1. Environmental Issues Quiz

2. Last Class… -Oil Clean Up Activity Debrief -Post Lab Questions
-Complete Lab due Friday!
-Connections to Reality

3. Methods of Clean Up
People may use any of the following kinds of tools to clean up spilled oil:
booms, which are floating barriers to oil (for example, a big boom may be placed around a tanker that is leaking oil, to collect the oil).
skimmers, which are boats that skim (scoop) spilled oil from the water surface.
sorbents, which are big sponges used to absorb oil.
chemical dispersants and biological agents, which break down the oil into its chemical constituents.
in situ burning, which is a method of burning freshly spilled oil, usually while it's floating on the water.
washing oil off beaches with either high-pressure or low-pressure hoses.
vacuum trucks, which can vacuum spilled oil off of beaches or the water surface.
shovels and road equipment, which are sometimes used to pick up oil or move oiled beach sand and gravel down to where it can be cleaned by being tumbled around in the waves.

4. Impacts of a Major Oil Spill
Destroys Marine Life
Destabilizes Marine Communities
Degrades Shore Amenities
Harms Economic Activities
Impacts Human Welfare

5. Destroys Marine Life
Physical contamination and smothering are primary mechanisms that adversely affecting marine life - particularly inter-tidal organisms. Oil can also change the physical characteristics of a habitat.
Clean-up activities can add to these effects by crushing, removing, and damaging marine life.
Birds and mammals suffer the greatest acute impact when they meet the oil/water interface and become contaminated. Reduction in thermal capability, and directed toxicity from fumes and ingestion are the greatest causes of mortality.

6. Destabilizes Marine Communities and Populations
Marine communities, such as planktonic waters, wetlands (estuaries/marshes), kelp-beds and mud-flats, and marine populations such as seabirds, seals sea otters, and whales have variable resiliency to oil spills - from highly tolerant (plankton, kelp beds) to very intolerant (estuaries and sea otters).
Impacts to communities and populations are very difficult to measure due to lack of scientific methods to measure, long-term, sub-lethal, and chronic ecological impacts

7. Degrades Shore Amenities
Contamination of coastal amenity areas is a common feature with many marine oil spills, leading to public disquiet and concern regarding impacts to boating, sun-bathing, swimming, angling and other recreational pursuits.
The prevailing question is how much and how long of an impact? The degree of impact to recreation is largely based on the season it occurred.. Summer being the highest impact period due to recreation and tourism.

8. Harms Economic Activities
Economic activities that can be adversely affected by an oil spill include: tourism, hotel and restaurant businesses, dive and fishing charters, rentals, marina operations. There can also be direct impacts to commercial fishing and aquaculture due to closures or concerns about tainted products.
The impacts to a coastal communities economic activities can be accentuated by media press, beyond the actual impacts to the recreational and commercial opportunities.

9. Impacts Human Welfare
A spill’s impact to human welfare is often under-rated. Coastal communities, and public in general, are deeply passionate about a safe, clean marine environment. There is no tolerance for accidental spills of oil of any quantity. As such a marine oil spill accentuates this passion, often beyond rationale thinking.
During an incident, public stress and anxiety prevail over the long-term economic uncertainty of lost welfare. In addition, a large influx of spill money can divide a communities from those the volunteer from their “hearts” and those the offer their services for a “fee”.

10. Spill Impact Recovery
The recovery of the marine environment from the effects of a spill is generally thought to be “a return to the precise conditions that preceded the oil spill”. However, this is very unlikely to happen. As such, the measurement of spill recovery is based on a comparison of unoiled sites with oiled sites of similar ecological characteristics.
If unoiled sites (control areas) change the same way as oiled sites, then the change is due to natural events and not linked to the oil spill.
Marine animals and populations recovery in different ways and different rates. Some animals and plants are resilient and grow back quickly, such as green and brown algae (1 year), barnacles (2 years), and clams and limpets (several years).

11. Case Study - Oil Reduction in Intertidal Shorelines
Surface oiling a study sites in Prince William Sound
Intertidal habitats of the Prince William Sound have shown surprisingly good recovery. Many shorelines that were heavily oil and then cleaned now appear much as they did before the spill. There are, however, still oil vestiges 10 years later.

12. Case Study - Remaining Impacts to Intertidal Habitats
Remaining impacts include:
some deeply penetrated oil continue to leach from a few beaches, and weathered remnants of oil in a few sites
some intertidal animals, such as mussels, are still contaminated
some rock sites stripped by aggressive (e.g. high-pressure, hot-water) cleaning are still bare
a few rich clam beds that suffered high mortality have not fully recovered.

13. Case Study - Remaining Impacts to Wildlife
Though a high number of individual animals may have been killed, the actual initial impacts to communities (populations) of salmon, sea otters, harbour seals and sea bird was low. Indications show that wildlife species populations have recovered within their natural range of variability.

14. Case Study - Restoration Focus
The marine environment with its natural resiliency and ability to recover required little work in restoration, beyond initial cleaning. The bird and wildlife populations are more threatened by upland activities such as logging, which destroyed Marbled Murrelet nesting areas, bear foraging sites, and salmon habitats.
Settlement funds - billions of dollars - enable purchase of a million acres of forest lands to ensure a sustainable environment. These purchases recognized that one can't draw a line at the ocean’s edge.

15. Case Study - Some Lessons Learned
Natural flushing action of waves and storms is far more efficient and better in restoration than mops, hoses, and rakes.
Wildlife rescue and rehabilitation efforts had a marginal beneficial effect on the recovery of bird and mammal populations.
Conventional wisdom is that habitat protection is a better cure than damage mitigation, no matter how extensive or tender.

16. Case Study - Conclusions
From an ecological perspective, the impacted area of the Prince William Sound from the Exxon Valdez has shown surprising resiliency - an ability to return to its natural state within the range of natural variability. There are still environmental scarring.
From a social perspective, the impact of the Exxon Valdez oil spill on those people who lived and experienced the event remains as fresh in their minds as the day it happened. People still hurt.
In conclusion, the environment has a greater resiliency to an oil spill than people.

17. British Columbia’s Ecological Approach to Marine Oil Spill Management
The Exxon Valdez as well as many other major oil spills has enable British Columbia to learn from the experiences of what to do, or more importantly what not to do.
These lessons are reflected in two main areas that the Province focuses on:
Coastal Inventory and Shoreline Oil Sensitivity Mapping
Shore Cleanup and Assessment

18. Coastal Inventory and Shoreline Oil Sensitivity Mapping
British Columbia has one of the most extensive and sophisticated coastal inventory and shoreline sensitivity mapping program in the world.
Red = High Oil Sensitivity

19. Coastal Mapping
Shoreline Oil Sensitivity Mapping ensures the most environmentally-sound and effective methods are used. Based on technical, not political evaluations

20. Shoreline Cleanup and Assessment
When a spill occurs, Canada utilizes the Shoreline Cleanup and Assessment Team (SCAT) process adopted from Alaska to determine when and how each individual shoreline will be cleaned based on geomorphological, ecological and archaeological factors.