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Clean-up operations on Garden Route Beaches will continue on Thursday after a small-scale oil spill was detected on Monday.
The substance found on the beaches has been identified as heavy furnace oil and the source is still unknown.
Municipal spokesperson, Herman Pieters says the key objective is to mitigate the effects of oil droplets on the environment and marine life, as well as to clean the temporarily closed beaches and re-open them before the holiday season.
He says cleaning teams on the ground in Mossel Bay use a water filtration system to float off droplets of oil from exposed areas of sand collected from the affected beaches.
This method will be duplicated elsewhere where beaches are temporarily affected by the contaminants.
Pieters says in addition to this, estuaries are closely monitored for any droplets.
He says specialists from the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, as well as South African National Parks, will do a flight to scan the coastline from Gouritz to Plettenberg Bay.
This will assist them to determine the origin of the spill as well as monitoring if any others are still en route to any of the Garden Route beaches.
Pieters says it is not likely that the temporary closure of some beaches will have an impact on the holiday season ahead.
A flag system is currently been implemented to indicate the status of contaminated beaches.
Four out of the five Blue Flag beaches have been declared green since Wednesday.
