The Baffin Island Oil Spill Project

Comprehensive chemical analyses of samples of water, sediment, and biota were carried out both before and after the spill. This cannot of course be carried out in most cases, and illustrates a serious limitation in field studies, in which lack of background data or difficulty in finding an uncontaminated control locality is frequently encountered. Sum parameters were sparingly employed in Baffin Island Oil Spill (BIOS), and emphasis was placed on the analysis of specific compounds attention was directed not only to PAHs, but also to azaarenes, dibenzothiophenes, and hopanes. Thereby, a clear distinction could be made between the input from the oil deliberately discharged, and that arising from natural biological reactions or mediated by atmospheric transport. 

Ice scouring of the intertidal zone in arctic waters makes this virtually sterile. This was noted more than 170 years ago by Keilhau (1831)—so that attention was directed to components of the subtidal zone to which little attention had previously been directed, and which was expected to be particularly sensitive to oil spills. Changes in the components of the macrobenthos including infauna, epibenthos, and macroalgae were examined, and attention was also directed to the histopathological and biochemical responses of bivalve molluscs that were affected in different ways by exposure to the dispersed and the undispersed oil. 

The original reports should be consulted for details of the conclusions drawn from this comprehensive investigation, but the following seem of particular importance for this specific class of pollutant. The study provided  

Experience with some major spills of crude oil has been summarized (Atlas 1995 Swannell et al. 1996), and attention was drawn to a number of important general issues. 

Rates of biodegradation are generally low compared with the speed and ease of mechanical removal, and are strongly dependent on whether the beaches are sandy or rocky. 

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FIGURE 27.8 GC traces of the saturated fractions of the weathered source oil (top), the moderately weathered sample 1 (middle), and the severely weathered sample 2 (bottom) from the Baffin Island Oil Spill project conducted at Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic from 1980 to 1983, illustrating the effects of over 15 years field weathering on chemical composition changes and the weathering trend of the spilled oil. IS, pr, and ph represent the internal standard, pristane, and phytane, respectively. 

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