and cover the leaks. And I defend it tooth and nail, because I lived it: the Scientific Advisory Committee was totally transparent. Everything was published.
Did they take them into account?
–When the whole strategy began with the Prestige I had warned that it was not going to end well, both to the president of the CSIC and to other authorities. The ship sank. In Madrid there was previously a Committee, of which we did not know the names of its members, who decided what to do with the ship. One Monday after November 18, I received the call to join the Scientific Advisory Committee, which was the one that coordinated everything that was done with him Nautilusboth the descents, as well as the plugging of the leaks of the wreck, and then a research plan. Those months, it was absolutely crazy work. I remember that we didn’t have Christmas or the end of the year, or anything. A without living We have been in the course of things for three or four months, until it was decided which company would empty the fuel in February 2003 and which was Repsol, compared to other offers that were available. And there everything is over.
– Was the opinion of the experts really heard?
-Yeah. And the first thing we did was reject that theory that the fuel at great depths was going to freeze. I think it was one of the hypotheses on which those who decided that it was best to move the ship away, not our committee, were based. Perhaps they believed that in a very deep zone and with very low temperatures, the fuel would freeze. We did a series of calculations and analysis work – there were chemists, physicists, naval engineers and hydrocarbon experts – and then we saw how it flowed. It was evident thatIt would take a long time to stop flowing, due to its thermal inertia: it was transported at 70 or 80° to prevent it from solidifying when unloading it. Then, the decision was made to plug the 21 leaks that came out of the entire wreck and that had different diameters. Through all the holes of the ship flowed non-stop cargo of 70,000 tons.
-And then?
–I continued to be involved because I did some research on the environmental impact that fuel oil could have on the response to some diseases in marine organisms and plankton. There was an investigation plan.
-When Rajoy He said that already historic phrase of “the strings of plasticine”, he blamed it on the technicians.
–It was a poetic figure used by a technician, who was in the Nautilus, and that he said it without knowing the scope of the expression: “they flow like threads of plasticine”. Then they contacted the Vice President of the Government and explained that the tubes through which it flowed are enormous. But he had already said it. After, Rajoy blamed it on the technicians in an appearance in Congress. It was true, but it got tangled up with the whole political battle and the government’s attempt to control information.
What was the big mistake?
–If the ship had been brought to port at the first call for help, we would have saved ourselves everything that came later. But I think that political interests prevailed over practical issues. Knowing that a toll was going to be paid, undoubtedly. What was the estuary or city that was going to eat the brown of taking the ship to port? No matter how much containment was used, it was going to spill. In the end, It did not affect only Galicia, but the entire Atlantic coast, the south of Ireland, England, Portugal and even France.
–Do you think a tragedy like the Prestige would happen again today?
-Yeah. And another COVID?, too. Everything you think can happen again. Despite the fact that in 2003 we began to promote a law that was finally promulgated in 2011, which is the one that governs how the Emergency Committee has to be formed in these circumstances of catastrophe, oil spills, discharges derived from the coasts…. Has this really been recorded on the State’s hard drive? I have serious doubts. We’ve already had a scare with Ebola, and then we had COVID.
–With the perspective of twenty years, how has the recovery of the coast and fauna in Galicia been after the tar?
-It’s hard to know. I can speak for what I saw. In half a year, from December to June, a beach in Cíes that was covered in oil was already full of mussels: recovery had already begun. But there was not as great an impact there as in areas of A Costa da Morte, which were also more inaccessible for cleaning. The Galician coast is immense and having a serious assessment of the impact of the recovery is difficult. First, because there was no reference, a conscientious inventory work of marine resources and ecosystems before the Prestige. I guess the recovery was mixed: Let’s remember that there were real fuel roads under the sea, which were dredged. A continuous monitoring system of animal and plant witnesses should have been created, so that after any event, this question could be answered. We have not behaved like him. Exxon Valdez. To this day they are still studying the effects of the spill on the Alaskan coast.
–He coordinated the book “The lessons of the catastrophe of the Prestige”. Which were?
-The biggest lesson is that ordinary people are great: shellfish collectors, fishermen, citizens, companies… who came from all over Spain or abroad. But I think there has to be an alert system, a purely emergency committee that covers everything that can happen in Spain. There should be an inventory of experts with cell phones and emails, on different topics so that the government does not improvise: from a subsidence, tsunami, earthquake, or volcano.
–The wreck has not been reviewed since 2007. It had 70,000 tons, some 40,000 were spilled and some 25,000 were extracted. What do we risk?
–In the last inspection in 2007, there were spots. I’m not saying that it spills, but that from time to time taking a look at it would be nice, in the same way as knowing what happens with the radioactive waste that was deposited for years in the Atlantic Trench, which is in front of Galicia. descend to Prestige, more than important, I think it would be ethical. You could carry out a campaign with an underwater robot and tell public opinion: there is no danger. It is about being transparent with society. Nothing else. I’m not saying it’s urgent, but it would be worth doing even incorporating some oceanographic campaign in the Atlantic.
– What should be done now with the ship?
The best thing to do is not move it. leave it.