Mitigating impact

Suitable spill response measures taken at sea mitigate the impact of the spill on land. The choice of shoreline protection, recovery and dispersion measures is therefore extremely important. It is essential to reduce the arrivals onshore as far as possible, without aggravating the impact on the marine environment.

It is common to find long lists of damages caused by inadequate or excessive shoreline clean-up operations in pollution follow-up reports. However, without clean-up, pollution is likely to subsist for a long time or be reclaimed by the sea and continue to pollute other previously unaffected sites.

The key to successful shoreline clean-up is to remove what is necessary but no more, thus restricting the damage to beach entranceways and surfaces used for temporary waste storage to a bare minimum. It is therefore essential to ensure good communication between operational managers, response specialists and environmental experts.