RHF wrote:


- Today, it's a thriving aquatic environment, teeming with life.
- The oyster and crab beds are richer than ever, and the local
- lifestyle is better than before the spill.

Exxon Valdez Anniversary: 20 Years Later, Oil Remains
Christine Dell'Amore
National Geographic News
March 23, 2009

Two decades after the worst oil spill in U.S. history, huge quantities
of oil still coat Alaska's shores with a toxic glaze, experts say.

More than 21,000 gallons of crude oil remain of the 11 million gallons
of crude oil that bled from the stranded tanker Exxon Valdez on the
night of March 23, 1989.

The oil—which has been detected as far as 450 miles (724 kilometers)
away from the spill site in Prince William Sound—continues to harm
wildlife and the livelihoods of local people, according to conservation
groups. (See an Alaska map.)

Dennis Takahashi-Kelso, who was on the ground at the Exxon Valdez
disaster as Alaska's commissioner of environmental conservation,
remembers wading through knee-deep pools of bubbling, thick oil. The
smell of the pure oil was intense and pungent, he said.

When he returned to the same beaches years later, he found "surprisingly
fresh" oil just below the sand.

(Related: "Alaska Oil Spill Fuels Concerns Over Arctic Wildlife, Future
Drilling".)

"The damage that [the spill] created is something beyond anyone's
imagination," said Michel Boufadel, Temple University's Civil and
Environmental Engineering chair, who has just completed research on why
the oil persists.

Oil-Munching Bacteria

An 11,000-person crew removed oil from the beaches until 1994, when
government officials decided to end the clean up effort. At that time,
what was left of the the oil was naturally disintegrating at a high
rate, and experts predicted it would be gone within a few years. But
they were wrong.

Oil naturally "disappears" through two processes: As the tide rises over
an oil patch, the water sloughs off bits of oil, which then disperse
into the ocean as tiny, less harmful droplets that can biodegrade easily.

Biodegradation occurs when bacteria or other microorganisms break down
oil as part of their life cycle.

But Prince William Sound is what ecologists call a closed system—it's
not exposed to big, pounding waves, so the oil has time to seep into the
sand, according to Margaret Williams, who oversees conservation in the
Bering Sea for the nonprofit World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

In these stagnant areas, oil-munching bacteria don't receive the
nutrient-rich water flow they need to thrive, said Temple University's
Boufadel.

"The assumption that oil is going to disappear is surprising—we have to
put an effort into understanding oil spills and how they interact with
the environment much better," Boufadel said.

Boufadel's research on the leftover oil was funded by the Exxon Valdez
Oil Spill Trustee Council, a state and federal partnership to restore
the damaged ecosystem.

Shangri-La of the North

Twenty years of oil exposure has injured this stretch of Alaska's coast,
which WWF's Williams calls the Shangri-la of the north.

In its first toxic sweep, the oil spill killed about 250,000 seabirds,
4,000 sea otters, 250 bald eagles, and more than 20 orca whales,
according to WWF.

Today, one of the orca pods that lost family members has not recovered.

Sea otters and harlequin ducks continue to die by digging into the sand
for food and releasing buried oil.

At the bottom of the food chain, pink salmon eggs and small
invertebrates such as mussels and clams are not yet back to their
original population levels.

And local fishers, who lost more than U.S. $286 million after the
herring fishery collapsed in 1989, are still waiting for the fishery to
rebound.