Our SERENGETI database, where the antelopes run, has a table containing more
than 4000 oil spills from the last fifty years where the spill volume is more than
10,000 gallons. More than 60 are spills estimated as greater than 10 MILLION
gallons. That is a bit misleading as there are on-going natural seepages of
hydrocarbons that put more crude oil into the oceans than ship discharges and
ship sinkings have or will manage. The largest natural oil seepage we are aware of
is Coal Oil Point in the Santa Barbara Channel off the central coast of California
which emits 10,000 gallons per day. It has been studied since the 1960s.
The real problem is WHERE spills occur. For deepwater seeps and sinkings there's
a good chance the oil will stay on the bottom only killing everything but bacteria.
When a disaster strikes oil tankers and oil pipelines typically release lots of
hydrocarbons on the surface. Depending on what kind of hydrocarbons are
involved, there may be direct evaporation or indirect vaporizing (burning). Of
interest is then where the remaining millions of gallons go. 100,000 gallons of
crude and bunker fuel slopping into the frail ecologies of the Galapagos Islands
(courtesy a vessel named Jessica in 2001) can cause far more environmental
damage from a human perspective than the 78,000,000 gallons released by
explosion of the tanker ABT Sommer in 1991 700 miles off Angola. Likewise,
the tanker Tasman Spirit only released 10,000,000 gallons when it was wrecked
and sank in 2003. But it was very close to Karachi, population 15.5 million.
The tanker Nagasaki Spirit and the container ship Ocean Blessing, despite
propitious names, collided in the Malacca Straits in 1992 and tied up marine
traffic in the form of hundreds of ships for days.
There's probably 45,000 active marine petroleum wells. Of those, 3200 are in very
deep water. They almost all leak - most of the time just not very much. The real
problem is when there's a lot of oil near an area rich in life - regardless of whether
the life is plant, animal or human. Some life like coral reefs and mangroves is not
very mobile. Migrating flyers and swimmers will be just as much at risk.