This recovery rate is fairly typical for a large oil spill," Short told a hearing on the 20th anniversary of the spill last year. "About 20 per cent evaporated, 50 per cent contaminated beaches, and the rest floated out to the North Pacific Ocean, where it formed tar balls that eventually stranded elsewhere or sank to the sea floor."
Short and his colleagues estimate that in the days and weeks after the spill, as many as 2,800 sea otters died, along with 250,000 seabirds. More that 300 harbour seals also died, not from being coated with oil, but "likely from inhalation of toxic fumes leading to brain lesions, stress and disorientation," according to a 2003 report in the journal Science, in which they summed up the spill's long-term impact.
Their report highlighted an "unexpected persistence of toxic subsurface oil and chronic exposures" that lingered in the ecosystem and "enhanced mortality for years."
Recovery of everything from sea otters to harlequin duck and salmon populations took much longer than expected.
Two decades later, Prince William Sound looks pretty idyllic, says Short, who lives in Juneau, Alaska, where he now works as a science director for the non-profit group Oceana, after 31 years at NOAA.
He says the ecosystem has pretty much recovered, though it is still possible to dig down into intertidal zone and find oil just below the surface that has yet to degrade.
"It still poses a danger to things that like to disturb the beach when they search for food, " Short says, such as sea otters looking for clams. "If they encounter one of these oil patches instead it doesn't do them any good."
Another wild card is hurricane season, which begins in June and could complicate efforts to mop up and disperse the oil.
It is hard to imagine a worse scenario than an unstoppable spill at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, but Short can envision one — a spill in the Arctic where there is growing interest in drilling for more oil.
He says policy-makers and oil companies are "dreaming" if they think it would be possible to control a spill in such a remote area.
"Look at the challenges of mounting an effective response here, where there is a great deal of infrastructure," Short says of the Gulf coast. "Up in the Arctic there is no infrastructure so you would, I think, pitch a tent and watch the tragedy unfold."
Short and his colleagues estimate that in the days and weeks after the spill, as many as 2,800 sea otters died, along with 250,000 seabirds. More that 300 harbour seals also died, not from being coated with oil, but "likely from inhalation of toxic fumes leading to brain lesions, stress and disorientation," according to a 2003 report in the journal Science, in which they summed up the spill's long-term impact.
Their report highlighted an "unexpected persistence of toxic subsurface oil and chronic exposures" that lingered in the ecosystem and "enhanced mortality for years."
Recovery of everything from sea otters to harlequin duck and salmon populations took much longer than expected.
Two decades later, Prince William Sound looks pretty idyllic, says Short, who lives in Juneau, Alaska, where he now works as a science director for the non-profit group Oceana, after 31 years at NOAA.
He says the ecosystem has pretty much recovered, though it is still possible to dig down into intertidal zone and find oil just below the surface that has yet to degrade.
"It still poses a danger to things that like to disturb the beach when they search for food, " Short says, such as sea otters looking for clams. "If they encounter one of these oil patches instead it doesn't do them any good."
Another wild card is hurricane season, which begins in June and could complicate efforts to mop up and disperse the oil.
It is hard to imagine a worse scenario than an unstoppable spill at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, but Short can envision one — a spill in the Arctic where there is growing interest in drilling for more oil.
He says policy-makers and oil companies are "dreaming" if they think it would be possible to control a spill in such a remote area.
"Look at the challenges of mounting an effective response here, where there is a great deal of infrastructure," Short says of the Gulf coast. "Up in the Arctic there is no infrastructure so you would, I think, pitch a tent and watch the tragedy unfold."
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