Oil stains Senegal beach near slave site
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DAKAR, Senegal (Reuters) -- An oil slick washed up on a beach near a historic slave trading centre in Senegal, in what appeared to be the latest sign of ships dumping oil off the West African coast, environmentalists said on Sunday.
A black smudge covered the water and much of the sand when it hit Goree Island on Saturday, where some two million African slaves had a last glimpse of their homeland before being shipped across the Atlantic to a lifetime of servitude.
"The pollution is quite worrying because the beach at Goree is covered by oil which is quite thinly spread but very visible," Blandine Melis, a marine biologist monitoring ocean life at Senegal's Oceanium diving centre, told Reuters.
Melis said she could not identify the specific source of the pollution, but said it was likely to have been dumped at sea by ships washing out their tanks, a frequent source of oil slicks off the coast of Senegal.
U.S. President George W. Bush visited Goree Island as part of an African tour in July, where he described slavery as one of history's greatest crimes.
Copyright 2003
Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
