Defenders of Wildlife Blog

An oiled pelican on the Gulf Coast (©Krista Schyler/Defenders of Wildlife)

Laurie Macdonald, Florida Program Director

This Saturday, April 20th, will mark the third anniversary of the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. By Earth Day 2010, we had learned the terrible news that 11 men had died in an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig and we hoped an environmental crisis was not going to follow.

But follow it did. Over 200 million gallons of oil spewed from a failed drilling operation nearly a mile below the ocean surface: hot, highly pressurized petroleum hydrocarbons that had been stewing for millions of years. In the days that turned into months of frantic work to seal the well, the oil and attempts to contain it caused direct and long term damage to wildlife and their habitat, including an unknown number of deaths.

How can there be restitution for such an assault on the precious and extensive resources of the Gulf? How can the environmental losses be restored and the related economic losses be compensated? Sea turtles, whales and dolphins surfacing to breathe and sea birds resting or diving into the ocean were covered with oil. Seahorses and juvenile sea turtles living in the floating sargassum seaweed mats were killed when the mats were showered with dispersants and burned. Below the surface, deep sea coral colonies and shallow seagrass beds died due to the toxic combination of dispersants and oil. And on the beach, shorebird nests and chicks were trampled and scraped away by uninformed workers during cleanup operations, while heavy equipment and lights disturbed and harmed wildlife. Every part of the Gulf was affected by the spill, from its shores to the sea floor. People dependent upon marine resources, from shrimpers to hotel and restaurant owners, lost significant livelihood, and some of those living along the affected areas suffer ongoing illnesses.

Oil floats in the water off the coast of Louisiana. (©Krista Schyler/Defenders of Wildlife)

A complex combination of legislation and lawsuits is causing the responsible parties, British Petroleum (BP) and others, to pay significant costs and fines. Penalties under the RESTORE Act passed by Congress on June 29, 2012 will make $4 billion available for restoration and improvement of the Gulf and for the people that suffered losses due to the spill. The RESTORE Act ensures that 80 percent of Deepwater Horizon civil and administrative penalties under the Clean Water Act will go to Gulf Coast restoration, and sets up a framework that can ensure coordination between the Gulf States and the Federal government.

Defenders’ Florida Representative Elizabeth Fleming and I recently attended a public meeting of the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force, which is evaluating which projects are most important to fund. The meeting was held to listen to information from the public about what actions we believed would be of the greatest benefit to the Gulf.

On behalf of Defenders, I presented a report that we produced with the National Wildlife Refuge Association that describes tracts of conservation land along the Gulf Coast and connections inland that should be acquired and added to the refuge system. This will protect wildlife habitat and help wildlife adapt to the impacts we are experiencing as a result of climate change and sea level rise. Examples include expanding the Gulf Islands National Seashore to protect sea turtle nesting beaches as well as people’s access to the coastline, and adding to the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge to complete the ocean-to-inland connection that wildlife will need to rely on as they adapt to climate change.

Shorebirds like this rely on the beaches affected by the Deepwater Horizon spill (©Krista Schyler/Defenders of Wildlife)

I pointed out three principles that I think should guide the decisions on how to spend the restoration funds. First, all projects, including those not focused on the environment (boat ramps and the like) must result in ecosystem benefits. Second, all projects should also take climate change and sea level rise into consideration. And lastly, the most important action we can take is to acquire valuable conservation areas that add to our system of natural resource lands and wildlife habitat.

Author Carl Safina in his book “A Sea in Flames,” closes with an observation on northern gannets — large, shining white seabirds that migrate from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico for the winter. Gannets dive for their prey and so they are directly affected by oil adhering to their bodies and by eating contaminated fish. Safina remarks that the first oiled bird whose image was in the news during the Gulf oil disaster was a gannet, and that seabird biologists speculated that up to a third of the population would be affected. The gannet already faces a host of threats near its breeding grounds, and is now suffering the impacts of the oil spill even 2,000 miles away, where it spends the off-season.

It is clear that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill will continue to affect wildlife and habitat for years to come. Our job now is to help our damaged Gulf regain its health with carefully planned, enduring restoration work.

Forty foot waves.  60 mile-per-hour winds.  Freezing temperatures.  A fragile, pristine environment.  As if we needed another example of why drilling in the Arctic Ocean is a very bad idea, we sure got one when the Shell drilling ship Kulluk ran aground on Monday.

The problems began last Thursday, when the Kulluk, a conical Arctic drilling ship on its way to Seattle for repairs, broke away from its towing vessel and was set adrift.  Things only got worse from there:  The tow vessel, Aiviq, lost function in all four of its engines due to mechanical issues.  This is the vessel Shell heralded as a symbol of its commitment to doing things right in the Arctic. It is the vessel company president and CEO Gary Chouest described as “the world’s largest and most powerful anchor-handling icebreaker.”  It was designed to operate in minus-40 degrees and is apparently a state of the art vessel. And yet it could not keep control of Kulluk.  As winter seas continued to pummel the drill ship and its now two attendant tow vessels, the Coast Guard was called in to evacuate all of the Kulluk’s crew members.

But the Kulluk wasn’t just carrying crew members.  While the ship pitched up and down in the icy waters, about 150,000 gallons of fuel were sloshing around inside it, too, in the form of sulfur diesel, hydraulic fluid, and lube oil.  In effect, the Kulluk was an oil spill waiting to happen.

By Monday afternoon, the Kulluk was reattached to a repaired Aiviq and a new tow vessel, Alert. The ships were headed for safe port in Kodiak to weather the storm.  But the relentlessly rough water separated the Kulluk from the Aiviq, forcing the crew of the Alert to sever their line, as well.  Kulluk was adrift again, and this time, grounding was all but inevitable.  The ship ran aground around 9 pm on New Year’s Eve on a small island off the coast of Kodiak.

As of this writing, there have been no reports of leakage from the ship or oil sheen on the water.  But the event serves to remind us that drilling attempts in the Arctic will be costly and difficult at best and an environmental tragedy at worst.

Polar bears and other large mammals could suffer damage to their eyes, mouth, skin and lungs from petroleum exposure. Like bird feathers, polar bear fur loses its insulating and water-repelling properties when coated with oil.

This time, the Kodiak Coast Guard station was close enough to respond quickly, with plenty of helping hands and the right equipment. The Coast Guard station can also provide a base for personnel to coordinate efforts or to hunker down when the weather gets too bad to send response vessels.   But the drill sites in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas are over 1,000 miles away from Kodiak, and there’s no Coast Guard station nearer than that.  Shell claims their spill response ship Arctic Challenger can contain an underwater leak, but external support could take days or weeks to reach an out of control vessel, or even worse, a spill.

If something like the 2010 BP Oil Spill were to occur in the Arctic Ocean, the environmental damage would be truly unimaginable: iconic arctic species like whales, polar bears and walruses could all suffer. There is also a huge risk of damaging the intricate and pristine ecology of the Arctic Ocean in ways we don’t fully understand yet.  Combine that with the danger to spill response crews, and it’s hard to believe Shell is willing to risk drilling in the Arctic Ocean at all.

This latest fiasco with the Kulluk could have been a New Year’s oil spill.  The incident surely shows that Shell, even with state of the art equipment, cannot  prevent accidents in the remote Arctic. We can only hope that this and Shell’s other recent travails will convince lawmakers and the administration to put an end to offshore drilling in the Arctic before it’s too late.

Mary Beth Beetham, Director of Legislative Affairs

Specialists from the Environmental Contaminants Program respond to an overturned train, taking quick action to prevent diesel from running into a nearby creek. (Credit: USFWS)

In our modern world, there are a myriad of harmful pollutants, many potentially lethal, that adversely affect fish, wildlife, habitat and people. These include pesticides, endocrine disruptors, heavy metals, prescription drugs, oil and other industrial chemicals, fertilizers and numerous other products that are released into the environment through spills, disposal, ongoing use or other means. In recent studies of major rivers and streams, one or more pesticides have been found more than 90 percent of the time, and in more than 80 percent of the fish sampled. This may also be causing declines in pollinators such as bees and birds, as well as declines and deformities in frogs and other amphibians.

The Fish and Wildlife Service, through its Environmental Contaminants Program, is the primary federal agency responsible for protecting fish, wildlife and habitat from damaging pollutants. It identifies and assesses their effects, works to prevent exposure, and leads restoration of the resources that these poisons damage. If the federal budget goes off the so-called “fiscal cliff” at the end of the month and triggers significant funding cuts, or an overall budget agreement produces similar impacts, vulnerable wildlife will face an even greater threat from dangerous substances.

Disaster Investigation and Recovery
One of the most important responsibilities of the program is its leadership in Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration to recover fish, wildlife and habitat injured from oil spills or the release of other hazardous substances. When these incidents occur, the Contaminants Program investigates the damage and, if it’s not already known, determines who is responsible and negotiates with them for restitution. Then, using that money, the program works with other stakeholders on restoration projects like these:

• In 2006, they reached a settlement of more than $2 million with DuPont to restore wetland and river habitat in Delaware that had been damaged by releases of lead, cadmium and zinc from 1902 to 1984 during production of pigment.

• In 2009, they reached a settlement of more than $12 million with parties responsible for damage from the Palmerton Zinc Pile Superfund Site in Pennsylvania, where zinc smelting had been releasing metals like arsenic, chromium, lead, manganese, copper cadmium and zinc for most of the 20th century.

• The program is currently working to determine what restoration efforts it will take to mitigate damages to natural resources from PCBs that were discharged from manufacturing plants in and around the Hudson River. Studies are underway to assess how the substances may have contaminated the area’s fish, mink, sediment, waterfowl and other birds.

The USFWS responds to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, bringing oiled birds like this pelican to stabilization facilities where they can be cleaned, rehabilitated, and released (Credit: Coast Guard Petty Officer 2nd Class John D Miller)

Since 1992, the program has negotiated more than $785 million in settlements from responsible parties to restore natural resources that are held in trust for the American people. That number predates the damage from the devastating 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, for which damages are still being assessed.

The Deepwater Horizon spill is now widely recognized as the worst oil spill in American history, with damage to natural resources likely to total in the billions. One billion dollars in early damages has already been provided for restoration, and will fund restoration projects like protecting and restoring habitat for beach-nesting birds in the Florida Panhandle, Alabama and Mississippi by marking and preventing disturbance of key sites, increasing predator control to reduce loss of chicks, eggs and nesting adults, and increasing surveillance and monitoring of nesting sites. It will also help with projects to restore nesting habitat for loggerhead sea turtles in Florida and Alabama by reducing artificial lighting through eliminating, retrofitting or replacing existing light fixtures.

Being Ready to Respond

Oil washes ashore in Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge in Alabama (Credit: Jereme Phillips, USFWS)

The Contaminants Program also makes sure that teams are ready and able to respond to spills and chemical releases. This includes pre-incident planning and training, incident response, and post-incident assessment and restoration. However, chronic underfunding of regular operations has made it more difficult for the program to maintain enough expert contaminant biologists, given that contaminant biology is a highly specialized field. Moreover, when a major incident occurs and significant staff resources from the Contaminants Program are used to address it, ongoing restoration efforts from prior incidents often suffer as a result. Stretching insufficient resources is a challenge already faced by many programs that affect wildlife and habitats, but we should be especially concerned when the program that reacts to oil spills, chemical leaks and other contaminations does not have the resources to do its job.

The program already lacks the funding for its current needs, and any additional cuts will further undermine the work needed to prevent harm to vulnerable wildlife from dangerous pollutants. For example:

• There are currently no criteria to describe what levels of many contaminants are safe or unsafe for wildlife, and this program is working to develop them.

• New studies have shown that fish and wildlife populations are more seriously affected by mercury than previously known, especially birds such as the American kestrel, American white ibis, snowy egret and tri-colored heron, and other animals that consume fish and insects contaminated by mercury. The program needs to investigate to determine the extent of these impacts.

• The number of oil spill inland and in or near rivers is expected to increase in coming years due to the aging of the U.S. oil pipeline infrastructure, much of which is already more than 50 years old. As a result, there will be a growing number of damaging spills like the one in the Kalamazoo River in Michigan in 2010 that spilled over 800,000 gallons of oil and devastated wildlife across the region, including wood ducks, swans, great blue herons, mink, turtles, snakes, frogs and toads. Another spill in the Yellowstone River in Montana spilled about 50,000 gallons of oil and harmed wetlands and wildlife including the endangered pallid sturgeon, waterfowl and wading birds. It is absolutely crucial that the Contaminants Program be able to reach out to land management agencies and train them in the proper procedures in the event of a spill on their lands to ensure that the Contaminants Program will be called immediately both to protect wildlife in spill areas from harm, and to ensure that damages to the public’s wildlife and habitats are properly quantified for restitution before the evidence dissipates or washes away.

The Contaminants Program’s funding level has basically stayed the same since 2001, yet its workload has only grown and its small team of expert contaminant biologists is far overstretched. Please click here tell your members of Congress that you support a balanced approach to address the budget deficit — one that does not include further cuts to programs that protect wildlife from dangerous pollutants.

The Royal Dutch Shell Company began drilling in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea on Sunday, with potentially disastrous consequences for Alaska’s wildlife.

The Chukchi Sea is home to many imperiled species, such as bowhead whales, Pacific walrus, and polar bears, a species already facing enormous challenges due to melting sea ice, one of the many effects of climate change.  A major oil spill here could be even more destructive to wildlife than the Gulf oil spill of 2010, because a cleanup response would be nearly impossible to perform.  Here’s why:

The threatened Steller’s eider, a seasonal visitor to the Chukchi. Birds suffer heavily in oiled waters: the oil on their feathers destroys their insulation from the cold, and makes them sick when they try to clean themselves.

Infrastructure.  The nearest coast guard station is in Kodiak, Alaska, more than 1000 miles away.  The closest village to the Chukchi Sea drilling site has just one small boat ramp and no hotels to accommodate cleanup crews.  The nearest airports that can handle the large cargo planes needed to transport oil cleanup equipment are 100 miles away or more.

Weather.  The Chukchi Sea is almost completely covered in ice over the winter months.  In summer, 20-foot swells, gale force winds and thick, lingering fog is common.  Stormy seas would endanger the lives of crew members and render oil booms and skimmer boats useless.  It can take weeks or months for backup rigs to drill relief wells, even in the relatively calm waters of the Gulf; in the Chukchi Sea, it may take even longer.  Worst of all, if an oil well breaks open and can’t be capped by the end of the summer, it will gush into the sea for months beneath the Chukchi Sea’s winter ice pack.

Temperature.  The temperature of Arctic seawater is often far below freezing, making it difficult to burn off oil because the water below the surface-oil cannot be heated sufficiently to start the burn.  Oil dispersant chemicals are known to be ineffective in cold temperatures, in addition to the potential harmful effects they could have on marine life.  Finally, oil simply takes longer to break down in cold temperatures.

A Fragile Ecosystem.

Polar bears are already stressed by the loss of sea ice they use to hunt due to climate change.  A major oil spill would jeopardize their food supply even more.  Photo (c) Joan Cambray.

The Chukchi Sea supports an intricate and delicate web of life. It provides critical food sources for migratory birds from around the world and pristine waters for important parts of the life cycle of many fish species. Every part of this ecosystem, from the tiniest zooplankton to the greatest bowhead whale, would be threatened by an oil spill in the Chukchi.  As the Defenders of Wildlife Fact Sheet on drilling in the Arctic details,

 “exposure to oil damages the eyes, mouth, skin and lungs of marine mammals and reduces the insulating effect of feathers on birds. Wild animals can also suffer from kidney failure after ingesting oil in attempts to clean themselves. Those animals that manage to survive will still be at risk from accumulating pollutants and metals in their bodies from the fish they eat. They may also suffer from starvation as the food chain they rely on for survival is disrupted.”

Even without a spill, noise and toxic pollution that are a normal part of industrial drilling will negatively impact local wildlife.  There is also so much about the arctic ecosystem of the Chukchi that we just don’t know anything about.  In its review of drilling plans the government admitted to a complete lack of information on key wildlife populations and their use of the Chukchi, but approved Shell’s drilling plans anyway.    The fact is that the Chukchi Sea is one of the last places any oil company should be allowed to drill.

Noise from drilling rigs disturbs marine mammals like these bowhead whales, which depend on echolocation to navigate the icy waters of the Chukchi.

Ironically, Shell was only able to drill for one day before a large ice floe forced it to back off the drill site. This should be a warning cry about the hazards of drilling in the Chukchi Sea.

We must not let our thirst for oil put yet another rich and vibrant ecosystem at risk of an environmental catastrophe, especially when this time, if an oil spill happens, cleanup will be virtually impossible.  Only time will tell if Alaskan wildlife can weather this latest threat to their survival.

UPDATE 9/17/12:  Shell’s oil containment barge suffered damage to its oil containment dome during testing, causing the company to scrap efforts to drill in the Chukchi until next year.  The barge had been previously plagued with leaks and safety standard issues, and has been unable to reach Coast Guard certification.  The threat of an oil spill has subsided-for now-but this fragile place will be in danger once more if drilling resumes in 2013.

It’s been more than two years since the BP oil spill that spewed 200 million gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico, but not all the damage has yet been done.

According to the latest AP report, the lingering effects are still taking a toll on fishermen in the Gulf, who are seeing much smaller catches in some areas. In the Barataria estuary, for example, the shrimp haul for last fall was down nearly 40 percent while the crab harvest was down nearly 30 percent.

High seafood prices have helped compensate for the shortfall to some extent, and some are blaming high water in the Mississippi River and drought in Texas in addition to residual oil. But it’s clear that we haven’t seen the last of the devastation from the spill.

It’s vital that we keep the BP disaster in mind, especially now that the Obama administration has agreed to let Shell drill in the Arctic this summer. Polar bears, whales and countless other species could be at serious risk from yet another oil spill that could be even more deadly than the BP spill in the Gulf.

See how Defenders is working to protect wildlife and natural habitats from the dangers of offshore drilling.

Help support our work to protect sea turtles and other wildlife. Text GULF to 90999 to make a $10 donation. (Message and Data Rates may apply. Mgive.com/t)

Gulf of the Farallones

Finally, some good news for American coasts! Yesterday, the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee passed the “Gulf of the Farallones and Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuaries Boundary Modification and Protection Act.” The legislation, which Senators Boxer and Feinstein introduced in January, would permanently protect California’s coastal waters and estuaries in Sonoma County and portions of Mendocino County by extending the boundaries of existing marine sanctuaries.

“One of America’s most important natural treasures moved one step closer to achieving permanent protection today,” said Richard Charter, marine policy advisor for Defenders of Wildlife. “Given recent threats to sacrifice local economies and the marine environment to offshore drilling, this is a critical and timely first step toward long-sought preservation.”

The Sonoma and Mendocino coasts are one of the planet’s most biologically productive marine environments. These areas support many species of marine mammals, birds and fishes, including endangered blue and humpback whales. The bill would expand the boundaries of the two existing National Marine Sanctuaries to protect the entire coastline in Sonoma County and as far north as Point Arena in Mendocino County, adding nearly 2,100 square nautical miles to the sanctuaries. The new boundaries would protect the Russian and Gualala River estuaries and the nutrient-rich Bodega Canyon from offshore oil drilling and pollution.

This move couldn’t come at a better time. Just yesterday, the Coast Guard responded to a seven-mile slick off the coast of Louisiana. The oil is believed to be continued fallout from from the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster. The Coast Guard has sent pollution investigators to the scene to take samples, which will go to a lab for confirmation.