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Santa Barbara Oil Spill
The Santa Barbara oil spill occurred in January 1969 in the Santa Barbara Channel, near the city of Santa Barbara in Southern California. The largest oil spill in the USA during this time, and now ranks third after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon and 1989 Exxon Valdez spills. As there is nowhere online about how The USA separated the oil from the ocean, I came to the conclusion that the USA used Natural recovery as the oil slowly decomposed in the water -
The Amoco Cadiz Oil Spill
The Oil Tanker Amoco Cadiz Split into 3 on the coast of France. There was approximately 1 million barrels of crude oil on the tanker. Weather was the cause of the oil spill. This oil spill caused the most recorded death of marine life and around 20,000 birds were recovered dead and covered in oil. There was erosion on beaches and there was no attempt to restore the gravel and there was oil in the sediments which meant there was no way of clean up and would have resulted in more marine death. -
The Ixtoc 1 Oil Spill
Ixtoc I was an oil well being drilled in the Bay of Campeche of the Gulf of Mexico, 100 km northwest of Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche. On 3 June 1979, the well suffered a blowout resulting in one of the largest oil spills ever. In the coming months, experts and divers came in to help cap the oil well and Pemex spent $100,000,000 to clean up the spill. 10,000 to 30,000 barrels were discharged into the Gulf until it was finally capped on 23 March 1980, -
Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
The Exxon Valdez Oil spill crashed west of Alaska spilling 53 million gallons. The tanker struck a reef and the oil spilled all over the coral therefore killing it. To clean up the oil, they decided to use high pressure hot water but during the cleanup, thick oil and kelp was clogging up the cleaning equipment. The death toll was 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, 12 river otters, 300 harbor seals, 247 bald eagles, 22 orcas. By 2014, scientists reported that some species seem to have recovered. -
The Persian Gulf War Oil Spill
The Gulf War Oil Spill resulting from the Persian War. The goal was to blow up a potential US Marine landing. Around 3 million US barrels spilt into the ocean. There was no clean up on the shoreline as the oil penetrated much more deeper into the sediment because those sediments had a lot of crab burrows and oil was deep inside it. The effect this oil spill had on the eco-system is that there was no way to get the oil out of the sediment therefore, there was a long term effect on the eco system -
Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
Considered to be the largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry and after several failed efforts to contain the flow, the well was declared sealed on September 19, 2010. To clean up this spill, BP and the US Government used physical barriers such as floating booms. The cleanup workers objective was to keep the oil from spreading any further and they used skimmer boats to remove a majority of the oil and they used sorbents to absorb any remaining oil like a sponge.