The Specialized Environmental Unit of the State Attorney General’s Office opened investigation proceedings this Monday due to the arrival on the beaches of Galicia of the dumping of ‘pellets’ that the ship Toconao dumped a month ago off the Portuguese coast, the institution reports. The public ministry opened a file to follow the evolution of the plastic balls on January 4, but now, after verifying their arrival on the Galician beaches, it has decided to formally initiate an investigation into what happened.
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The massive arrival of plastic pellets has caused a solidarity tide to try to clean the beaches that remembers the solidarity that occurred with the Prestige spill. On this occasion hundreds of volunteers were deployed more than twenty beaches from A Coruña to the Rías Baixas, including the islands of Ons and Sálvora, to collect the five-millimeter balls that reach the sand. The Xunta de Galicia, highly criticized by the opposition for its actions in response to what happened, announced that this Monday it will increase its forces, after mobilizing workers in Ribeira and Corrubedo.
Galician fishermen have already warned of the danger of these plastic balls, since due to their small size “the fish confuse them with food,” the senior patron of the Fishermen’s Guild of A Coruña, Javier Mariñas, explained to EFE.