Maj. Sjaak van Elten, a spokesman for the Dutch Defense Ministry, said that 100 troops had been sent to the island of Schiermonnikoog on Friday and that they would continue cleaning up debris this weekend. He noted that Schiermonnikoog was one of the country’s “most scarcely populated islands, with the least capacity for volunteering, and it’s there that most of the rubbish is washing ashore.”

“It’s not mopping up with the tap open anymore,” Major van Elten said, using a Dutch expression referring to an impossible, pointless task. “But after every high tide, new stuff arrives on the beaches, so the cleaning work continues day after day.”

The Mediterranean Shipping Company said in a statement on Friday that it was using fast boats to tow drifting containers and sonar-tracing vessels for underwater recovery. It also deployed drones to try to prioritize what to recover.