Prince William Sound, Alaska

The Exxon Baton Rouge was sent to off-load the un-spilled cargo and to stabilize the Valdez by pumping sea water into its ballast tanks. The oil transfer took several days. By the time it was finished, more than 250,000 barrels of oil had spilled into the Sound. Eventually, 33,000 birds and 1,000 otters died because of the spill. 

Captain Hazelwood was tried and convicted of illegally discharging oil, fined US 50,000, and sentenced to 1000 hours of community service. Exxon spent US 2.2 billion to clean up the spill, continuing the effort until 1992 when both the State of Alaska and the U.S. Coast Guard declared the cleanup complete. The company also paid about US 1 billion for settlements and compensation. 

Eleven thousand workers treated 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) of shoreline around Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska, using 82 aircraft, 1,400 vessels, and 80 miles (128 kilometers) of oil-containing booms. 

The efforts seem to be working. On July 10, 2004, USA Today reported Not one drop of crude oil spilled into Prince William Sound from oil tankers in 2003 - the first spill-free year since the ships started carrying crude from the trans-Alaska pipeline terminal in 1977.  

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Sugai SF, JE Limndstrom, JF Braddock (1997) Environmental influences on the microbial degradation of Exxon Valdez oil on the shorelines of Prince William Sound, Alaska. Environ Sci Technol 31 1564-1572. 

Tank vessel Exxon Valdez 03-24-89 Bligh Reef, Prince William Sound, Alaska 240,500... 

Short,]. W. Maselko, J. M. Llndeberg, M. R. Harris, P. M. Rice, S. D. Vertical Distribution and Probability of Encountering Intertidal Exxon Valdez Oil on Shorelines of Three Embayments within Prince William Sound, Alaska. Environ. Sci. Technol. 2006, 40, 3723-3729. 

Shorelines. The successful bioremediation of shorelines affected by the spill from the Exxon Valdez in Prince William Sound, Alaska, was perhaps the largest project to date. Bioremediation focused on the addition... 

Long-term exposure of microbial populations to certain toxicants often is necessary for adaptation of enzymatic systems capable of degrading those toxicants. This was the case with the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in 1989. Natural microbial populations in Prince William Sound, Alaska, had developed enzyme systems that oxidize petroleum hydrocarbons because of long-term exposure to natural oil seeps and to hydrocarbons that leached from the pine forests in the area. Growth of these natural microbial populations was nutrient limited during the summer. Thus the application of nutrient formulations to the rocky beaches of Prince William Sound stimulated microbial growth and helped to degrade the spilled oil. 

Page, D.S., Boehm, P.D., Douglas, G.S., Bence, E.A., Burns, W.A., Mankiewicz, P.J., 1996. The natural petroleum hydrocarbon background in subtidal sediments of Prince William Sound, Alaska, USA. Environ. Toxicol. Chem. 15, 1266-1281. 

North Sea, United Kingdom Prince William Sound, Alaska Pipe alpha oiling explosion Exxon Valdez spill Millions of tons of oil spill 166 ... 

C5B In 1989, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez struck a reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska. The accident released 40 million litres of crude oil. The oil eventually covered 26 000 km2 of water. 

Page DS, Boehm PD, Brown JS, Neff JM, Bums WA, Bence AE. 2005. Mussels document loss of bioavailable polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and the return to baseline conditions for oiled shorelines in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Mar Environ Res 60 422-436. 

On March 24, 1989, shortly after midnight, an accident involving the supertanker vessel, the Exxon Valdez, resulted in a spill of 11 million gallons (260,000 barrels) of crude oil into the waters of Prince William Sound, Alaska. The spill was the largest in U.S. history and tested the abilities of local, national, and industrial organizations to respond to a disaster of such magnitude. Many factors complicated the cleanup efforts following... 

Kvenvolden K. A., Hostettler F. D., Rapp J. B., and Carlson P. R. (1993a) Hydrocarbons in oil residue on beaches of islands of Prince William Sound, Alaska. Mar. Pollut. Bull. 26, 24-29. 

Fault bays are formed by horizontal movement of Earth s plates, but plates can also move up and down. If the seabed moves down and the continental mass remains in place, tall cliffs form along the coast. On the other hand, if the continent shifts upward, places that were once under water are suddenly exposed. This kind of movement pushed up much of the seafloor in Prince William Sound, Alaska, after an earthquake on March 27, 1964. 

In a study to evaluate the concentrations of PAHs in various fish and shellfish species from Prince William Sound, Alaska, following the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill of more than 10 million gallons of crude oil, PAHs were not detected in 18% (72/402) of the samples trace levels were found in 78% (312/402) of the samples and individual PAH concentrations ranging from 5 to 12 pg/kg (wet or dry weight not specified) were found in 4% (18/402) of the samples. There was no apparent difference between PAH concentrations in salmon collected from impacted areas and those collected from control areas however, there was a suggestion that contamination may be increasing with time. No PAHs were detected in 14% (31/221) of samples collected in 1989, trace levels were found in 85% of these samples, and only 1% (3 samples) had individual PAH concentration >5 pg/kg whereas in the 1990 samples, PAHs were detected in all of the 41 samples, trace levels were found in 87% of the samples, and 13% (6 samples) had individual PAH concentrations >5 pg/kg. 

Bence AE, Kvenvolden KA, Kennicutt MC (1996) Organic geochemistry applied to environmental assessments of Prince William Sound, Alaska, after the Exxon Valdez oil spill-a review. Org Geochem 24, 7-42. 

Coffin RB, Cifuentes LA, Elderidge PM (1994) The use of stable carbon isotopes to study microbial processes in estuaries. In K Lajtha, RH Michener (eds) Stable Isotopes in Ecology and Environmental Science, p 222-240. Blackwell Scientific Publications, Oxford, UK Coffin RB, Cifuentes LA, Pritchard PH (1997) Assimilation of oil-derived carbon and remedial nitrogen applications by intertidal food chains on a contaminated beach in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Mar Environ Res 44 27-39... 

Sedimentation and oil-fines interaction Sedimentation is the process by which oil is deposited on the bottom of the sea or other water body. Once oil is on the bottom, it is usually covered by other sediments and degraded very slowly. Following the Exxon Valdez oil spiU in Prince William Sound, Alaska in March 1989, the process of oil-mineral fine aggregates was discovered as a mechanism affecting the rate of natural cleansing of oil residues from shorelines. " Oil-mineral aggregates were found to result from interactions among the oil residues, fine mineral particle, and seawater. Particles of mineral with oil attached may be heavier than water and sink to the bottom as sediment... 

Boehm, P. D., Page, D. S., Gilfillan, E. S., Bence, A. E., Bums, W. A., and Mankiewicz, P. J., Study of the fate and effects of the Exxon Valdez oil spiU on benthic sediments in two bays in Prince William Sound, Alaska. 1. Study design, chemistry and source fingerprinting. Environ. Sci. TechnoL, 32, 567-576, 1998. 

Hostettler, E. D., Rosenbauer, R. J., and Kvenvolden, K. A., PAH refractory index as a source discriminant of hydrocarbon input from cmde oil and coal in Prince William Sound, Alaska, Org. Geochem., 30, 873-879, 1999. 

U.S. Department of Commerce Report 1966. The Prince William Sound, Alaska Earthquake of /964 and Aftershocks, Vol. 1, Publication 10-3, Coast and Geodetic Survey, Washington, DC, pp. 230-238. 

Since the Torrey Canyon spiU, the spate of accidents that have occurred shows that the threat from accidental marine pollution remains (Amoco Cadiz, 1978, off Brittany, France Kark V, 1989, off the Atlantic coast of Morocco Exxon Valdez, 1989, Prince William Sound, Alaska, U.S.A. Haven, 1991, Genoa, Italy Braer, 1993, Shetland Islands, U.K. Sea Empress, 1996, Milford Haven, Wales, U.K. and Erika, 1999, off Brittany, France). 

The greatest hazard to the biosphere from petroleum production and transport results from oil spills that kill wildlife. Most such incidents occur in coastal areas, affecting birds, fish, and shellfish. Two of the more notorious incidents of oil spills that caused harm to wildlife were the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker oil spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska, which may have spilled up to 750,000 barrels of crude oil, and the 2010 blowout and fire of BP s Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico, which some credible sources have estimated released as much as 5 million barrels of crude oil into the fragile Gulf waters. 

This accident occurred on March 24,1989 when an oil tanker named "Exxon Valdez" was grounded on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska. This resulted in the escape of approximately 37,000 tons of Alaska North Slope crude oil into the Prince William Sound and spread widely [3,16-18]. Despite the use of a large number of vessels, skimmers, and booms, only less than 10% of the original oil spill volume was possible to recover from the sea surface. 

Iverson, S.J., Frost, K.J., and Lowry, L.F. (1997) Fatty acid signatures reveal fine scale structure of foraging distribution of harbor seals and their prey in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser, 151, 255-271. 

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