SLO 4: Physical Properties and Marine Life

Oil spills are a big cause of pollution in the oceans. A lot of oil spills go unnoticed, however in the past 50 years there has been over 44 oil spills that were over 420,000 gallons of oil that have impacted U.S. waters alone. Oil is less dense than water and so it spreads out over the surface of the water. Marine animals can loose insolation, experience erosion and reproductive issues, and even loose oxygen from this oil pollution. Collecting and removing this oil from these spill areas is very challenging, time sensitive and mostly ineffective.

In order to get a better understanding of the human impact and knowledge of oil spills, I conducted a short survey with some of my friends and peers on social media.

Oil Spills Survey

I sent out a series of 6 questions. They were available for 24 hours on my Instagram story. The first 4 were simple Yes or No questions, the 5th question and the 6th question were both a way to test how much us humans are aware of the amount of oil spilled into the ocean annually and the things we do to contribute to this.

These were the results...

The questions were seen by a total of 139 people but not everyone had responded. Each question had a different amount of responses, but the average number was 78.1. The reason for not getting an average of a whole number like 80 is because some had 81 responses and some had 78, or even 74 responses. Some questions could have just been skipped over by accident or not answered, but nevertheless I still received enough data to draw some interesting evidence.

The majority of people answered yes to the first 4 Yes and No questions. However, when it came to the last two questions, the answers became more balanced out. This shows that there are so many things we do in our everyday lives that we are unaware pollute the ocean. The simple act of buying something online or driving a car can cause for oil leaks and spills. We are also not aware of many oil spills because, most of them go unnoticed and not talked about in the news or media.

Research

Oil spills are just one thing polluting the ocean, but they have a big impact. About 210 million gallons of oil go into our worldwide oceans annually. This can be caused by both people who are careless or people who simply make mistakes. Equipment breaking down is another factor, as well as natural disasters such as heavy rains and storms. The things I mentioned in the survey questions are also all ways us humans contribute unintentionally to oil spills. When we drive a car to work or school the little bits of oil dripping onto the road eventually wash away into water systems. When we purchase items online to be shipped to us, usually big corporations have the items come from overseas which causes for shipping vessels to leak oil along their journey. The high demand for gas to fill up our cars and plans to fly give the need for oil drilling in the ocean. All of these and more are contributing everyday to the oil in the ocean and most of us do not know about it. I wanted to look more into the cause and effect of these oil spills, so I did some research and found some interesting and informational articles.

3 Surprising Sources of Oil Pollution in the Ocean

According to the article on National Geographic by Christine Dell'Amore and Christina Nunez there are three little-reported sources of oil that contribute to oil pollution in North American oceans.

1. Natural Seeps: Oil that is underneath the Earth's surface actually accounts for about 60 percent of the estimated total oil in North American waters and about 40 percent worldwide, according to the National Academy of Sciences.

2. Cars and Other Land Vehicles: Most cars will drip oil onto the ground as they drive about, on concrete or asphalt, and that oil ends up trickling into the ocean over time from rain or other causes.

3. Recreational Boats: People operating recreational craft, such as Jet Skis and boats, sometimes spill oil into the ocean unintentionally.

Oil spills like this are sometimes not accounted for and not publicized so they are sometimes taken out of the bigger picture.

Oil Spill Pollution Causes

In the article written by the Environmental Pollution Center they explain some of the more ways oil pollutes our beautiful oceans both accidently and intentionally.

Accidental Spills: Many spills can seep into the ocean accidentally through a variety of different ways. Some examples include: oil containers that are stored and leak slowly overtime, transportation of tanker ships or tanker trucks, drilling offshore, the cleaning or maintenance of ships, and oily runoff from the roads.

Intentional Discharges: Oil can also be intentionally dumped into the ocean water, but it is not always meant to be an evil act. Examples of these spills include: disposing of oil into drains and sewers from an oil change in ones car, and indirectly through burning of fossil fuels such as individual components of oil from vehicle emissions.

How do oil spills harm or kill ocean life?

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has a good article with two of the most detrimental affects of oil spills on the oceans marine life.

Fouling/Oiling: Occurs when a plant or animal is physically harmed by oil. Oil can strip away a sea otters insulating properties of their fur, and it can coat the wings of a bird.

Oil Toxicity: The toxic compounds of oil can cause severe health problems. Some of these problems include: heart problems, immune system effects, stunted growth, and in worse cases, death.

This is how oil spills damage our environment

Charlotte Edmonds article on the World Economic Forum explains not only how oil affects marine life, but also how it affects the ecosystems and what the long-term affects can be.

Disruption of Ecosystems: The oil can contaminate sea life's food sources making it less available and hazardous to them. Oil is also a big problem when it comes to reproduction and breeding. The oil can contaminate the on shore nests of turtles and birds pretty much killing the unborn babies.

Long-term effects: It was shown that after a major oil spill in the ocean, months later oil levels along the coastline was recorded to be about 100 times higher than before the incident. It was also found that even a year after this spill, oil droplets continued to still sink into the seabed affecting the sedimentation rates, an important habitat and food source for marine life.

"Cleaning up" an oil spill

According to the article from Carnegie Mellon University written by Ryan Noone, many agencies and volunteers do what they can to "clean up" the oil in the oceans. Some of the ways this is done are explained in this article.

Booms: These are floating barriers that contain the oil in such a way that it stops is from expanding outward. Then, a skimmer will be used to remove oil from inside the boom. After that, it is soaked up in a mixture that is somewhat sand-like.

Dish Detergent: This surfactant is used to clean off animals skin or feathers. It also allows for tiny oil droplets to go down to natural oil eating microbes and naturally break down.

These solutions, however, have both negative and positive outcomes. Booms are not as useful for larger and wider oil spills, and dish detergent disperses oil and helps promote growth of the bacterial microbes that feast upon it.

The ultimate solution would be to better a way in preventing these oil spills to occur so the need for "cleaning" would not be necessary.