Oil slick threatens birds in Baltic sanctuary

Copenhagen, Denmark. As ships from three countries worked to contain an oil spill in the Baltic Sea, an international conservation group said Friday that a sanctuary home to thousands of ducks, swans and other waterfowl was under threat by a drifting 9.3 mile long oil slick from the accident.

With high winds that broke the oil into dozens of small slicks tapering off, the birds were "under Bird Life International, a conservation partnership of organizations in more than 100 countries.  while the spill following a collision late Wednesday was not large i comparison to those elsewhere, it was apparently Denmark's largest.

MOre than 764,000 gallons of oil spilled after a double hulled tanker carrying 9.7 million gallons of oil and a freighter crashed in  international waters between easter Denmark and NOrthwest Germany.  A slick about 9.3 miles long and 161/2 feet wide slipped into the Groensund strait between the Danish islands of Moen, Bogoe and Falster, while the bulk of the oil remained in the Baltic sea off the southern denmark.  The sanctuary, home to about 10,000 birds, is in the Fane fjord on the southern coast of Moen.

The coasts of the three islands were dotted with oil slicks, but authorities were optimistic about containing most of the fuel.  "The slick (in the strait) is almost still and is easier to contain and scoop," said Joern Allan Pedersen of the Danish Emergency Management Agency.  Armed with rifles, hunters began shooting birds coated in oil on the beaches of Bogoe island.  A heron stuck in  2 inch thick oil that have been fighting for its life ws destroyed.  On several beaches, a 3 foot band of oil ws glued to the rocks in the shallow waters.

A spoke mans for the InterOrion Navigation, the Hamburg Germany based company that owns the tanker, said the vessel had problems with steering and radar.  However, Tony Redding declined to speculate on whether the technical problems caused the crash.

Danish Maritime Authorities declined to comment on the cause of the collision, saying they were waiting for investigators to return from northern Germany, where they had questioned people on the two ships.  no injuries were reported from the collision.  A preliminary report was to be released saturday.  Gal force winds broke the oil into dozens of small slicks and pushed them northwest to the islands of Falster and Moen, south of zealand, the island of which the capital, Copenhagen, is located.

Despite efforts from Danish, Germany and Swedish ships, a roughly 300 foot wide oil slick had entered the Groensund strait late Thursday and landed on the coasts of the three islands.  Bogoe is inside the strait.

Seven vessels were at work in the southern Denmark archipelago while an eighth vessel ws trying to contain the oil slick in the Baltic Sea.  By late Friday, about 5 percent had been cleaned up.  On land, up to 100 members of the Emergency Management Agency walked in the thick black oil  and scooped it up.  Both the tanker Baltic Carrier and the Cypriot sugar freighter Tern remained afloat Friday, and the leak from the tanker was stemmed.