oil in the oceans
On 23 March 2021, at 7:40 am, the Ever Given, a 400-meter-long Golden class container ship, ran aground in the Suez Canal ( Egypt ) causing its obstruction. The ship was previously hit by a sandstorm and blown by strong winds of up to 74 kilometers per hour, causing it to go off course. The ship then ran aground on one of the banks of the canal, completely obstructing it and preventing the passage of any ship.
The day after the accident, at least 15 other ships were detained at anchorages and at least 237 ships queued to pass through the canal. Unfortunately, the ship ran aground in the unexpanded section of the canal, making it impossible to bypass.
This is a very particular case of a naval accident, because various statistical studies say that more than half of the time this involves an oil leak at sea.
In fact, crude oil has a lower specific weight than water, so it initially forms an oxygen-impermeable film above the free surface of the water, causing in addition to the obvious damage due to physical and toxic phenomena directed to the macrofauna, an anaerobic disease that kills the plankton. It is not easy to establish the amount of hydrocarbons that are lost each year at sea, however the estimates of these losses seem to be around an average of 4 million tons per year for the whole planet and 600,000 tons for the Mediterranean alone.
In addition to the environment, oil also causes serious damage to animals.
Oil penetrates into birds' plumage, reducing their thermal insulation capacity (making animals vulnerable to environmental temperature fluctuations) and making feathers unsuitable for swimming and flying, so birds are unable to find food and escape from predators. The instinct of birds leads them to clean their plumage with the use of their beak, but in this way they ingest the oil, with harmful effects for the kidneys, liver and digestive system; these latter effects on the organism, together with the inability to obtain food, lead to dehydration and imbalances in the metabolism.