It looks just terrible and, yes, many animals will die. But an environmentalcatastrophe? Paddy Woodworth navigates between media hype and divided expert opinion
Cape Finisterre was one of several Atlantic penisulas thought to be the end of the earth by medieval Europeans. But it is alarmist - so far - to suggest that the sinking of the Prestige in the waters off the cape represents something akin to the end of the natural world in the region.
The short-term situation is undoubtedly bad, as TV images of clogged mussel-beds and asphyxiated sea-birds illustrate so grimly. As fishing and shellfish farming are banned along a coastline which offers few other livelihoods, local people are going to suffer great hardship. And there is no doubt that politicians have been grossly irresponsible in this shameful chronicle of a crisis many times foretold.
However, sober ecologists are warning against exaggerating the scale of the crisis, while not ruling out nasty surprises down the line. "The situation is reversible," says the director of the Galician government's Centre for Control of the Marine Environment, Mr Juan Maneiro. Then he adds: "But it is too early to predict how quickly the reversal can take place. Let's hope it's months, not years."
You might think that Mr Maneiro is simply putting a brave face on things, since he represents an organisation funded by a regional government that failed to avert the disaster. But a number of international experts tend to agree with him, though scientific opinion is, as ever, deeply divided.
There is a view that spectacular oil spillages often do much less ecological damage than is popularly believed, but attract massive and over-hyped media coverage because of the dramatic images they offer the cameras. According to this argument, continuous small spillages from oil refineries like Milford Haven may do more harm to the Atlantic ecosystem than once-off "catastrophes". But they do not attract television crews.
In any case, each catastrophe will have different results, depending on where and when it happens, on how much oil is spilt, and how toxic that oil is. A number of factors is now beginning to suggest that the ecological impact of the Prestige could be considerably less than, say, that of the notorious Exxon Valdez on Alaska in 1989.
The most crucial factor is that the 60,000 tonnes of fuel still on board the ship will remain where they are forever. Low temperatures on the sea-bed will make the oil congeal and prevent it leaking.
That, at least, is the firm view the Madrid government's representative in Galicia, Mr Arsenio Fernández de Mesa, who claims, with some justice, that this is an expert view. He adds that "there is no reason to doubt the experts".
But other experts, of course, hold contrary views, claiming that the tanks will already have burst due to increased pressure, long before the ship hit bottom, and that westerly winds and tides are already pushing this huge quantity of toxic liquid towards the Galician (and Portuguese) coasts.
It all depends which experts you choose to doubt.
If the congealers are right, there are other indications in favour of a relatively rapid recovery by the Galician ecosystem. The 10,000 tonnes of oil known to have been leaked before the vessel sank are being dispersed towards as much as 300 kilometres of coastline. This means that their impact may be diluted to manageable, or at least reversable, proportions.
It is also argued that the small amounts of plankton in the winter waters is an advantage. Plankton is the base of the marine food chain, and in summer large quantities of contaminated plankton could have spread havoc through the system. However, cold water also kills the microbes which were said to be so effective in breaking up the oil spills at the end of the Gulf War, so it may be that one seasonal "advantage" cancels out another.
Migrating sea-birds are also a seasonal phenomenon. Many of the gannets, auks and shearwaters fouled by the oil are northern European nesters, heading south to avoid our winters. The west coast of Iberia is one of the great European high-roads for these massive biannual displacements of bird populations. But the timing could have been worse. More birds are on the move in October, and the springtime could have been a killer on a grand scale, if healthy birds heading north died before they could breed.
Irish-born gannets and razorbills will certainly be among the victims this time , says Mr Oscar Merne, head of the bird research unit of Dúchas. But he is reasonably sanguine about this.
"I'm not expecting a population drop in Ireland," he told The Irish Times yesterday. "There is a very high mortality rate in these birds in any case. We estimate that out of every 1,000 guillemots [an auk like the razorbill] which fledge in Ireland, only 125 survive to breed."
He found that after the Erika oil spill in Brittany, in 1999, in which tens of thousands of young guillemots were killed, there was no detectable decline in the numbers breeding here in 2000. "The big worry in this case," he says, "is that a small and vulnerable endangered population, like the Balearic shearwater, could suffer."
He agrees, however, that the long-term consequences are unpredictable. A particular concern is that surviving birds, having swallowed small quantities of toxic liquid, may become infertile. This point is picked up by Mr Sebastian Losada, of Greenpeace Spain.
"The oiled birds are the most visible victims," he said last night, "but you have to see what is happening under the surface. Surviving birds depend on the whole ecosystem.
"There will be a chain effect from polluted fish and shell-fish to birds and mammals. And remember that the fuel carried by the Prestige was very high in sulphur content, more toxic than crude oil."
"The effect on marine life is already disastrous," adds Mr Raul García of World WildLife Fund Spain, speaking from a dying mobile on an oil-encrusted Galician beach, watching the westerlies blow more big black stains towards the shore.
Like Mr Losada, he suspects the ship's tanks will either leak soon, or have already broken up, with appalling consequences for the unique biodiversity of the Galician Bank where it lies.
The jury on this particular "catastrophe" is still out, and will be for some time.