The container ship Mumbai Maersk, which ran aground off the East Frisian island of Wangerooge on Thursday night, was towed free and headed for the port of Bremerhaven.

Meanwhile, after the accident, the discussion about the protection of the Wadden Sea and the islands flared up again.

The accident shows "that we have to constantly work on improving the protection of our coasts from accidents involving pollutants," said Lower Saxony's Minister for the Environment, Olaf Lies, and called for large ships to take routes further away from the coast in the event of a storm.

Susanne Preuss

Business correspondent in Hamburg.

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The nature conservation association NABU demands that the federal government must request the International Maritime Organization in London to move the main shipping route north.

"It's no use constantly lamenting that such an advance could take a long time - if you never start it, you'll wait endlessly and achieve nothing!" writes NABU state chairman Holger Buschmann.

Tracking transmitter and information on container contents required

NABU also demands that the containers should always be equipped with direction-finding transmitters. If the worst comes to the worst, it must also be quickly and clearly recognizable what is loaded in the containers, according to Buschmann: “It will make a difference whether there are sneakers or chemicals in them if something happens.” Buschmann recalled the MSC accident Zoe two years ago, when 342 containers went overboard, parts of which are still in the washed-up area of ​​the North Sea coast.

The accident on the Mumbai Maersk meanwhile ended lightly.

In a second salvage attempt on Friday night, it was possible to tow the freighter free, which, at 399 meters long and 59 meters wide, is one of the largest container ships in the world.

Suitable for around 19,000 standard containers, the Mumbai Maersk was loaded with 7,300 containers at the time of the accident.

"In order to be able to move a ship of this size that has once got stuck, you need enormous strength," emphasized the head of the CCME, Robby Renner, during a press conference in Cuxhaven.

The deep-sea tug Union Sovereign with a bollard pull of 178 tons and the multi-purpose ship Neuwerk with a bollard pull of 113 tons as well as six assistance tugs were deployed.

After the functional tests had shown that neither the rudder nor the propulsion machinery of the Mumbai Maersk were damaged by the accident, the shipping police gave the go-ahead to continue the journey accompanied by a tugboat.

There is no information yet on the cause of the accident.