No initial signs of pollution from ship collision

A university professor said there were no initial signs of pollution following the collision between two ships in the North Sea on Monday.

Prof Rodney Forster, director of the Hull Marine Laboratory at the University of Hull, accompanied a BBC crew on a boat to take water samples near the crash site.

Prof Forster said the results were "very good" with "no adverse signs".

The US-registered tanker Stena Immaculate was carrying 220,000 barrels of aviation fuel during the collision with a Portuguese-flagged cargo ship off the East Yorkshire coast.

Prof Forster told BBC Radio Humberside further testing was needed but the first results were "promising".

"We have quite a sensitive testing kit that allows us to work out basically how healthy the little cells that live in the water are," he said.

"It seems that life in the water, at least the small cells, may be unaffected so far."

He added there had been no reports of dead or sick seabirds being washed ashore which was "a good sign".

The professor took the samples on Wednesday close to the edge of the safety exclusion zone around the Stena Immaculate.

He described the burnt out wreckage of the tanker as an "amazing sight".

Salvage crews are assessing the damaged vessel and Prof Forster said moving the vessel was an "enormous engineering challenge".

"Very, very risky operation," he said.

"I don't know whether they would try to move them first or try and get off the kerosene."

The East Yorkshire coast is home to a wide range of wildlife, especially birds which gather at Spurn Point and cliffs at Bempton and Flamborough.

Prof Forster said the weather conditions at the time of the collision may have helped mitigate any pollution from the tanker, especially with a northerly wind blowing at the time.

"With the high waves and also bright sunny weather, the sun breaks down the hydrocarbons on the sea surface," he said.

"So a lot of the material has been taken care of by nature."

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