M/C Milford Haven

The sinking of Milford Haven just constitute one of these examples, one of the more striking environmental damage which involved the Mediterranean Sea in the last decade. The oil spill polluted as well as transformed about 50.000 tons, of the 144.000 tons of Iranian raw contained in her holds, in tar residuals which flood the waters, sea bottoms and shorelines of one of most beautiful coasts of the Italian regions.
Launched in the 1973 by Amoco and transferred to the ship owner Loucas Ioannou, the tanker Milford Haven, flying the Cypriot flag, after discharging a part of her load to the oil terminal of Multedo, near port of Genoa in the northern Italy, went away to carry out the usual pouring operations in her internal tanks. For unknown reasons, a fire exploded on board and the Haven sunk, after three days of burning, the 14th April of 1991 causing also the death of five men of the crew.
Before to sinking, the tanker broke in several stamps. The first one went down on a sea floor of 500 meters depth while, for the second one was tried to bring it near the coast, on shallow waters, because it was considered more easy to control it and to recover the raw. A third one is only a pile of sheet iron, which lays on 90 meters depth.
The fire, gone on 70 hours, died down only when she sunk. It probably had a double effect: the first one was to burn thousands tons of raw which, differently, were poured in the sea; the second one was to eliminate every trace of paint, probably getting ready to a fast colonization by benthic and bento-nectonic marine communities. The main stamp sank on a muddy sea floor of about 80 meters depth, without further breaks in her holds; but she lost, in the meantime, others 30.000 tons of raw which consolidated and covered with a heavy tar layer the surrounding sea bottoms.
The wreck lay down in navigation balance. The wreck is totally recovered by a lot of oysters, hydrozoa, sponges, polychetes and others encrusting organisms such as the jewel anemones which cover completely the banisters of the deck; while, on the upper deck, a lot of lobsters, sargos, morays and congers are common examples of the biological diversity which it was settled on the wreck. In the rooms, till today, there is also the exile of a lot of hydrocarbons as liquid, often mobilized by the bubbles of the divers during their penetrations.