5. Results and discussion
Between the 29th December 2002 and the 22nd January 2003, under predominant southwesterly winds, the trajectory of the drifting buoy (Fig. 1) was to the northwest, close to the Brittany coast. From this date, until 5th February 2003, a change in its movement was observed; this was in response to a changing wind direction towards the south-southeast, which drifted the buoy to the centre of the Bay of Biscay.
During the last days of January and first week of February 2003, the oil impacted heavily on the coasts of Cantabria and
the Basque Country (González et al., 2006).
After the impacts in February, the wind direction in the area changed again, causing the buoy to drift towards the west-northwest; at the same time, the oil impacts on the coasts decreased significantly.