Prestige oil spill causing great harm to the local fishing industry. The spill is the largest environmental disaster in the history of both Spain and Portugal. The amount of oil spilled was more than the "Exxon Valdez" incident and the toxicity considered higher, because of the higher water temperatures. In 2007 the Southern District of New York dismissed a 2003 lawsuit by the Kingdom of Spain against the American Bureau of Shipping, the international classification society which had certified the "Prestige" as in compliance with rules and laws, because ABS was a "person" per the International Convention on Civil Liability for Oil Pollution
Morris J. Berman oil spill of hours after the spill. As mentioned earlier, despite the overall success of Puerto Rico's oil spill response plans there were still some areas for improvement. For example, there were some mechanical failures with some skimmer boats, inappropriate use of oil soaking materials, and an insufficient number of properly trained personnel. There were also problems with communication between agencies as well as some organizational issues during the cleanup process. The Berman spill served as a field test of how well the plans set forth by the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 worked, and provided many examples on how future spill