Saturday, February 03, 2007


To Otter Nurseries, Devon (www.otternurseries.co.uk) for a birthday lunch and then as we were near Sidmouth viewed the container shipwreck MS Napoli from the cliffs above. The crew abandoned ship 50 miles off Cornwall in the big storm of 18th January and there was a very brave rescue performed by a RNAS Culdrose helicopter when the waves were sometimes higher than the helicopter. The ship was then being towed to Portland but began to break up so was beached in Lyme Bay. Controversial as this is part of the World Heritage Jurassic coast. On this day, 28th, the mooring line on the Bigfoot crane barge (which came from Rotterdam) had snapped so the start of removing over 2000 containers had been delayed by a day. See www.mcga.gov.uk for updates plus probably every newspaper's website - this was The Story of The Scavengers as some containers landed on the beaches ..... The tragedy is that guillemots were coming in to start nesting on this coastline and got caught up in the oil slick from the ship. 1300 oiled seabirds have been found.

No comments: