Fierce gales and huge waves have kept clean-up vessels in port as another oil slick from the sunken tanker Prestigethreatens Spain's northwest coast.
Four specialist pollution-control ships from Germany, France, Norway and Britain were on their way to the disaster scene but strong winds and six-metre high waves forced three other ships already in the area to stay in dock.
The Spanish government has put a price of at least €42 million on the clean-up from the disaster triggered by the Liberian-owned Prestige, which was sailing under a Bahamas flag.
Volunteers and fishermen joined the battle to remove the stinking sludge washed ashore from the Prestige, which snapped in two and sank 130 nautical miles off Spain on Tuesday, six days after getting into difficulty in a storm.
It could prove to be one of the world's worst oil spills as the ship carried twice as much as the Exxon Valdezspewed out when it ran aground in Alaska in 1989.
The Prestigetook most of her 77,000 tonnes of fuel oil to the ocean floor some 3.6 kilometres below, but at least 10,000 tonnes is believed to have leaked into the Atlantic.
Spanish Prime Minister Mr Jose Maria Aznar and EU Transport Commissioner Ms Loyola de Palacio led growing calls for a crackdown on unseaworthy ships and the bringing forward of a ban on ageing single-hull tankers such as the Prestige. Double-hull vessels have been deemed sturdier.