Coastal areas offer great challenges when balancing the need to protect natural habitats, with the requirement of human and economic activities . Dikes, for example, may not constitute the solutions of the future.

Hans Cozijn is Senior Project Manager at MARIN, the Maritime Research Institute in the Netherlands, which specialises in testing designs of ships and oil platforms.

Oil is less dense than water and therefore the oil escaping the sea bed travels up to the water surface. Dr. Fivos Andritsos and his colleagues from the Joint Research Center in Ispra, Italy have now developed a reservoir which can be applied on top of the leakage.