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OIL SPILL BOOKS |
Torrey CanyonTorrey CanyonLands End, England 3/18/67 Incident Summary On the morning of March 18, 1967, the T/V Torrey Canyon ran aground on Pollard Rock on Seven Stones Reef off Lands End in England due to the master's negligence. The entire cargo, approximately 860,000 barrels (References range between 857,600 and 872,300 barrels), was released into the sea or burned during the next twelve days. Ships of the Royal Navy carrying detergents were en route to the scene within four hours of the grounding. The response command post was established at Plymouth. The Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy implemented an early warning system for oil movement. A panel of expert scientists was assembled to consider scientific problems involved with the cleanup procedure. Local authorities were instrumental in dealing with the oil beached within their jurisdictions. A detergent, primarily BP1002, was sprayed on much of the floating oil to emulsify and disperse it. Manual methods were used for removal of oil on many of the sandy beaches, although the dissected nature of the shoreline made it impossible to clean the whole coastline. The vessel lost structural integrity on March 26, releasing more oil into the water. Since towing the vessel off of the reef was deemed impossible, the government decided to bomb the vessel. This incident prompted the English Government to take the initiative in organizing an early meeting of the Intergovernmental Maritime Consultative Organization to consider needed changes in international maritime law and practice. Relevant maritime laws were considered to be overly complex and out of date in many respects. An estimated 25,000 birds died as a result of the Torrey Canyon spill because the incident coincided with their northerly migration. The coasts of southern England and Brittany are nesting beaches for a variety of seabirds such as guillemots, razorbills, shags, puffins, and Great Northern divers. Thousands of oiled birds were picked up from the beaches for treatment, but the survival rate was only around one percent due to ingestion of oil, pneumonia, and improper handling and cleaning. The Torrey Canyon incident was the first incident to draw universal attention to the dangers of dispersants. Extremely large quantities of dispersants were used during the response, clearly for aesthetic and not ecological purposes. Contamination by oil without dispersants resulted in less adverse biological effect than where dispersants were used. Many herbivores, mainly limpets, and some barnacles were killed due to the toxicity of the dispersant. Widespread mortalities on the West Cornish coast set the stage for a large-scale experiment on the development of a mature community, normally found on rocky shores, and the influence of herbivores and predators on the ecosystem. However, the resultant statistical comparisons may be somewhat inaccurate due to the small amount of pre-spill data, the lack of control sites where the oil was left totally untreated, and uncertainties of how much dispersant reached marginal areas. Early estimates indicated rapid recovery of species along the beach, while long term studies revealed extremely slow recovery. Wave-beaten rocky areas that received only light oiling took approximately 5-8 years to return to normal while areas receiving heavy and repeated dispersant applications took 9-10 years to recover. A 1978 study showed that a rare hermit crab species had not re-appeared in the spill area. This content has been excerped from: Oil Spill Case Histories 1967-1991: Summaries of Significant U.S. and International Spills |
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