Teams are monitoring salvage

Members of the public are being asked not to report timber washing up on Fife’s beaches following a spill in the North Sea.

Fife Council has said officers are aware of the situation, affecting areas between St Andrews and Eyemouth in the Borders, and the debris is being monitored.

People have already been warned not to try to salvage any of the wood, which has come from a ship which lost a significant amount of its load.

The cargo vessel Frisian Lady shed around 200 timber bundles during severe storms on March 2 while she was 110 nautical miles east of Souter Lighthouse, off the South Shields coast.

Some of it was recovered at sea and the rest is believed to have largely broken up into planks which are being washed up on beaches.

John Rodigan, Fife Council’s senior manager for environment and building services, said: “Fife Coast and Countryside Trust is leading on the clean-up for us in Fife and teams are now deployed to look for salvage on the shoreline.

“When any salvage is identified, information will be passed to our parks, streets and open spaces teams to organise the removal as quickly as possible.

“We don’t need the public to report locations to us or the police as the situation is being regularly assessed.”

Chief Inspector James Jones urged people not to put themselves at risk by trying to recover timber.