The "ship's pilot" as you describe him was NOT an employee of the ship's owners or under their control in any way. These ships are REQUIRED to give the wheel to a "harbor pilot" who is indirectly working under the control and oversight of the local government harbor commission. He was indeed repeatedly cited for carelessness and ran another ship aground only last year--and still kept his job. When the Coast Guard boarded the vessel just after the spill, Mr. Cota had left the ship and was not located for about 26 hours when he was then tested for alcolhol and drugs--and found "clean." This stinks and worse yet, Newsweek has skirted these facts in their "investigation!"
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A Nasty Spill
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A pristine national seashore north of San Francisco.
Right.
You are describing failure at many levels.
The investigation needs to be completed. We still don't have an incident report or the Coast Guard records. There seems to be a lot of backtracking, The same pilot has been cited for several different mishaps. Maybe that was a warning sign.
What is the long-lasting ecological impact?
It's been devastating for the environment. It's hard to predict how long it will last. Bunker fuel contains polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), which are extremely toxic. It doesn't degrade easily and can have carcinogenic impacts and delay the development of birds and other marine life. So far, more than 200 birds [have been] picked up and another 135 have been found dead. When the oil ends up covering birds, they lose thermal protection, move to the shoreline and try to preen, and then they end up ingesting a lot of oil. Another problem is that their food sources can get covered by oil. We are looking at PAH levels being elevated in the bay for the next decade or two. In terms of the fuel, it could be around for the next couple of years.
Are you sure the impact will last for years? That seems like an awfully long time.
What we have heard from cleanup and response crews is that the sheens on top of the water won't be cleaned up by skimmers.
They can only get this thick, gunky stuff?
Right. The oil has to be dispersed throughout the Bay and ocean; then it will get pushed up to the shoreline. I don't think we will be able to get this cleaned up within the next few months. And if you compare it to a spill of diesel fuel from a pipeline into the Suisun Marsh [about 35 miles northeast of San Francisco] in 2004, we are still finding traces of the fuel in the marsh three years later.
© 2007
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