Prestige: five solutions chosen from 172 proposals
When a disaster of that scale happens, everyone claims to have the solution. What matters is not who applied, but who got through the filter.
The context
The sinking of the Prestige in November 2002 off the Galician coast caused one of the worst environmental crises Spain has experienced. The urgency attracted treatment proposals from all over the planet.
The filter
The CSIC received and assessed 172 proposals from around the world. Of all of them, only five went on to run trials on the island of Sálvora. The product of what is now BioPulcher was one of those five.
Why this says something
Getting through a cut from 172 to 5 is not a marketing badge: it means convincing a scientific committee, under maximum public pressure, that it was worth spending time and resources testing that product in the field. That is the real value of the fact.
What we are not going to say
We are not going to say bioremediation solved the Prestige. It did not: a spill of that magnitude was fought with dozens of resources over years. What did happen is that this product was considered serious enough to be one of the five tested.
Want the full technical dossier?
System details, reports from the CSIC and the University of Vigo, and the Spanish Merchant Marine approval.
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