(UPDATED*) Science News: Twenty years after Exxon Valdez, some parts of the bay are still markedly short of sea otters…
Much is being written on the 20th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez’s collision with a rocky shoal in Prince William Sound, Alaska, and the immense oil spill that followed. The outward signs of oil pollution are long gone. Much of the wildlife is back. It looks for the most part like an episodic insult that Nature is shrugging off. But if anybody has felt complacent – The Tracker confesses it – Science News‘s Janet Raloff has today a sterling and plausible account of why sea otters in at least one locale are still suffering and still unusually hard to find. Just because the remaining oil is out of sight does not mean it is inaccessible except to microbes and a few burrowing worms and clams. Sea otters, it appears, like clams. And they go clamming. Raloff runs this report as part of a multipart series reviewing the whole event. On Monday was Part I, and yesterday Part II.
A few other Exxon Valdez catch-ups, remembrances:
- Reuters – Yereth Rosen : Twenty years after Valdez spill, Exxon grows in Alaska ;
- Wired – Brandon Keim : The Exxon Valdez Spill Is All Around Us ; Treats accident as metaphor for what occurs elsewhere, every day ;
- USNews & World Report – Kent Garber : Oil Drilling Debate Rages on, 20 Years After the Valdez Spill ;
- NYTimes – Andrew C. Revkin (DotEarth): Valdez Legacy: More OIl Moved, Less Lost ; Some needed, quantitative context. Source of graphic above.
- *UPDATE: Yale e360 – Doug Struck: Twenty Years Later, Impacts Of The Exxon Valdez Linger ; Struck covered the spill for the Baltimore Sun when it happened. This is a super re-visit to the scene and its lingering impacts. One interesting aspect of this is the account of profound changes in the management of tanker traffic through the area since the spill. ;
