Seven spotter aircraft liaising with satellite observers spent a total of 220 hours in the air as part of the exercise carried out by Britain, France, Belgium and Holland. Seven vessels liaised with the aircraft 24 hours a day. A French spokesman said that the five incidents took place in British, Belgian and Dutch waters. The names of the allegedly offending ships have not yet been revealed. The cases are being handled by specialist teams of prosecutors based at Le Havre in northern France. In a French court case last month the captain, owners and charterers of the Danish chemical carrier Atlantic Swan were fined 200,000 euros for deliberately flushing out oil in August 2004 close to another ship, the Tricolor, which had sunk off Calais 18 months previously.
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