The Effects of Oil Spills on Wildlife

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Oil Spills Effect Wildlife How do you clean up wildlife after an oil spill? Oil spills are dangerous because it has lasting effects on all life cycles. It is important to look at all species that are affected by an oil spill. Oil spills effect the carbon cycle directly. They also effect the food chains in the water and on land. Oil effects animals in four ways physical contact, eating, breathing, and absorption (Effects of Oil Spills on Wildlife, 2010). Depending on what type of oil it is also contributes to the seriousness of the spill. The weather also has a role in the clean-up of a spill. There are four peer related articles that show there are real cause for concern What the Spill will Kill? Was about the animals that are affected by the spill. A Tale of Two Spills: Novel Science and Policy Implications of an Emerging New Oil Spill Model. This articles talks about the areas within the ocean that are affected differently depending on the spill, as well as the different ways to clean up the spills. Oil, Seabirds, and Science this article talks about the effects on the population, reproduction, habitat and recovery after an oil spill in seabirds. There Will Be Birds: Images of Oil Disasters in the Twentieth Centuries. This article talks about the different types of oil spills. The last article is Achievement of 100% Removal of Oil from Feathers Employing Magnetic Particle Technology the article explains how to get all of the oil out of feathers. For many years, the main use of cleaning up wildlife has been using detergents and warm water (Dao, Ngeh, Bigger, & Orbell, 2006). The hypothesis of my experiment is: Warm soapy water will remove motor oil from a feather more effectively than just warm water. Materials and Methods In t... ... middle of paper ... ...t could work it would be much more labor intensive then being able to use soapy warm water. Conclusion The effects of the oil spill have a population size, reproduction, and habitat. The oil spills can take a long time to clean up and that effects what the birds have to eat and where they can go without being disturbed by humans. Some of the places were breeding grounds for birds and then having to find other places to breed while the clean-up could lead to lower levels of reproduction. Throughout the years the changes on how we handle oil spills have changed. “Oil out of control increasingly meant oil at sea” as said in There Will be Birds (Morse, 2012). The penalties for the fragile balance of life in the defenseless ecosystems of the gulf, and the broader cycles of nature that maintain life in the gulf, are as limitless as they are devastating (Begley, 2010).

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