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“The contamination of the oceans and ecosystems with plastics is one of the biggest problems faced by humanity,” Spain’s minister for the environment, Teresa Ribera, said. “So the spilling of such an important quantity of plastics requires close oversight and to determine if the transport company and shipping company exercised the proper precautions.” Maersk, the shipping company contracted to transport the containers, told the AP in an email that the containers were lost on Dec. 8 in the deep sea during the voyage from Spain’s southern port of Algeciras to Rotterdam, Netherlands. It said that the Toconao is a charter vessel, not one of the Danish company’s fleet, and it works on the company’s route between Northern Europe and the Mediterranean. “None of the six containers contained dangerous goods. One of them was loaded with bags with little plastic pellets for the production of food-grade packaging like water bottles,” Maersk said in the statement. “The vessel owners have appointed multiple cleanup specialists to support removing the pellets.” Maersk said it is investigating the cause of the lost containers to “take necessary steps to minimize the risk of similar incidents occurring in the future.” Volunteers and workers have organized to clean up the beaches and coasts of the area, which depends on a large fish and shellfish industry. Galicia’s marine coastline was devastated by an oil spill from the Prestige tanker in 2002.
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