That is exactly what has happened with the history of oil spills over the last few decades. They come round again and again. The feelings, the reactions of outrage, of helplessness and of frustration are the same, although the language they are expressed in varies.
This time the language is Galician, one of the official languages of Spain. On Nov. 13, a radio call for help was received from the Prestige (what's in a name?), a single-hull tanker flying a Liberian flag and carrying 77,000 tons of M-100 fuel oil -- extremely viscous and with a high sulphur content. It's maybe worth remembering that the Exxon Valdez's load was 40,000 tons. After five days of indecision and being towed around off the Northwestern coast of Spain, in a sort of bizarre blind man's bluff, the Prestige finally sank -- in two parts about 4 miles apart and at a depth of nearly 12,000 feet.
The latest official estimates are that the "black gold" is seeping out of the two halves at a combined rate of 125 tons per day. A rough and ready calculation means that the tanks will finally be empty in March 2006.
In the meantime, just in Galicia, the area hit the hardest, fishing, the area's major source of income, is prohibited along 571 of the total 701 miles of the coastline. This means that 6,619 fishing vessels are now just vessels, and 21,527 fishermen are now just men. This doesn't mean, by any means, that they are idle. They have been working from dawn to dusk, seven days a week for more than a month now -- fishing for oil. They are using makeshift nets, spades and even their bare hands.
The work is hard, very hard, even for men hardened by years of fishing off A Costa da Morte (Coast of Death). They arrive at the ports physically unable to climb out of their boats. But other days, when they are confined to port watching how the 60-mph winds and 16-foot waves blow more slicks toward the coast, are harder still.
Their success is at best relative. There are already nearly 200 beaches affected, areas of outstanding ecological value and national parks. Thousands of volunteers work to clean the latest deposits, only to start all over again after the next high tide.
Here, there are many stories to be told -- stories of fishermen who are on hunger strike; stories of widows; stories of TV cameramen who return without their cameras, as volunteers; stories of whole towns fighting this "black tide," as it's known in Spanish, as if their lives were at stake.
But there is no "if." Their livelihoods and their lives are at stake.
Ian Barber is an organization development consultant who has been working with organizations for more than 20 years, helping them to solve their problems.
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