If tides blackwoman are spectacular, the wholesale trade of maritime pollution by hydrocarbons comes from acts of spitefulness. The voluntary deflections represent every year, according to WWF, not less than one and a half million tons of oil for the only Mediterranean. That it is for the oil tankers to empty vats filled with seawater to sail to space, or for all the ships to reject discreetly wastes of engine room, result is the same: the ocean introduces tablecloths made iridescent by several kilometre long in the wake of the culprits. But surveillance advances in big step, supported by a more and more strict justice.

On September 29th of this year, an aircraft of national navy so spotted an eleven-kilometre tablecloth on three hundred metres broad, in the wake of an Egyptian freighter, Al Esraa. According to our information, this recent ship (thrown in 1996) is a regular of controls by the harbour authorities. It was so kept 13 days in Antwerp in August, 2007, six months after a sequestration of seven days by the Spanish authorities in Gijon, notably for a defect of functioning of its alarms anti-fires and of its equipment radar. His shipowner, Federal Arab, has three ships which all were kept at least once these three last years.

This time, it is for voluntary pollution that Al Esraa must stay in the harbour of Brest, having been arraisonné by national Navy. Justice ordered the remittance of a 350 000-euro deposit which will have to be paid before the ship takes back the sea. Every day which passes to the harbour costs a true destiny to the shipowner.

Since 2004, 37 business of voluntary pollution judged to the court trying criminal cases of Brest gave rise to 7 million euro of fine, reminded the World Friday. To improve its means of intervention, the French customhouses acquired a new plane, Polmar III. Contrary to his precursors, the small twin-engined plane loads means infrared which allow him to discern night pollutions. Since last July, the plane dispels the tablecloths of hydrocarbons of the clever babies who, having understood that in the neighbourhood of the French coasts the impunity of day in stopping, wait for the sunset to pour their dirtiness out in sea.

Picture: Hunt for the oil of Prestige, in 2003, off the French coasts © Denis Delbecq