While there’s cause for hope that relatively few seabirds will be harmed by the Orange County oil spill, an expert is warning that large numbers of fatalities typically don’t show up until as much as a week after such events.
A clear assessment of the spill’s total impact on fish, sea mammals and coastal habitat will take even longer. While modern oil cleanup efforts have become increasingly efficient, numerous variables make it difficult to predict how long it will take to do the job. Wind, storms, wave size and ocean currents all affect how far the spill will spread and how quickly it can be contained.
As of Monday evening, just eight oiled birds had been collected, according to the running tally being kept by UC Davis’ Oiled Wildlife Care Network. One, a brown pelican, was euthanized.
But the most vulnerable birds may still be out at sea.
“Most of the birds that would be affected are those who sit on the water, offshore,” said William Sydeman, a seabirds researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Those birds include common murres, surf scoters and grebes.
“It takes maybe four to seven days after a spill for the numbers to catch up,” he said. “It’s good that there aren’t a lot of affected birds taken in so far, but we can expect to see the number of dead birds to increase considerably in the days ahead.”
If there’s a hint of good news for the birds, it’s that the spill comes at a time when their coastal population in Southern California is at an annual ebb, said Kim Kolpin, executive director of the Bolsa Chica Land Trust. Birds aren’t nesting or mating, the summer migrating birds have left and the winter migrating birds won’t begin arriving until later this month or early November.
“If this was summer, when our migratory shorebirds were here, this would have been catastrophic,” Kolpin said.
Kolpin said another bit of good news for the bird population is that, so far, the Bolsa Chica wetlands have been spared. A boom was installed across the inlet, before the first traces of oil began showing up on nearby beaches, and as of midday Tuesday it was keeping petroleum out of the bird-rich habitat at the wetlands.
The Huntington Beach Wetlands have not been as fortunate, with oil entering the Talbert Marsh and cleanup efforts well underway there. While migratory birds aren’t present, there are plenty of year-round birds that may be exposed to the oil.
Sydeman, of Scripps, said that for species that are residents of the area — including terns, comorants and pelicans — “there’s not a good time for an oil spill.”
Oil kills
In the May 2015 Santa Barbara oil spill just north of Refugio State Beach, 203 dead birds were collected. Because the actual number of fatalities from a spill is considerably higher than those documented, the final estimate was that 550 birds died. That spill of 140,000 gallons was a similar size to the estimated 126,000 to come from the pipeline offshore of Orange County last weekend.
“I would expect similar numbers in this case,” Sydeman said. “It doesn’t take a lot to have an estimated total of 500 killed.”
In the Refugio spill, 132 sea mammals were injured or killed by the oil, including 71 sea lions and dolphins that died, according to the joint state-federal assessment. Although there have been boaters’ reports of oiled sea mammals offshore in recent days, as of Tuesday afternoon there was no official documentation of any injuries or deaths to those mammals from the weekend spill.
But those could take time to be registered as well.
“The Refugio data took a year to compile,” said Clarissa Anderson, a biological oceanographer at Scripps Institution. She added that it’s too early to even access how far the spill will reach.
“There are too many variables,” she said, noting the range of weather and ocean conditions at play. “There’s a lot of uncertainty.”
Visible injury and death aren’t the only consequences facing coastal wildlife, Kolpin noted.
“All the sea mammals and fish, even if they survive this, can have toxins in them and it can effect reproduction and other aspects of their health,” she said. The oil can also contaminate mussels, barnacles and shellfish, as well as underwater habitats.
Sydeman said this leads to food-chain issues, including seabirds who dine on fish.
“They could ingest small fish that have been oiled,” he said. “Most of the birds in that area eat small fish.”
Timelines
While experts are reluctant to predict when the spill will be contained and the cleanup completed, the Refugio spill offers a model.
The first phase of cleanup there, dubbed “active cleanup and gross oil removal,” took about 3 1/2 months, according to the state-federal assessment. A more detailed “refined oil cleanup” was completed 8 months after the spill.
A restoration plan was finalized in June and is ongoing.
The $60 million in civil penalties against the Refugio pipeline owner, Plains All American Pipeline, included cleanup costs not already covered by the company as well as $22 million for restoration and other mitigation for natural resources damage.
Of the $22 million, $2.2 million will go to improving bird habitat and related bird conservation activities, and $2.3 million for marine mammal recovery and rehabilitation. Another $5.5 million goes to improving the 1,500 acres of shoreline habitat affected by the spill and $6.1 million toward improvements in subtidal and fish habitats.
Because humans lost an estimated 140,000 recreational user days, $3.9 million was set aside for that mitigation, with 53% going to state parks for improvements and the rest to be administered as grants for coastal recreation in the affected areas.
