Water and sediment sampling on Morrow Lake near Battle Creek, Mich., during the response to the Enbridge pipeline spill of oil sands product. August 2, 2010 (U.S. Coast Guard)
Unless there is a big spill or accident, most people probably don’t think much about different types of crude oil, where it comes from, or how it is transported.
Yet there is an ongoing national debate about Canada’s Alberta oil sands and whether to complete the Keystone XL pipeline that would carry Alberta oil sands products to refineries in the U.S. Gulf Coast. This proposed pipeline has gotten a lot of attention, but there are existing pipelines carrying oil sands products around Canada and across the border into the U.S., as well as tanker, barge, and rail operations doing the same.
The Exxon Pegasus pipeline spill in Mayflower, Ark., on March 29, 2013, was a reminder that oil sands are already being transported and, whenever oil is transported, there is risk of a spill.
Oil sands are considered an unconventional oil type that has been growing in prominence as oil prices fluctuate and production technologies improve. As a result, there are many questions about how best to respond to spills of crude oil products derived from oil sands. One of the major concerns is the buoyancy of oil sands products, and their potential to sink, especially in sediment-laden waters. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is still cleaning up submerged oil from the July 2010 Enbridge pipeline spill in Michigan’s Kalamazoo River.
Last week, NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration participated in an Oil Sands Products Forum held at NOAA’s Western Regional Center in Seattle, Wash. The forum was sponsored by the Washington State Department of Ecology Spills Program, U.S. Coast Guard, and the Pacific States/British Columbia Oil Spill Task Force. The University of New Hampshire Center for Spills in the Environment facilitated the forum.
The two-day meeting included a full day of presentations and discussions about oil sands (also known as tar sands or bitumen) and their related products—covering everything from extraction, refining, and transportation to chemistry, how they move and react in the environment, and recent case studies of spill responses. Over 50 environmental specialists, oil spill planners, and responders attended from government agencies, tribal governments, nongovernmental organizations, and industry. Several oil sands experts from Canadian agencies and organizations also attended and presented.
On the second day, spill responders were presented with four different spill scenarios involving oil sands products, and the potential issues and challenges highlighted by the different spill situations were thoroughly discussed and recorded. Presentations and meeting notes will be made available through the Center for Spills in the Environment. The focus of this forum was not to discuss whether or not oil sands should be exploited as a resource, but rather, how to prepare better for and then deal effectively with a spill of oil sands products when it happens.
For decades, two Alcoa alumininum facilities discharged toxic PCBs into the St. Lawrence River, its tributaries the Grasse and Raquette Rivers, and the surrounding area in Massena, N.Y. Alcoa and Reynolds are paying $19.4 million to settle the resulting damages to natural resources. (NOAA)
In the northern reaches of upstate New York, just across and upriver from Canada, two factories chug along. Both now owned by aluminum manufacturer Alcoa, these factories have been producing aluminum on the banks of the Grasse and St. Lawrence Rivers since 1903 and 1958. And like many other industries in the past, these two Alcoa plants in Massena, N.Y., discharged a stream of toxic pollutants into the water, air, and soil around them.
Now, only a few miles away, dozens of young Mohawk children at the Akwesasne Freedom School attempt to reclaim their Mohawk heritage and a connection with the natural world and traditional practices endangered in part by the area’s contaminated history.
Today, the majority of the $19.4 million settlement with Alcoa and the former Reynolds Metals Company will go toward healing past wounds to this rich ecological and cultural environment with a suite of proposed restoration projects.
A History of Pollution on the St. Lawrence
Starting in the late 1950s, Alcoa and Reynolds used polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in hydraulic fluid and electrical equipment as they produced aluminum at these two factories. Nearby, General Motors Central Foundry (GM) also used PCBs in the hydraulic fluids when building automotive engines and in electric equipment. The PCBs from these three facilities in turn made their way into the St. Lawrence River, its tributaries the Grasse and Raquette Rivers, and the surrounding area.
Banned in 1979, PCBs are a group of persistent and highly toxic compounds which, in addition to causing cancer in animals, affects growth, behavior, reproduction, immune response, and neurological development. Manufacturing activities at these three factories released a slew of other industrial pollutants [PDF] that impacted the environment, including aluminum, fluoride, cyanide, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs, a hazardous component of oil, coal, and tar).
In 2000, Alcoa purchased Reynolds and as a result, Reynolds’ facility is now known as Alcoa East. Its sister facility, Alcoa West, is the longest continually operating aluminum facility in the world. The third, now-shuttered, General Motors factory sits next door to Alcoa East and has already paid approximately $1.8 million for environmental restoration in separate bankruptcy proceedings. Combined with $18.5 million from Alcoa’s settlement, the Alcoa and GM settlements will provide approximately $20.3 million for specific projects to restore access to recreational fishing, fish and wildlife, and Mohawk traditional practices and language.
Moving Toward Environmental Restoration
The St. Lawrence Environmental Trustee Council, a group of federal, state, and tribal governments which includes NOAA, has coordinated with the companies to assess the damages to ecological resources, recreational fishing, and the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe’s cultural resources. Due to the history of industrial pollution released from these factories into the St. Lawrence River watershed, the sediments, fish, birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians along the St. Lawrence, Grasse, and Raquette Rivers have all suffered. Under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, various cleanup activities, such as dredging and capping contaminated river sediments, have been attempting to remediate the polluted environment.
Improvements to spawning habitat and stocking of lake sturgeon is one of the restoration projects preferred by the natural resource trustees. (Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe)
As part of a process that moves beyond cleanup, the trustees, led by the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe, have identified preferred recreational fishing, ecological, and cultural restoration projects to compensate the public for the resulting environmental injuries.
For example, contaminants from the three facilities degraded adult and juvenile fish habitat for species such as the American eel (currently being considered for Endangered Species Act protection) and the state-threatened lake sturgeon. The presence of toxic PCBs triggered fish consumption advisories for the St. Lawrence, Grasse, Raquette, and St. Regis Rivers. In place since 1984, these advisories have resulted in an estimated 221,000–250,000 fewer fishing trips on these rivers, both in the past and into the future. In response, four new boat launches will be constructed and one existing launch will be upgraded to provide shoreline and in-river fishing access points.
The trustees also will protect and restore wetland and upland habitat, enhance stream banks, improve impeded fish and other wildlife passage through the rivers, enhance fish stocks and spawning habitat, and restore bird habitat. The preferred restoration projects are described in the St. Lawrence River Environment Restoration Compensation and Determination Plan [PDF]. The public can comment on this plan and on the Alcoa $19.4 million natural resource damage settlement, which includes $18.5 million for restoration and nearly $1 million in reimbursement for past environmental assessment costs.
Reconnecting to the Natural World
One of the most creative examples of the preferred restoration projects centers not on restoring natural resources such as sturgeon, a species important to the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe, but on restoring the unique culture of the Mohawks, which is tied closely to the natural world.
A tribal apprenticeship program will work to restore traditional Mohawk cultural practices, including basketmaking. (Akwesasne Museum and Cultural Center)
Grassy meadows on both sides of the Lower Grasse River were set aside for the Mohawks of Akewsasne by the Seven Nations of Canada Treaty of 1796. The name Akwesasne means “the land where the partridge drums,” a reference to the sound created by the rapids of the St. Lawrence River prior to the construction of dams.
The people of Akwesasne were directly impacted by the contamination from the Alcoa, Reynolds, and GM factories. An innovative tribal apprenticeship program will seek to restore traditional Mohawk cultural practices that have been lost or impaired since contamination limited use of the uplands, the rivers, and their natural resources. The tribe, as a trustee, has targeted four traditional areas for apprentices to receive hands-on training from experienced masters:
Water, fishing, and use of the river.
Horticulture and basketmaking.
Medicinal plants and healing.
Hunting and trapping.
The apprenticeship program will provide experience in directly harvesting, preparing, preserving, and producing traditional Mohawk cultural products while promoting Mohawk language in each aspect of the training.
Restoration funding also will support existing institutions and programs focused on recovering cultural practices and language injured by contaminants from these manufacturing sites.
Arctic Ocean, Canada Basin, July 22, 2005. (NOAA/Jeremy Potter)
The United States and our neighbors to the north in Canada share a border approximately 5,525 miles long. Some 1,538 miles (or roughly 28%) of which are shared with the State of Alaska alone. And with this shared boundary comes shared natural resources, shared interests, and the need for a shared understanding of how we can work together to protect our communities, wildlife, and environment from the escalating risk of oil spills and other accidents in the Arctic.
To that end, NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration co-hosted a workshop in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, with the Inuvialuit Settlement Region Joint Secretariat (a Canadian delegate representing aboriginal interests to the Arctic Council) and the University of New Hampshire’s Coastal Response Research Center from February 12-13, 2013. The goal was to bring together representatives from both the U.S. and Canada to examine the potential for incorporating Canadian data into NOAA’s online mapping tool, Arctic ERMA®.
Arctic ERMA (Environmental Response Management Application) is an online Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tool being used to prepare and plan for Arctic pollution response, assessment, and environmental restoration. ERMA brings together critical information needed for an effective emergency response in the Arctic’s distinctive conditions, such as the extent and concentration of sea ice, locations of ports and oil and gas pipelines, and vulnerable environmental resources which could be harmed by an oil spill.
The workshop participants came from a variety of organizations. Here, top row: NASA, Consultant, Canada Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Canadian Ice Service, Inuvialuit Settlement Region Joint Secretariat. Bottom row: Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Environment Canada, NOAA. (University of New Hampshire/Kathy Mandsager)
Discussions at the workshop focused on identifying the regional gaps in data in Arctic ERMA, usable data formats, and how to improve functionality and access to information and tools that would help in the case of an oil spill or environmental accident. Workshop participants spanned multiple areas of expertise: government emergency responders, environmental protection and fisheries managers, weather and natural resource agencies, private industry, non-governmental organizations, local indigenous communities, and universities.
By the end, the workshop improved our understanding of U.S. and Canadian data management practices and systems, how we identify both the data that are available and still needed, and what the long-term training needs are for Arctic communities. We also discussed at length how to better incorporate traditional local knowledge about landscapes and natural resources in Arctic ERMA. We hope that engaging in these conversations and building strong relationships today will promote the kind of cooperation and collaboration that will carry us through any environmental emergencies in the future.
This is a post by NOAA Environmental Scientist Dr. Amy Merten.
The ShoreZone project photographs, maps, and collects information about Pacific Northwest shorelines, like in this view of Kruzof Island, Sitka Sound, Alaska. (NOAA Fisheries)
As Chief of the Spatial Data Branch in NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration, my focus is all about data. In particular, that means figuring out how to access data related to oil spills: the type of information useful for planning before a spill and for the response, environmental injury assessment, and restoration after a spill. Once we get that data, which often comes from other science agencies, universities, and industry, we can then ingest it into Arctic ERMA®, NOAA’s online mapping tool for environmental disaster data. While at the Alaska Marine Science Symposium this week, I have spent much of my time working with experts who provide and manage that kind of data.
For example, the Alaska Ocean Observing System (AOOS) provides real-time and historical coastal data to multiple stakeholders, including NOAA for Arctic ERMA. AOOS is also the host for the newly signed data-sharing agreement [PDF] between NOAA and three oil companies (Shell, ConocoPhillips, and StatOil). These companies have agreed to share the physical oceanographic, geological, and biological data they have been collecting near areas of Arctic offshore oil and gas activities since 2009. This is an unprecedented amount of data that the industry now is sharing with the federal government and the public. The data are available at www.aoos.org.
A view of Anchorage from the Alaska Marine Science Symposium. (NOAA)
My colleague and our Arctic ERMA geographic information system (GIS) expert, Zach Winters-Staszak, attended the Arctic Mapping Workshop sponsored by our partners at the University of Alaska Fairbanks GINA program. Their geographic information network gives us access to high-resolution base maps, imagery, high frequency radar, ice radar, webcams, and more. Zach learned about new data sets and new ways for pulling high impact data into Arctic ERMA.
Another helpful information source I learned more about was NOAA’s ShoreZone project. ShoreZone [PDF] is a popular Pacific Northwest dataset of high-resolution aerial videos and photographs of the shoreline in Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon at extreme low tide. The photos and videos are augmented with habitat classifications of the different zones along the shoreline, such as salt marsh or kelp beds. We already pull in ShoreZone data layers into our Arctic and Pacific Northwest ERMA sites.
These data are valuable for preparedness and response to oil spills and for understanding places where oil and marine debris may accumulate naturally. It’s especially useful for understanding what the shoreline might look like before going out to survey for signs of oil or marine debris accumulation. It can help you decide how you’re going to access the shore (boat, helicopter, on foot) and what you might expect to find. ShoreZone surveyed the Kotzebue and North Slope regions of the Alaskan Arctic this past summer, which we’re excited to draw into Arctic ERMA when they are available.
Dr. Amy Merten is pictured here with children from the Alaskan village of Kivalina. She was in Alaska for an oil spill workshop in the village of Kotzebue.
Amy Merten is the Spatial Data Branch Chief in NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration. Amy developed the concept for the online mapping tool ERMA (Environmental Response Mapping Application). ERMA was developed in collaboration with the University of New Hampshire. She expanded the ERMA team at NOAA to fill response and natural resource trustee responsibilities during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill. Amy oversees data management of the resulting oil spill damage assessment. She received her doctorate and master’s degrees from the University of Maryland.
This is a guest post by University of Washington graduate students Robin, Terry, Shanese, Jeff, Ali, and Colin.
In July of 2010, an Enbridge-owned pipeline spilled oil — which later turned out to be diluted bitumen from Canadian tar sands — into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. Because the heavier elements of the oil became submerged in the river, response-related boat traffic trying to remove the oil ended up crushing freshwater mussels. The scientists shown here were assessing those impacts. (NOAA)
What are tar sands?
How are they different than other forms of oil, and why have they been such a hot topic in the news recently?
What environmental risks might tar sands oil pose if spilled during transportation?
How would this affect NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration (OR&R)?
As tar sands production continues to rise in North America, these are some of the core questions NOAA hopes to answer—and therefore, are the focus of our research. Our project team of six graduate students at the University of Washington is working to gather information that will help inform OR&R’s preparedness and response efforts for potential spills of tar sands oil.
Tar Sands: The Basics
Tar sands, also referred to as oil sands, are a combination of clay, sand, water, and heavy black viscous oil called bitumen. They can be extracted and processed to separate the bitumen, which is upgraded to synthetic crude oil and refined to make asphalt, gasoline, and jet fuel.
Bitumen. (Government of Alberta, Canada)
Because of its thick consistency (which resembles peanut butter), bitumen, unlike most conventional crude oils, must be diluted with a cocktail of other petroleum compounds before it is able to flow through pumps and tanks or pipelines for transport. This thinner, more fluid product is called diluted bitumen or dilbit. Another similar blend made from bitumen and synthetic crude oil is called synthetic bitumen or synbit.
Over the past decade, this resource which was previously uneconomical due to the high cost of extraction has become profitable as oil prices have increased and extraction technologies have improved. While many countries, including the U.S., have known deposits of tar sands, the world’s largest reserves are located across three deposits in northern Alberta, Canada—the Athabasca, Cold Lake, and Peace River deposits. The Government of Alberta estimates its total reserves of bitumen at about 170 billion barrels.
A map of current and proposed Canadian and U.S. oil pipelines which carry tar sands oils. It includes the proposed TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline which would cross the U.S.-Canadian border and six U.S. states. (Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers/The Facts on Oil Sands Report 2012)
Increased Spill Risks and NOAA
Canada has been producing tar sands products since 1967, but recently, production has ramped up substantially.
Because Canada exports most of its tar sands products, the transportation infrastructure for bitumen—pipelines, rail, and ships— has been expanding as well.
A notable example is the proposed TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline which would cross the Canadian-U.S. boundary, extending from Alberta to Texas. Other proposed projects would increase transportation capacity for tar sands products on both the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts. Expanding traffic to markets in the U.S., Asia, and elsewhere is predicted to increase the potential for spills in and around the Great Lakes, Washington’s Puget Sound, and at other major U.S. shipping terminals and river crossings.
NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration has the responsibility to respond to and provide scientific support for oil and chemical spills in U.S. coastal waters. This means OR&R must be able to anticipate and plan for the increased risks that a tar sands oil spill might bring.
At present, knowledge about the chemical properties and behavior of tar sands products during a marine spill is limited. For example, would the diluted bitumen float or sink in the brackish waters of many ports, where rivers’ fresh water mixes with salty seawater? How should responders be ready to remove that oil if it were suspended in the water column instead of floating on the surface?
These gaps in information make effective spill planning and response more difficult for NOAA and its partners. Key information about tar sands’ chemical and physical properties is proprietary, and regulatory agencies’ knowledge of where and when this material is being transported is limited as well. OR&R has been learning on the job how to deal with some of these challenges, as in the 2010 case of an Enbridge pipeline spilling what later turned out to be tar sands oil into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River.
Project Scope
Over the past three months we have begun investigating key environmental, economic, and transportation issues facing tar sands oil production. We have met with key players, including NOAA scientists and responders, U.S. Coast Guard, Washington Department of Ecology, oil industry representatives, and environmental groups, to define our research questions and the project scope. Currently at the halfway point of our project, we are meeting with NOAA to discuss preliminary findings and further refine our research goals for OR&R’s benefit.
Here’s a peek at what we’ve found so far:
To be transported, bitumen is diluted with a variety of petroleum compounds, and some of this information may be considered trade secrets and is not generally shared, with potential implications for human health and environmental impacts.
Because the base bitumen product has a similar density to water, it has the potential to sink when spilled and undergo significant changes once in the environment—an important consideration for spill response and cleanup.
Canadian tar sands are currently transported across Canada and the United States by ship, rail, and pipeline, with plans to expand substantially.
Because the tar sands industry is relatively new and key information is proprietary, there are gaps in knowledge that warrant additional information sharing and research to improve NOAA’s and other government agencies’ readiness to deal with tar sands oil spills.
The project will wrap up in March 2013, and we will present our final report to the Office and Response and Restoration. We will update our progress on this blog as we get closer to finishing the final report. We look forward to hearing your feedback.
Robin, Terry, Shanese, Jeff, Ali, and Colin are graduate students at the University of Washington in programs at the Evans School of Public Affairs, the Foster School of Business, and the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. OR&R is sponsoring their research project, “Understanding the Risks from Transportation of Tar Sands and Diluted Bitumen” as part of the Environmental Management Certificate Program at the University of Washington. It focuses on providing information to OR&R that will help inform preparedness and response to future spills.
A 66-foot dock sits on Agate Beach, Oregon. Debris of all different sizes and types from the March 2011 tsunami in Japan has washed ashore in the United States. (Oregon Dept. of Parks and Recreation)
The funds will be used to support marine debris response efforts, such as removal of debris, disposal fees, cleanup supplies, detection and monitoring. NOAA anticipates distributing funds to affected regions as the funds are received from Japan and will work to determine immediate needs and plan for future applications.
Since the disaster, NOAA has been leading efforts with federal, state and local partners to coordinate a response, collect data, assess the debris, and reduce possible impacts to natural resources and coastal communities.
Debris from the disaster has drifted across the Pacific and reached shorelines in the U.S. and Canada. In July, NOAA provided $50,000 each to Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, and California to support response efforts.
Items from the tsunami that have drifted to U.S. shores include sports balls, a floating dock, buoys, and vessels. Mariners and the public can help report debris by emailing DisasterDebris@noaa.gov with information on significant sightings.
The small boat which washed up on remote Spring Island, British Columbia, Canada, was positively identified as a vessel lost during the 2011 Japan tsunami. Credit: Kevin Head.
On remote Spring Island, northwest of Vancouver Island, Canada, a small boat inscribed with Japanese characters washed up with the tide this summer. A Canadian provincial official has confirmed this boat was lost during the 2011 Japan tsunami. Emergency Management British Columbia matched the serial number on the boat’s hull with one on the Japanese consulate’s list of vessels lost due to the tsunami. Eric Gorbman, who owns a nearby resort, and Kevin Head found and reported the boat on August 9, 2012.
A Summer Decrease in Debris
While this brings the total number of confirmed tsunami debris sightings to 11, summer weather patterns have created a lull in debris turning up on nearby Washington’s coast. This has the state Department of Ecology taking back some of the additional trash receptacles they provided near public access points earlier this summer. Recent decreases in reported marine debris in these areas, along with reports of someone using them to dump household waste, led to the removal.
“We want to ensure we are stretching our dollars as far as we can,” said Peter Lyon, a Washington Department of Ecology regional manager. “In June, when the boxes were placed along beaches, a southwest wind pattern directed more debris ashore in those areas than we are seeing now. When weather patterns shift again in the fall, we are likely to see higher amounts of debris again. So we want to conserve our resources in case that happens.”
The Washington Department of Ecology states that the trash bins can be easily and quickly redeployed within about 24 hours to accommodate possible increases in marine debris in the future. The funding to stock the bins and litter bags came from Department of Ecology’s litter account, setting aside $100,000 to deal with marine debris. These supplies help support community and volunteer efforts to collect and dispose of debris on Washington beaches.
Where Is the Debris Now?
NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration has oceanographers Glen Watabayashi and Amy MacFadyen using our GNOME model to give us an understanding of where debris from the tsunami may be located today. GNOME is a software modeling tool used to predict the possible route pollutants might follow in a body of water, and we use it most frequently during an oil spill.
Our oceanographers are incorporating into this model how the winds and ocean currents since the tsunami may have moved items through the Pacific Ocean. However, rather than forecasting when debris will reach U.S. shores in the future, this model uses data from past winds and currents to show possible patterns of where debris may be concentrated right now.
“For me the story is not what’s been found but what hasn’t been found,” said NOAA oceanographer Glen Watabayashi. “With all the summer vessel traffic along the West Coast and out in the North Pacific, there have been no reports of any large concentrations of debris.”
An aerial view of debris from the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that struck northern Japan, taken on March 13, 2011, only days after the disaster struck. Debris fields such as these are no longer visible. (U.S. Navy)
As the devastating tsunami waves which hit Japan in March 2011 receded from land, they washed approximately 5 million tons of debris into the ocean. While Japan estimates about 30 percent of that originally floated away from shore, there are no accurate estimates of how much debris is still floating today.
Concerns persist that this diverse array of floating materials—everything from boats and building rubble to appliances and consumer products—could wash up on shores in Hawaii, Alaska, the U.S. West Coast, and Canada over the next few years.
A recently updated model from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicted that some very buoyant debris already may have reached the Pacific Northwest coast as early as winter 2011–2012.
NOAA researchers were validating these results with other modeling experts when a Japanese fishing vessel was reported adrift in Canadian waters near British Columbia, and its connection to the tsunami was confirmed. The model shows that the bulk of the tsunami debris, however, likely remains dispersed in the Pacific Ocean north of the main Hawaiian Islands and east of Midway Atoll.
NOAA continues to lead efforts with international, federal, state, and local partners to collect data on marine debris quantity, location, and movement; to assess its possible impacts; and to make plans to reduce tsunami debris impacts to our coastal communities and natural resources.
Predicting Where the Debris May Travel
Immediately after the March 2011 disaster, NOAA used a computer model employing past data on ocean currents to forecast potential paths of the tsunami debris. It provided NOAA with an idea of the general direction and timing of the debris, with the recognition that over time changing ocean conditions might affect the expected behavior of the drifting materials.
More than a year later, NOAA modelers have been able to incorporate wind speed and ocean current data from the past year into an updated model. This new modeling effort gives us a better understanding of where the debris may have traveled to-date, but it does not predict where it will go in the future or how fast it will drift. The new model takes into account that wind may move items at different speeds based on how high or low materials sit in the water.
UPDATE: The below model graphic is current with data as of April 3, 2013.
NOAA model of past and current predictions of the location and concentrations of Japan tsunami marine debris. Data current as of April 3, 2013. (NOAA) Click to enlarge.
Monitoring Debris at Sea and on Shore
NOAA is collecting observations from aircraft, vessels, and high-resolution satellites in an attempt to track where the debris may go as it crosses the ocean. We are working with partners that regularly travel the Pacific Ocean, including the U.S. Coast Guard, commercial shipping vessels, and the fishing industry to keep watch for debris. Ships may report sightings to DisasterDebris@noaa.gov.
Currently, NOAA and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and state and local partners are surveying the background levels of marine debris stranded on U.S. coastlines in order to better detect potential influxes of tsunami debris on land. The public may also participate in shoreline monitoring by requesting our standardized protocols through the NOAA Marine Debris Program at MD.monitoring@noaa.gov.
For the past several months, the NOAA Marine Debris Program and federal, state, and local partners have been preparing contingency plans that will help protect our coastal communities, since the debris may be a hazard to natural resources, such as U.S. beaches, wildlife, marine sanctuaries, and navigation. These plans will guide local responses in case large, hazardous, or unmanageable items need to be removed from U.S. shores.
State radiation experts have assured NOAA that it is highly unlikely any debris will be contaminated. Some marine debris collected along shorelines has been randomly spot-checked in Hawaii and on the West Coast, and to date, no one has detected radiation levels of concern.
Keeping Up with the Latest Information
The NOAA Marine Debris Program continues to provide updates to communities and partners in Hawaii, Alaska, and on the West Coast through a number of public meetings and other outreach activities.
To stay up-to-date on the latest information on the debris as well as NOAA monitoring and modeling efforts, visit the NOAA Marine Debris Program [leaves this blog] website. Our state partners are also sharing regional information at http://disasterdebris.wordpress.com [leaves this blog].
The derelict Japanese fishing vessel RYOU-UN MARU drifts more than 125 miles from Forrester Island in southeast Alaska. The fishing vessel has been drifting unmanned at sea since the 2011 Japanese earthquake and subsequent tsunami more than a year ago (U.S. Coast Guard, Air Station Kodiak).
You might have already heard about the rusted-out, abandoned fishing vessel adrift off British Columbia, Canada. The 170 foot (53 meter) long vessel is the Ryou-Un Maru, a squid boat that broke free from a dock in Hokkaido, Japan, after the March 11, 2011 tsunami. Fortunately, no one was on board when the tsunami happened.
Over the past year it has drifted across the Pacific Ocean and was first observed in Canadian waters. The U.S. Coast Guard is now tracking the drift of the vessel, which entered U.S. waters March 31, 2012, and currently it is about 155 nautical miles away from Baranof Island in southeast Alaska.
The drift of the vessel confirms what generations of beach combers have known for a long time. The Pacific Ocean currents form a giant conveyor belt that carries flotsam (floating items) across the Pacific. Over the years I’ve found glass fish floats, glass bottles, and other Japanese items that have washed up along the coast of Washington state where I live.
But a big fishing vessel—that must be something really unusual—or is it?
In 2003, the 97-foot ship Genei Maru #7[leaves this blog] caught fire and was abandoned at sea about halfway between Japan and the United States. This “ghost ship” ran aground on Kodiak, Alaska, after drifting at sea, crewless, for five months. And in 2006, the U.S. Coast Guard found an abandoned coal barge adrift off the Kenai Peninsula of Alaska, which had wandered across the Pacific from Russia.
The document, "Record of Japanese Vessels Driven Upon the North-West Coast of America and its Outlying Islands," was originally published in 1872.
But there is evidence that vessels have been drifting across the Pacific for a long time. Check out this old document from 1872, “Record of Japanese Vessels Driven Upon the North-West Coast of America and its Outlying Islands.”
Some archaeologists think that Indigenous cultures of the Pacific Northwest Coast have been strongly influenced by the effects of foreign shipwrecks.
Artifacts from shipwrecks, including metals and other technologies, may have been used by these tribes (Quimby, G. I. 1985. Japanese Wrecks, Iron Tools, and Prehistoric Indians of the Northwest Coast. Arctic Anthropology 22(2): 7–15.).
And the blog A Blast From the Past [leaves this blog] has a lengthy discussion on historical and more recent cases of vessels washing across the Pacific. The oldest record is from 1617, when an abandoned Japanese ship was found near Acapulco, Mexico, but there are likely many other wrecks that went unrecorded because the vessels probably stranded in areas then inhabited only by native tribes.
The March 2011 tsunami certainly added to the amount of debris floating across the Pacific. If you find items you think might be from the tsunami, you can report them to DisasterDebris@noaa.gov.
This is a post by Jennifer Boyce of the NOAA Restoration Center.
An Ancient Murrelet adult and chick. Credit: Jake Pattison, Laskeek Bay Conservation Society.
On the remote, windswept islands of British Columbia, Canada, a unique species of seabird, the Ancient Murrelet, nests in burrows among tree roots, logs, and rock crevices set in the breathtaking Haida Gwaii region. Unfortunately for this threatened relative of the puffin, however, mysterious oil spills in California were coating and killing the murrelet and thousands of other seabirds from at least the 1990s through 2002.
This devastation to the rare murrelet, which migrates south to California in the winter, and to other threatened and endangered species such as sea otters and snowy plovers went on for years. Finally in 2002, U.S. federal and state officials identified the sunken oil tanker Jacob Luckenbach (wrecked in 1953) as the culprit and the source of several mystery oil spills cropping up during winter storms off the coast of California.
The owners of the vessel no longer exist, but the U.S. government created the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, managed by the U.S. Coast Guard, to provide cleanup operations and support for restoration projects resulting from these kinds of oil spills. The same year, the Coast Guard used the Trust Fund to remove oil from the Luckenbach and seal it from future leaks.
To make up for the damage to wildlife from the oil, a trustee council that includes NOAA summarized the injuries to natural resources and, as a result of the assessment, received $22.7 million toward restoration projects for the impacted seabirds and otters. The money came from the National Pollution Fund Center.
As a result, an innovative partnership has sprung up between nonprofits, governments, state and federal agencies, and foundations to restore critical breeding habitat—located in Canada’s Haida Gwaii region—for colonies of the Ancient Murrelet. However, that offers its own challenges.
Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve, National Marine Conservation Area Reserve, and Haida Heritage Site are home to many of the Haida Gwaii region’s 1.5 million nesting seabirds. A marine archipelago, the region is renowned for its rugged coastline, temperate rainforests, and distinct flora and fauna, which evolved through 14,000 years of isolation from the mainland. It is so disproportionately rich in rare and unique species that it is often referred to as the “Galapagos of the North.”
The Bischof Islands, part of Gwaii Haanas National Park, looking south to Juan Perez Sound in British Columbia, Canada. Credit: Andrew S. Wright.
Yet Gwaii Haanas’s biodiversity is threatened by a range of biological, climate, and human-induced impacts. One of the most significant is from introduced species. Rats, first introduced to Haida Gwaii via maritime shipping in the late 1700s, have been found on at least 18 islands throughout the archipelago.
Because island systems have been isolated for long periods of time, they are especially vulnerable to the impacts of introduced species because native island species often lack the evolutionary defenses to deal with the newcomers. Rats have devastating effects on populations of nesting seabirds, forest songbirds, and native small mammals. Recent research shows that rats can also affect invertebrate populations, and as a consequence, unleash a cascade of far-reaching effects in ecosystems, such as changes to soil fertility and plant composition. With funds from the Luckenbach settlement and Parks Canada and the Haida Nation, a partnership has been created to eradicate rats on the islands in Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and Haida Heritage Site in the hopes of restoring seabird populations.
In September of this year, I was fortunate enough to visit this stunningly beautiful and culturally rich region to witness the restoration project as the NOAA representative on the Luckenbach Trustee Council. Traveling with Parks Canada, Island Conservation, and Coastal Conservation (the latter two are the non-profits implementing the on-ground efforts), we were able to visit the islands kicking off the rat eradication project.
Strategically placed bait stations have been situated throughout each island and armed with the pesticide brodifacoum. Infrared cameras capture any nocturnal visitors to the stations and ensure that only rats can access the bait. Initial signs are positive. These bait stations will be monitored for the next two years to confirm that all rats have been removed before the islands can be declared officially rat-free.
In addition, scientists will use automated acoustic listening devices to measure seabird populations on affected islands, studying the frequency and distribution of seabird calls and determining what bird species are present. Hopefully in the years to come, these devices will record both the return of the Ancient Murrelet to its historic numbers—and the sound of success.
Jennifer Boyce in Gwaii Haanas, Canada.
Jennifer Boyce works for the NOAA Restoration Center, based in Long Beach, California. Jennifer serves as the NOAA trustee on several oil spill restoration Trustee Councils throughout California and is the Program Manager for the Montrose Settlements Restoration Program.
