Related Sites Explore the issue on the web. If you have information relevant to this story, we d like to hear about it. We would also appreciate your help or suggestions. Naturally we can treat your information with confidentiality. An oil tanker breaks up in a storm, spilling its sticky, deadly cargo into the sea.
Tides wash the oil ashore by the tonne, smothering hundreds of kilometres of wild coastline.
It's an environmental nightmare which played out for real on France's Brittany coast last December. He discovers among officials a disturbing tolerance of rustbucket ships. He also encounters a widespread reluctance to acknowledge responsibility. There is no problem in blaming one individual - the relatively powerless Indian skipper who was thrown into a French jail as soon as the Erika went down.