An unfortunate story...
MERLE was apparently on her first voyage after having been released by the British authorities after having been arrested at Hull for several months on court orders (owner's bankruptcy).
At time of the accident, she was reported sailing empty and on low fuel (a bunkers stop had been programmed at Lisbon, further South, if I remember correctly).
Press reports from the time of the accident indicated that the risk of a direct environmental hazard at the scene was modest, as she had only 10 tons of potentially harmful fluids on board. In effect, protection barriers had initially been dispatched to the scene after she went aground, but I could not see any trace of them almost 1 month later. This probably meaning that authorities did not believe she posed a threat to the local environment per se.
In any case, I was surprised to see that even the entire crew had vanished.