Some of Australia’s most popular white sand beaches were declared a disaster zone today after an 11,000 gallon fuel oil spill from the cargo ship Pacific Adventurer.
The oil blackened miles of pristine beaches and has led to the detainment of the ship by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority.
“This could … be the worst environmental disaster we have faced.” - Anna Bligh, Queensland Premier
An oil spill on Wednesday has left more than 40 miles of Australia’s Sunshine Coast in dire straits.
While salmon, otters, and other animals in the area have experienced partial or full recoveries, this group of whales has struggled ever since the 11-million-gallon oil spill in 1989. At that point, the whales numbered 22. Today they’re down to just seven.
The American Chemical Society reports that aerogel or “frozen smoke” may be the holy grail of sponges for capturing oil from wastewater and soaking up oil spills. Unlike other costly and inefficient sponges, hydrophobic silica aerogels are both highly porous and absorbent.
[Creative Commons photo by Russian Doors/Marine Photobank]
A team of researchers have developed a color-coded bacteria that will make it much easier to detect oil-spills and other forms of environmental pollution.
During a recent sea expedition the team successfully used the bacteria, which contains a protein that glows blue when viewed though a simple light-detecting device, to detect oil.
This Australian Senator states his position very clearly: It’s not that oil tankers are unsafe, they just need to build them so that the fronts stop falling off! Enjoy this satirical short (under 2 mins.).
OuchLOL
Every time that I see “Arctic” paired with “oil” in the one sentence, I start getting antsy. It can only mean one thing, and that one thing is eventually going to see oil spills coating ice-sheets rocking up on the front pages of our newspapers. And over and over people are reminded that whatever oil lays beneath those icy plains, won’t sustain the planet for very long.
A government-run US Geological Survey found that 90 billion barrels of oil and a vast quantity of natural gas is waiting beneath the Arctic Circle. These results came to light late last week, once again reenergizing publicity for the future of Arctic drilling.
According to the study, 90 billion barrels of crude, 1,670 trillion cubic feet of gas and 44 million barrels of natural gas liquids, are all just waiting for humans to come and extract them at any cost. Those humans will probably be representatives of the six countries that own – for a given value of “own” – stakes in the Arctic; Russia, Canada, Sweden, Norway, Greenland and the US.
“The Alaska platform really looms as the most obvious place to look for oil in the Arctic right now,” said USGS geologist Donald Gautier.
“We’re not antidevelopment. We’re not antigrowth. But this is just stupid.”
How many times has that been muttered over the past few years, in an attempt to bring a semblance of common sense to the world?
The answer is, obviously, far too many. But nevertheless it has once again been spoken by Margaret Williams of the World Wildlife Fund in Alaska in response to the leasing of millions of offshore acres for petroleum development in the Chukchi Sea, off Alaska.
What’s it like helping to clean up after the single worst ecological disaster in a nation’s history? Ecoworldly went to the Taean Peninsula–the site of South Korea’s recent oil spill–to lend a hand and find out.
There is, perhaps, the sense in the West that Asian countries are less concerned about the environment. Ten years ago, this may have been true. However, ask one of the tens of thousands of Korean volunteers who have come to help clean up the massive 10-million liter (2.6m gallon) oil spill off the West Coast of their country, and you’ll hear another story.
Jun Ho Kim, a university student and volunteer at the oil cleanup, says, “All of the Korean people think about the environment. People used to think that development was best; they only thought about development. Their consciousness has changed. Their concept about the world has changed.
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