The world uses nearly countless amounts of oil every year in one form or another. The United States alone has been consuming a total of over 7 billion barrels of petroleum products a year, or around 20 million barrels a day in recent times. This reliance on fossil fuels has its own host of long-term environmental problems, but when you have an oil spill, you create another world of issues. Oil spills can happen for a variety of reasons, from careless mistakes or equipment breaking down, to natural disasters like hurricanes.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, there are thousands of oil spills that occur in US waters every year. That said, most are relatively small compared to the big ones that make the news, often spilling less than one barrel of oil. However, in the past 50 or so years, there have been over 44 oil spills — each over 10,000 barrels or 420,000 gallons of oil — that have impacted US waters. These spills have the potential to be very harmful to the environment, marine life, and even humans. After a spill, since oil is less dense than water, it will typically float on the surface of the water. It doesn’t just stay there in some big glob, though. What usually happens is that the oil will rapidly spread out over the surface of the water until it becomes a thin layer of oil known as an oil slick. Then it keeps spreading out until it forms a super thin layer called a sheen. But that thin layer of oil can be a big problem. Our fur-bearing mammal friends, like the adorable sea otter, can lose their ability to insulate themselves when covered in oil and birds can lose the water repellency of their feathers. Without proper insulation, they can end up dying from hypothermia. Not to mention, if they try to clean themselves, they might ingest some of that oil.
While fish, shellfish, and other underwater creatures can come into contact with oil if it’s mixed into a water column. Adult fish can experience fin erosion when exposed to oil, as well as reduced growth rates and enlarged livers. It can also hinder their reproduction. Even if they can successfully make eggs, the oil can negatively impact egg and larval survival. What’s worse is that these kinds of things can last long after the news stops covering them. You know the BP oil spill that happened about a decade ago? Some reports claim that animals are still being negatively impacted by the lasting effects of the spill even though cleanup has largely gotten rid of the initial problem. Oil spill cleanup can involve a bunch of different tools, including floating barriers called booms, chemical dispersants and biological agents, and skimmers, which are boats that skim or scoop spilled oil off the water’s surface.
But still, we’re likely talking months, or even years, of cleanup if the spill is bad enough, and ecosystems that are damaged long after the initial contamination goes away. Researchers from a 2015 Canadian study threw around some hard truths when they said that the reality of an oil spill cleanup is that actually collecting and removing the oil is a challenging, time-sensitive, and often ineffective process — even with favorable conditions. In addition to all of the time, effort, and negative effects of the spill, some cleanup methods can mess with marine life even worse that the oil itself. That’s why making sure that as few oil spills happen as possible should always be the goal.
Cleaning up the spill is HEAVILY studied, but what about later? What happens 5, 10, 50 years after a spill? Is everything just hunky-dory? Not at all. On March 24, 1989 the Exxon Valdez oil tanker ran aground spilling more than 11 million gallons of crude oil into waters off the coast of Alaska. At the time, it was the largest oil spill in US history.
More than 1000 miles of shoreline were covered in the toxic hydrocarbon chemical; and more than 2000 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, and a quarter million seabirds died following the spill. The Exxon Valdez was a huge story and by volume it was only eclipsed by the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill by BP. These two spills are affecting flora and fauna in massive numbers — but now, years later, what’s happening? Even after cleanup is considered “done,” oil is still in the environment; for example, tarballs wash up onshore months or years later. Tarballs are crusty weathered balls filled with soft gooey oil — like a toasted marshmallow of death. When we think of an oil spill, we picture water with a thin layer of oil on top spreading for miles — that’s the first stage. Eventually, the sun, wind, waves, ocean bacteria and other forces act on the oil creating the tarball.
The sun helps evaporate the lighter components, leaving behind the heavy chemical compounds; sand and tiny particles in ocean water collect in the oil, and the sun, waves and wind form the oil into an emulsion. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says it looks like chocolate pudding — and is even stickier than the original spilled oil! If it comes in contact with the beach, it can crack open causing new tiny oil spills. Some cleanups are so severe, the top-most layer of sand is completely removed and new, uncontaminated sand is brought in. Scientific American wrote in 2003 that bacterial growth is “inhibited,” on beaches and in Alaska “toxicity remained for a decade or more”. Mammals and ducks ate prey contaminated with oil, and mussel beds are STILL recovering — estimated time? 30 years. According to the National Wildlife Foundation, turtles and dolphins are being affected by oil, with turtles stranding themselves at five times the normal rate, and a new study in PLOS ONE found adrenal and lung lesions caused by oil in Gulf dolphins’ inhaling of oil fumes when they come up for air! Under the water, life is hit HARD whenever oil spills; but humans are quick to forget and move on. Coral in the gulf were covered in oil, and dead and dying coral was found seven miles from the BP spill site. A study published in Science after the Exxon Valdez spill found even a few molecules of oil out of a billion — known as parts-per-billion — was enough to harm some animals; like salmon, whose mortality rates increased for years after the spill because sensitive fish eggs were contacted by tiny amounts of toxic crude oil.
Oil is toxic, inhalation or ingestion of, and contact with hydrocarbons is bad, but the decades of cleanup and response can affect the ecosystem in so many ways. The propellers of boats alone can disturb and kill wildlife! Today, 26 years later, oil is STILL found on the beaches of Alaska and though some species have returned to pre-spill levels some species of fish, whale and bird are not recovering at all,.
More recently, NOAA created a model of how sea currents likely carried the BP Deepwater Horizon oil along the Gulf coast and into the Caribbean and Atlantic. Though years go by and the media move on, spills like these go on to affect waterways for generations to come.
Indian Retort 