Lingering Harm:
Oil’s Toxic Legacy By Riki Ott
»Over 30 million gallons of crude oil blackened the
Exxon claimed it spilled 11 million gallons, but this self-reported number was never verified independently. Four years after the spill the State of Alaska released its investigation into the matter. The state estimated the spill at 30 to 35 million gallons. www.waterkeeper.org
AP Photo/John Gaps III
waters of Prince William Sound in the Exxon Valdez spill of 1989. At the time, the general consensus among scientists was that the oil spill’s effects on sea life would be deadly but short-term. They predicted that birds and marine mammals would suffer and die through hypothermia, drowning and ingestion through preening and grooming. Fish and other marine life in the water column would take a hit from toxic compounds that would remain at concentrations in mere parts per million parts of seawater — seemingly very low levels. But scientists believed that oil stranded on beaches and in sediments would rapidly degrade, leaving an asphaltlike substrate that was ‘environmentally benign’ or harmless. Wildlife would recover rapidly. They were partially right. The Exxon Valdez killed more wildlife than any other oil spill in history. But the killing did not stop in 1989 and, nearly two decades later, the Prince William Sound is still struggling to recover. Ultimately, the Exxon Valdez unleashed a cascade of events that would change scientists’ understanding of oil toxicity. Today scientists know oil is a thousand times more toxic than ever thought before. As early as 1990, Exxon scientists heralded the ‘remarkable recovery’ of the sound. But government and other scientists continued to observe impacts. Pink salmon eggs, developing in oiled beaches, died in ever increasing numbers from 1990 through 1992. Young sea otter pups, first weaned from their mothers, died by the score on oiled beaches. Harlequin ducks died over winter on beaches covered in black. This was only the beginning. In April 1993 the Pacific herring stocks crashed unexpectedly, followed Crude oil from the Exxon Valdez swirls on the surface of Alaska’s Prince William Sound near Naked Island on April 9, 1989, 16 days after the tanker ran aground.
Summer 2007 Waterkeeper Magazine 35
