Oil on the surface of the San Francisco Bay in November 2007. Photo: NOAA.

We have no idea how much oil gushed out of BP’s Deepwater Horizon well into the Gulf of Mexico—estimates vary from 92 million gallons to over 320 million gallons, according to the NewsHour’s widget. By comparison, a much smaller amount of oil—53,000 gallons—was spilled into San Francisco Bay when the container ship Cosco Busan ripped its hull open on the Bay Bridge in November 2007. The volume of oil spilled in the Gulf is several thousand times what was spilled in San Francisco Bay, and obviously the environmental consequences of the Gulf spill will far exceed what we’ve seen here. But the ecological studies conducted in the wake of the Cosco Busan spill give us an idea of what we can expect in the Gulf.

After the Cosco Busan spill, scientists looked at the effects of oil on different coastal habitats, and on individual species. A year after the spill, the QUEST radio story Oil Spill Anniversary discussed a study that revealed the negative effects of oil on Herring embryo development. Other studies looked at the impact of oil on intertidal areas, eelgrass beds, native oysters, Brown Pelicans, Marbled Murrelets, and more—a full list of studies that assessed damage to natural resources is at this NOAA site (click on “Case Documents” on the right to download the list as a PDF). Not all organisms fared poorly; the snowy plover, a bird that lives on beaches and is already a threatened species, was fine. They build their nests far enough from the water to be buffered from oil contamination.

Research about impacts and restoration in the Gulf is just getting started. The official US government website about the oil spill switched from a mindset of emergency response to one of restoration, reflecting the huge challenge that lies ahead—provided the oil doesn’t start flowing again. Some government agencies, like the EPA, are sharing the data that is being collected as you read this. My hope is that these research efforts will involve extensive long-term monitoring; the effects of oil spills can last for decades, and we need to understand how ecosystems function over time, with and without oil. We have the opportunity to learn a lot from this disaster, and hopefully we’ll have the money to fund it. The company that operated the Cosco Busan was fined $10 million, $2 million of which is slated for environmental efforts. If BP is fined in proportion to the volume of oil spilled, billions could go towards ecological research.

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World Oceans Day on June 8th

After musing on all of this anger, I always come back to one simple thought: We need the oceans more than they need us. The ocean is our thermostat, regulating our climate and providing a majority of the oxygen we breath. The ocean is our muse and represents hope for new discoveries. Yet we often treat the oceans as a trash bin.

June 8th brings about a day to change our thinking, perspective, and actions around the oceans: World Oceans Day. WOD is a UN marked day, celebrating the oceans that give us life. WOD is organized by the Ocean Project, an international collaboration of aquariums, zoos, conservation orgs, and museums. This year marks another opportunity to help keep the ocean free of plastics through the annual Beach Cleanup. While many of us can't travel to the Gulf to help in the effort to clean up the oil, we can all do our part at home.

Sea Stewards Ocean Cleanup and Party
When: Saturday, June 5th, 3-8 PM
Where: Crissy Field, Across from Sports Basement
Cost: Free, Donation Requested for After Party
Details: Cleanup along Crissy Field from 3-5PM. After party with light nibbles and drinks at Sports Basement across the street. All items at Sports Basement will be 10% off for cleanup attendees, with a portion of the proceeds going to Sea Stewards effort to protect sharks.

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It could have been many things that caused the greatest oil spill ever.

My first response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was, "Some engineer screwed up!" After some thought I realized this may not be true. If someone designed a system to stop the flow of oil in an emergency, said it would work under the conditions a mile below the surface of the Gulf, and then the failsafe system failed, that person is in big trouble. But it could have been many things that caused the greatest oil spill ever. It could be that the equipment wasn’t designed to work under a mile of water, or that the correct procedure for shutting down the flow of oil was not followed, or it could be that warnings that an emergency was likely to happen that would put the entire Gulf ecosystem and the livelihoods of thousands of people were ignored for the sake of getting the job done on schedule and saving BP money. Eventually, I expect the truth will come out.

One of my lab mates while I was studying bioengineering at Penn State had spent some time just out of college working for a defense contractor on the nosecone of the MX missile, a nuclear weapons delivery system. His job was to help figure out how to trigger the nuclear warhead before the missile, going at supersonic speeds, was crushed upon hitting the ground. He said it was a very interesting engineering project, and that he didn’t think about what the device was designed to do. When he did, after a year or so on the project, he decided he couldn’t live with himself if something he worked on were ever used to cause mass destruction. So he switched gears and began studying to do medical research.

On the other hand, one of my classmates at Notre Dame, a metallurgist, has been working for a defense contractor for almost thirty years. I haven’t spoken with him recently, but I imagine he feels okay about his work, and has decided that any use of weapons he helped design or build would be justified and necessary for the defense of the country.

Which one of my classmates is right? I imagine they both are, as long as they think seriously about what they are doing, assent to it, and take responsibility for the work of their hands. Engineers at BP are no different than the other professionals in the company—the accountants, CEOs, marketing people, executive assistants. They all have influence on outcomes. It’s easy to blame the people who handle the money—think Wall Street—but it’s usually not that simple.

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Clean up for the recent spill in the San Francisco Bay was partially cleaned up by hair. Hair is a great catalyst in absorbing oil. Image courtesy of Matter of Trust.

Volunteering in the Steinhart Aquarium has given me a deeper respect and love for the ocean. Which I didn’t think was possible as I grew up walking Santa Cruz beaches with my grandfather. I have always loved the ocean. I cringe thinking about the Gulf spill and feel overwhelmed with dread about is affect on coastal and marine ecosystems

The way clean up has been dealt with by BP makes my skin crawl. I was sent an article about the 3 million gallons of oil being hastily cleaned up with chemical dispersants. Director of Oceana, Jacqueline Savitz, commented on the massive use of these dispersants as a lose-lose situation: “These chemicals are toxic. It would probably be illegal to dump them in the ocean under any other circumstances.". One dispersant in particular, Corexit 9500, has been noted as four times as toxic as oil.

Making a toxic soup is not the only way to go about a clean up. Clean up for the recent spill in the San Francisco Bay was partially cleaned up by hair. It was a sustainable and effective measure. Hair is a great catalyst in absorbing oil. Matter of Trust has set up a program to collect human hair from salons. Phil McCrory, stylist and inventor of the hair mat, notes “There are over 370,000 hair salons in the US and each collects about 1 pound of hair a day. Right now, most of that goes into the waste stream, but it should all be made into hairmats." Hairmats are mats made out of clippings from salons that are then made into square mats or boons, which are hairs stuffed into nylon socks. These are used to absorb oil from oil spills. Matter of Trust has also been partnering with other organizations like Fungi.com in order to research ways of making used hairmats into clean and usable compost. With Fungi.com research is being done to see if mushrooms break down the oil in the hairmats into usable compost. If this proves successful, you have a cycle of clean up that mimics the no waste cycle found in nature. I saw the hair mats in action when they demonstrated them at one NightLife at the California Academy of Sciences. It is such a simple and effective tool for these natural catastrophes.

What’s more is Matter of Trust has been mobilized in the clean up efforts in the Gulf. They are now in Wave 8 of their efforts of getting hairmats out to contaminated areas. You can help by donating hair or supplies. More information can be found on how you can get involved by going to their website. The more hair that is donated and made into hair mats means the less toxic chemicals mixed into the ocean. Which to me, seems like a much better way to go about clean up efforts.

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Staff at the International Bird Rescue and Research Center caring for oiled birds.

When two gigantic oil tankers collided near Golden Gate Bridge in 1971, more than 900,000 gallons of oil were spilled into the waters of the San Francisco Bay. Thousands of birds and animals were covered in oil and in great danger. Rescue centers to the scale that were needed did not exist. Concerned citizens and professionals snapped to attention and set up emergency centers, one being a facility in Richmond. Alice Berkner was one of those citizens and she was inspired by the efforts of the crew. As a registered nurse, she was also filled with ideas of how to improve on this brand new field. Alice and a group of volunteers were compelled to find the solution that worked best for future injured wildlife and The International Bird Rescue and Research Center (IBRRC) was born.

The center has since been working non-stop to save wildlife that suffers from oil spills and other disasters. In 2001, IBRRC helped to open the state-funded Oiled Wildlife Care and Education Center in Cordelia (Fairfield), California at the northern end of San Francisco Bay, a key facility in California's Oiled Wildlife Care Network. This facility contains IBRRC's new headquarters and the International Training Center for Oiled Wildlife Response. Their work includes training volunteers, consulting with the petrol industry, and managing a professional emergency response team. Their efforts have covered over 200 oil spills in 11 states, including the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. A southern rescue center in San Pedro, Los Angeles also contributes to the efforts.

What makes oil spills so toxic for birds?

Birds are made to be buoyant in the water, light in the air and warm and insulated wherever they go. Oil penetrates and opens up the structure of the plumage of birds, reducing its insulating ability, making the birds more vulnerable to temperature fluctuations. It also makes them heavy and less able to float above the water or take off for flight. In this exposed condition, they are unable to escape from predators or find food. As they attempt to preen themselves, they ingest the toxic substances. Unless there is human intervention, most birds affected by an oil spill do not survive.

Fortunate for those birds, and for us humans who are lucky enough to share the planet with them, organizations like the IBRRC exist and are powered by passionate wildlife heroes, like Jay Holcomb.

Jay Holcomb has served as director of the center for the past 24 years and has many amazing stories to tell, from pelicans to penguins.

You can hear these stories at, "Saving Seabirds – Stories from the Frontline" with Jay Holcomb of the International Bird Rescue Research Center. This will be an inspiring benefit presentation by Jay on January 28th at the Oakland Zoo. All proceeds from this event will go support future bird rescue efforts.

Discovered an oiled bird?
In California, call the Oiled Wildlife Care Network at 1-877-823-6926.

Interested in volunteering? Classes are available.

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Areas where the oil spread after the spill. See this map and others.

And November's the month last year when the Cosco Busan crashed, leaking 53,000 gallons of black goo into San Francisco Bay.

So biologists will be particularly attentive this November, one year after the oil spill, to see if there's a noticeable dip in the numbers of herring in the Bay, or the number of migratory birds that alight here.

The number of birds harmed by the oil spill is not really known. More than 2,000 birds were killed – but those are simply the birds that were identified, not the total number. Since many dead birds in remote areas were never found, and since predators took away many of the hurt birds, the estimate for the total number of birds harmed by the spill is many times higher than that. So researchers are conducting experiments to determine a provable, scientific estimate of the number of birds killed or harmed by the oil spill.

According to California Fish and Game scientist Julie Yamomoto, it only takes a spot of oil the size of a nickel to harm a bird. It's not just uncomfortable, she says, it's actually lethal – because the oil is like a hole in a wetsuit, and birds that have been oiled become hypothermic. And they also lose buoyancy, so birds can actually sink and drown in the ocean.

All the experiments and data on habitats, fish, birds and other wildlife will be compiled into something called the Natural Resource Damage Assessment.

It's nicknamed NRDA (pronounced "nerd-a") and that's pretty apt. It's a little wonky, to say the least. The data is supposed to be completed by the end of next year, and then the NRDA report is expected to be compiled and submitted sometime in 2010.

Listen to the Oil Spill Anniversary radio report online.

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You may listen to the "Cleaning Up Oil in the Bay" radio report online, as well as find additional links and resources.

Amy Standen is a Reporter for QUEST and Radio News at KQED-FM.

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Oil boom at Crab Cove. Credit: gwen

Go to: KQED | News: SF Bay Oil Spill

See and contribute photos to KQED Public Radio's: SF Bay Oil Spill photo pool.

Craig Rosa is an Interactive Producer for QUEST at KQED.

latitude: 37.7631, longitude: -122.4093

Oil booms at Crissy Field. Credit: fredsharples

It seems that the fate of birds in these situations provokes an especially emotional response in most people. Maybe it’s their visibility, maybe it’s the metaphor of losing flight, but there’s something about an oil-covered bird that makes plain the most tragic consequences of human interactions with nature.

Standing at the beach (which I visit frequently because it’s across from my office) made me realize how much there is to understand about the Bay’s inner workings. Knowing that there was much less oil on Crissy Field than at Rodeo Beach made me consider how the Bay’s currents flow than I had before. The booms floating in the water prompted questions about whether marine microorganisms are filtered out along with the oil, what role such critters play, and how they’re faring in an oily environment. Watching ducks splash about in the marsh, I wondered about the less-visible fates of the plants and fish below the surface. No doubt the oil spill's effects are beyond birds and oily blobs on the beach, hidden to those of us unfamiliar with the Bay’s ecosystems and mechanics.

While Craig and I meandered the dunes with Park Service staff days before, we learned that Crissy Field is an ever-changing environment, always in flux, sometimes through forces of nature and sometime at the hands of humans. Remembering this was heartening. Crissy Field has gone from natural shoreline to air strip and back to shoreline again, and has recovered from past oil spills much larger than this one. Nature (with a little help from concerned citizens) has amazing repair mechanisms, and has allowed Crissy Field to survive many assaults during its history. Despite its current scars, it will survive this as well.

Robin Marks is a journalist and science writer who current serves as a Multimedia Projects Developer for the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA.

latitude: 37.8058, longitude: -122.4530