Lighthouse vessel marking shipping English Channel lanes replaced with buoy

A ship that acted as a lighthouse in the English Channel to mark out shipping lanes after a disastrous oil spill has been replaced by a buoy.

The Channel Lightvessel was installed near Alderney after an oil tanker ran aground in Brittany and split in two.

The 1978 Amoco Cadiz disaster spilt 220,000 tons of oil that affected the coasts of Guernsey and France.

The vessel has now been replaced by a permanent buoy, the charity responsible said.

The Amoco Cadiz ran aground aground on Portsall Rocks, three miles (5km) off the coast of Brittany, France, in March 1978.

The oil spill of 1.6m barrels created an 18-mile long slick, covering more than 800 square miles (1,287 sq km).

It was, at the time, the largest oil spill in history - with 200 miles (322km) of beached along the French coast polluted.

An estimated 300,000 birds died or were injured as a result of the disaster.

The Channel Lightvessel was installed near the Casquet Rocks, north west of Alderney, after new shipping lanes were adopted in 1979.

Trinity House explained because the vessel does not mark a physical hazard to navigation, it could be removed as "traffic patterns in the area are well established".

However, the charity opted to replace the vessel with a buoy as the ship was a "prominent physical mark for all sectors of the marine community".

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