On march 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez hit a reef called Bligh Reef, severely damaging the ship, and rupturing eight out of the eleven holds. The third mate increased the damage of the ship by trying to break free of the reef, but this only did more damage to the ship causing more oil to spill out than before. This was the cause of human error, and if not for the carelessness of the captain, and the inexperience of the third mate, the ship would have never hit the reef. The captain should have stayed at the helm until he got the ship back into the correct shipping lane. Exxon’s oil spill changed how Prince William Sound operates today, and has made shipping safer for the environment. Captain Joseph Hazelwood was steering the ship and had to change course to avoid floating ice in the channel. With the go ahead of the Coast Guard Captain Hazelwood changed lanes, and once he did that he left the bridge of the ship, leaving the ship in the hands of a third mate who was inexperienced and unqualified to be in charge of a ship in closed water. Hazelwood also left the ship in auto pilot revealed by the Anchorage Times. Captain Hazelwood took a blood test 10 hours after the crash, and it revealed that his blood-alcohol content was …show more content…
.061%, 50% above the maximum .04% allowable by the Coast Guard regulations. Exxon fired Hazelwood upon hearing the results of the blood-alcohol content test. The U.S.
Coast Guard responded to the oil spill. The Coast Guard initiated the cleaning of Prince William Sound, by shutting down the flow if inbound and outbound ships at the port. Alyeska assumed the initial responsibility of cleaning the oil spill. Alyeska had the responsibility to clean up an oil spill if one happened in the port of Prince William Sounds. The clean-up of the oil was terrible, and some of the techniques for cleaning the oil actually did more damage than good. The methods of cleaning up the oil was to burn it, mechanical clean up, chemical dispersants, and hot water pressure on the rocks. Later we found out that the hot water treatment on the rock actually didn’t help at all, and that it destroyed the microorganisms and
clams. The wildlife and its people around in Prince William Sound suffered greatly from the oil that came from the Valdez. According to Amadeo’s research the “direct contact with the oil (spill) killed at least 140 bald eagles, 302 harbor seals, 2,800 sea otters, and 250,000 seabirds within a few days. Four people died as part of the clean-up crew” Alaska’s commercial fishing has never been the same, but as time goes on the fish are coming back to what it was before the oil spill. To this day you can still find oil from the Valdez, and if you dig around the port of Prince William Sound you can find it. With the Exxon Valdez oil spill it sparked for the U.S. Congress to pass the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA 90). OPA 90 required the U.S. Coast Guard to increase their regulations for oil tankers and their owners as well. This required company owners to have a plan to prevent spills, and to have a clean-up plan. Through the Exxon Valdez oil spill tankers are now required as of 2015 to be double hull. This is to prevent an oil spill like the Exxon Valdez to happen again. By having the double hulled, the ship has a protective layer over the oil in the tank. The oil spill from the Exxon Valdez could have been easily prevented if the Captain of the ship Hazelwood didn’t go back to his quarters, or if the third mate asked for help getting back into the correct shipping lane. With the Exxon Valdez oil spill, people learned how destructive oil can be to the environment, and to the people living there as well. By creating the OPA 90 we now have safer and cleaner ports in the U.S. and this also helps make ships safer as well. Like Winston Churchill said “All men make mistakes, but only wise men learn from their mistakes.” Meaning that through this tragic event we learned and made better through regulations like OPA 90.
The captain was Franklin Buchanan and he had 300 men in the crew. Most of the men were soldiers recently assigned out of artillery regiments. And there were very few sailors in the South, so most were clueless on where to go or what to do. When everything was done and she began to move, it looked like the Merrimac was capable of doing what she was meant to do. The Northerners were warned about this ironclad “monster” and were waiting for this moment for a long time.
All the above stakeholders impacted by oil spill but differently unfortunately, the oil spilled into the ocean and killing all the fish and wash off the coast spread through rivers, affecting the fishermen and BP company affected by because they need to clean all this was to be able to cover the costs, and bad publicity the oil spill has affected governments w...
Most people believe that one man-made natural disaster would teach us to be better, but we have learned that history repeats itself. The Exxon Valdez oil spill (in 1989) and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, or BP oil spill, (in 2010) were both devastating oil spills that shocked the nation. The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred due to a tanker grounding. The BP oil spill was caused by an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil platform. These two oil spills were both disasters and had greater effects in certain categories. In this essay, I will be comparing the cause of both oil spills, the damage/effect of both oil spills, and the cleanup of each oil spill.
The disaster that took place on the Ocean Ranger had a very large effect on the way Newfoundlander's feel about the gas and oil industry. The government examined the safety issues that led to this disaster and has implemented numerous changes to enhance the safety of the offshore workforce. The Newfoundland and Canadian government set up a combined royal commission to investigate the disaster of the Ocean Ranger and to provide recommendations to improve safety. Two years after the disaster, the royal commission on the Ocean Ranger disaster concluded that the deaths resulted not only from the storm and flaws in the rig's design, but also from a lack of human knowledge.
Research Question: What is causing coral reefs around the world to bleach? Can we do anything about it?
Smith Jr., Lawrence C., L. Murphy Smith, and Paul A. Ashcroft. "Analysis Of Environmental And Economic Damages From British Petroleum's Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill." Albany Law Review 74.1 (2011): 563-585.Academic Search Complete. Web. 17 Feb. 2014.
Many businesses that sell seafood had to cut back on it for the past few months. It has been since April that businesses are now selling shellfish back on the menu for a somewhat reasonable price. A major incident occurred just two days before Earth Day. The incident is well known as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, or as many others call it, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig along the Gulf of Mexico is an oil-spill that resulted from an explosion that is under contract with BP, leading up to over million barrels of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico. This incident has led to many controversies. Arguments in discussion are whether or not we should continue to drill offshore, what exactly went wrong, and why none of the safeties were unable to activate.
Every year starting around May, sometimes as early as February, an enormous swath of the Gulf of Mexico loses a great amount of oxygen, making some areas inhospitable to marine life. These oxygen-depleted conditions stay until September, sometimes even October. This annual occurrence is referred to as the Gulf of Mexico hypoxia or “dead zone.” Hypoxic conditions in the Gulf of Mexico are defined when levels of dissolved oxygen drop bellows 2mg/L (Hypoxia In the Northern Gulf of Mexico 2014). While dead zones occur naturally throughout the world, the hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico is greatly exacerbated by human actions. These hypoxic and sometimes even anoxic conditions drive away marine life and can even kill those that are sessile or linger too long and find themselves unable to escape.
Clean water involves seclusion of lakes and hoping the acid rain does not reach these pure water supplies. Another major source of contaminating clean water are oil spills and how destructively they blanket the shoreline they come in contact with. Although offshore drilling expeditions contribute some to the devastating outcome, oil tankers are the superior enemies toward the water. One estimate is that for every one million tons of petroleum shipped one ton is spilled. The largest super tanker spill was in 1979 when 3.3 million barrels was spilled off the coast of France. The largest in the United States was the Exxon Valdez in the gulf of Alaska. On the night of March 24, 1989 the 987 foot Exxon Valdez ran aground in the gulf of Alaska spilling 260,000 barrels of oil. With the help of the forceful winds, the slick soon covered about 1,100 miles of shoreline, including many islands in the sound.
Because it is the most highly publicized of the different forms of ocean pollution, oil spills, oil leakages, and general oil contamination are something that we all seem to be aware of. Since the Exxon Valdez incident, the American public in particular has been more and more critical of oil companies.Each year, over 700 million gallons of oil end up in the ocean. Contrary to what you may have thought, most oil pollution doesn't come from tanker accidents. In fact, tanker accidents account for less than 90 million of the g...
This paper describes equipment and techniques for responding to oil spills. Various techniques for the containment, cleanup and recovery of oil spills are examined; advantages and disadvantages of each are considered. Along with providing insight for oil spill response, this paper discusses environmental factors which can contribute to the success or failure of a cleanup operation.
The oil cuts off the ability of oxygen from the air to move into the water, which directly harms fish and other marine wildlife that require that oxygen. The dispersant that the BP is using to try and break up the oil moves the slick into the entire water column which contaminates the ocean floor, which would most likely not have seen any damage if it wasn’t for the use of these dispersants. More than 400 species that live in the Gulf Islands and marshlands are at risk and as of November 2 six-thousand-eight-hundred-fourteen dead animals have been collected.... ... middle of paper ...
Winston A, 2010, Five Lessons from the BP Oil Spill, Harvard Business Review, accessed 1 April 2014,
Oil spills occur when ships run aground and the oil inside the ship leaks out into the ocean, which has a catastrophic effect on life. Any animals that are caught in the oil slicks risk dying from suffocation because the oil clogs up the lungs. In April 2010 the Chinese ship Shen Neng 1 ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef at full speed, which resulted in the ship leaking 4 tonnes of heavy fuel oil and anti-fouling paint into the ocean. The damage from this accident was severe. The ship left a 3km scar on the reef. Scientists have estimated that it could take 10-20 years for the reef to recover from the damage the Chinese ship caused (Fraser, A. 2010). This accident resulted in the creation of an environmentalist campaign called: Fight for the Reef. Fight For The Reef has been attempting to increase awareness of the danger ships pose to the Great Barrier Reef because once the new shipping ports like Abbot point are built, the amount of ships passing through the Great Barrier Reef will increase. They estimate that the amount of ships passing through the ships will increase from 4,000 ships a year to 7000 ships within a few years. This emphasizes that as the number of ships passing through the reef increases, so will the increase in risk of another oil spill occurring (Fight for the Reef, publishing date unknown). This risks the environmental integrity of the
Coral Reefs need to be preserved for many reasons. In this paper I will discuss a