There is a depressing familiarity in the reports coming from the Gulf of Mexico as the slick of oil escaping from fractured pipes on the seabed teases the coast of the Southern states. Before long it will hit the beaches – but in the days and hours of frantic burning, spraying, scooping and planning that come ahead of landfall there is a feeling that, even now, the worst can be avoided. Of course the toxic layer of oil is already starting to claim its toll of wildlife. A guy on the television summed it up neatly ‘When big oil meets big wildlife – wildlife always loses’.
For those of us of a certain age the wreck of the Torrey Canyon is the iconic image of big oil meeting big wildlife. On 18 March 1967 the tanker hit the Seven Stones reef. She was carrying 120,000 tons of crude oil bound for Milford Haven. I was 10 – just getting into wildlife and the images of oil-caked seabirds was a true shock. I remember the RAF bombing the wreck to ignite the oil though (having just looked it up) I was surprised that it was as many as 40 1000lb bombs! I remember the spraying of dispersants – then probably as harmful as the oil itself.
The Torrey Canyon was the first major oil wreck, though the RSPB had been well aware of the risk of deliberate discharges of oil from ships back in the 1930s and had campaigned for the process to be stopped. What is sadly certain is that the Gulf of Mexico disaster won’t be the last.
But will lessons be learned? The Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has spotted the risks of deep sea oil exploitation and has cooled his supported in the light of images going around the world from the Gulf of Mexico.
My only direct involvement in an oil incident was on the Mersey estuary in 1989. Thankfully this was small oil meeting small wildlife – luck was on our side as the incident (a ruptured pipe running to a refinery) happened in August when bird numbers were at their lowest. Three months later and tens of thousands of birds would have been at risk.
The Mersey incident was serious but small, its impact localised and short term. But the images of nature stained by oil, of sea lavender sporting blobs of sticky black oil, of black-headed gulls with blackened bellies sitting on roofs preening and ingesting the toxic crude oil were a wake-up call. Suddenly the importance of the Mersey for wildlife was centre stage, something to be taken seriously. We don’t know how bad the situation in Gulf of Mexico will get. Already 11 human lives have been lost – the toll of this disaster is already unbearably high.
The Gulf coast stands directly in harms way – Audubon, our BirdLife International partner in the USA describes the special places at risk here. They are listed as Important Bird Areas, places amongst the most important places in the Americas for birds. The black skimmers flying behind the reporter on yesterday’s BBC 10 o’clock news are just one species amongst many at direct risk.
In a coincidence of timing BirdLife International has just launched a full inventory of IBAs throughout the Americas – four of them in the Gulf face the full consequences of what happens when the exploitation of oil goes spectacularly wrong. The full list numbers 2,345 sites – the long-term consequence of our dependence on burning fossil fuels such as oil is global warming which will directly threaten far more of these special places than the four in the front line. If this latest wake-up call stimulates a faster and more profound move to renewable sources of energy then there is a silver lining to this very black cloud.