The government Coast Guard dispatched more than 60 ships and five helicopters to battle the spill. It said the area of shoreline affected by the disaster had more than doubled by yesterday evening, from 4 miles earlier in the day.
A Hong Kong-registered supertanker, the single-hulled Hebei Spirit, was struck early Friday by a Samsung Corp. barge in rough seas. A total of 66,000 barrels, or 2.7 million gallons, of crude gushed into the ocean, more than twice as much as leaked from South Korea's worst previous spill, in 1995.
Cho Yoo-soon, who runs a raw fish restaurant at Mallipo Beach, 95 miles southwest of Seoul, said the situation was overwhelming. She said restaurants in the area were closing, and she could not pump fresh sea water into her tanks.
"Without fresh sea water the fish will start going bad after a week," she said. "We can't even walk around here because the entire beach is covered with oil."
The affected areas are home to 181 maritime farms that produce abalone, brown seaweed, littleneck clams, and sea cucumbers, said Lee Seung-yop, an official with Taean County, which includes the beach. Sea farmers in the areas number about 4,000, he said.
Volunteers were scrubbing rocks and removing oil from the coast yesterday. The government also put up containment barriers to help minimize the environmental damage.
The government is expected to send more equipment and personnel to contain the spill today. The Coast Guard said it was unclear how many days the cleanup operation would take.
"We're doing our best to remove the contamination as quickly as possible, but it will take some time to clean up the shore because it needs to be done by hand," said Kim Woon-tae, a Coast Guard official stationed in the region.
"It's a difficult operation because weather is not good," Kim said. "We're focusing our efforts on preventing more oil from reaching the coast."
Kim said oil was still trickling out of the punctured tanker, but it would soon be sealed. The Coast Guard headquarters had said Friday that all three holes in the tanker were plugged. Kim did not explain the apparent discrepancy.
