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On December 12, 1999, the Maltese tanker Erika, loaded with 30,000 tons of heavy fuel oil and sailing from Dunkirk (France) to Livorno (Italy), broke up into two parts in bad weather and sank 40 miles off the Brittany coast in the northern part of the Biscay Bay. The very first assessment of the situation revealed that between 5,000 and 7,000 tons of Fuel Oil No. 6 had been released into the sea. French Customs remote-sensing aircraft revealed many black and thick slicks drifting southwards at a speed of 1.2 knots. On December 15, a French oil recovery vessel (ORV) called Ailette arrived on-site equipped with a Transrec 250 skimmer in very rough seas and was followed a few days later by four other ORVs: Alcyon (French) and three other ships belonging to the European fleet, British Shield (United Kingdom), Neuwerk (Germany), and Area (Netherlands). Finally, after 2 weeks at sea, but only a few days during which conditions permitted the recovery operation to proceed, more than 1,100 tons were retrieved by the five ORVs. This paper describes the cleanup operation at sea, and analyses problems and difficulties encountered because of bad weather, the way the slick evolved, the way subsequent floating slicks behaved and the difficulty in detecting them, and the limitations of the equipment available in the event of this major oil spill.