An Ocean of Oil
From San Francisco Bay, to the Sea of Azov, to the coast south of Santa Cruz, it's been a week of bad news involving oil spills and dead birds.
Most dramatic, at least in our corner of the world, is the damage that resulted when a cargo ship hit a Bay Bridge abutment last week, spilling 58,000 gallons of bunker oil. It's still fouling beaches, killing birds and forcing closure of fisheries -- including the sustainable Dungeness crab fishery.
Most significant was the breakup of an oil tanker and the sinking or grounding of 11 other ships in a severe storm that hit the Kerch Strait on Sunday. The strait links the Black Sea with the Sea of Azov, in southern Russia. At least half a million gallons of fuel oil spilled, killing thousands of birds and fouling at least 16 miles of beaches. The spill affected the Taman Peninsula, home to a wildlife preserve, and oil is sinking to the seafloor, meaning the after-effects will linger for a long time.
Most mysterious was a small spill of a "clear, oily substance" that killed more than 50 seabirds in Monterey Bay early this week.
We're blogging elsewhere about how to get involved if you live in or near the Bay Area. We've already sent several trained Monterey Bay Aquarium staff members north to wildlife rehab facilities, along with a donation of food for the oiled birds. Our staff and volunteers, trained in caring for oiled wildlife, are doing whatever is needed to help the most.
The trifecta of oil spills -- and doubtless others we haven't heard about -- 
begs a larger question: what can we do?
Clearly, the global appetite for petroleum and imported consumer goods is increasing the risk of oil spills. The world demands more oil, so tankers carry it from the places where it's found to the markets that crave it. Russia sends 25 percent of its oil through the Black Sea, and this isn't the first time there's been a spill. The United States imports a staggering volume of goods from Asia, and this won't be the last shipping accident.
The mantra of "reduce, reuse, recyle" applies here, as with other environmental threats. If we use less energy, if we consume fewer goods, that will have an incremental effect on shipping, and incrementally reduce the likelihood that human error or bad weather will create a local disaster.
Cut back on plastics, and you reduce the need for oil to create plastic products as well as ships to carry them to distant markets. (That's also going to affect the growth of the floating plastic patch in the mid-Pacific.) Drive less, and you reduce incrementally the oil from land that ends up in the ocean.
Meanwhile, we can all work to create systems in which accidents are less likely, or less disastrous: 1. Support efforts to require double-hull construction on all ships, and not just tankers. 2. Eliminate more harmful forms of fuel oil as we search for environmentally acceptable biofuels to replace them. (The shipping industry has an entire website devoted to news about sustainable shipping practices.) 3. Create marine protected areas in which ecosystems will be healthier and more resilient in the face of the inevitable accidents.
Just seven years ago, California's threatened sea otters were extremely vulnerable to a catastrophic oil spill along their range. Thanks to citizen lobbying efforts and collaborative negotiations, federal and international rules were changed to move shipping lanes farther offshore -- giving the otters a bigger buffer zone.
We can address other threats facing ocean wildlife as well. That's one reason the Aquarium created its Ocean Action Team. By getting folks to stand up and speak out now, maybe we won't have to write as much about diasters in the future.
