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After The Spill

Four minutes after midnight on March 24, 1989, a dark poison began to spread through the waters near southern Alaska. First hundreds, then thousands, then millions of gallons of black oil gushed into the sea. The oil was pouring from the ripped belly of a ship. A giant oil tanker, the Exxon Valdez, had crashed into rocks.

Terrie Williams, a biologist with the Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks, got a call the next day in California. Could she report to the disaster scene immediately? She was on her way.

Williams was not prepared for what she found at the spill site. Dead fish littered the shore. Birds hopped about helplessly, their feathers gooey with oil. Sea otters tried to clean themselves by licking their filthy fur. No one knew how best to help these sick animals. "It was total chaos," Williams recalls. "There wasn't even a local veterinarian on site."

Now, nearly 10 years later, new information is surfacing about the effects of the worst oil spill in U.S. history. Some of it is good news, but even the bad news may help scientists cope if such a crisis occurs again.

Racing To The Rescue
Soon after she arrived in Alaska, Williams and other volunteers began setting up an emergency hospital for oily sea otters. Their first patient arrived in a duffel bag. The teenage otter had been found by a volunteer named Fred. "Fred Jr.," as the otter was nicknamed, was covered in thick oil. Williams helped scrub him for two hours with soap and water.

Fred Jr. was the first of hundreds of otters to be treated by Williams and her team. Some lived; many did not. The spill killed nearly 3,000 sea otters, including Fred Jr.

A Deadly Disaster
In addition to the sea otters, the Exxon Valdez spill killed 250,000 seabirds, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles and as many as 22 killer whales. Billions of fish, clams, oysters and other small sea creatures also died.

More than $2 billion was spent to clean up Prince William Sound, the pocket of ocean off Valdez, Alaska, where the spill occurred. A little more than half of that money was paid by the Exxon Corporation, the oil company that owned the ship.

Although the cleanup was officially completed in 1992, scientists continue to study the area. This month the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, a government group that oversees the area's recovery, released a new report. The report includes updates on the species that were damaged in the spill.

The good news: "Ten years after the spill, there has clearly been a lot of recovery," says Molly McCammon, executive director of the council. The not-so-good news: "It is equally clear that for several species and the ecosystem in general, there is a long way yet to go."

A region's ecosystem is its community of plants and animals. Within an ecosystem, each living thing depends on other living things. That means that when the fish died in Prince William Sound, there was less food for the seals that normally eat them. As those seals died, there was less food for the killer whales that eat seals.

Humans also play an important role in this ecosystem. Some Alaskan natives still depend on seal meat for food. And fishing is a source of income for many Alaskan families. As some fish and seal species continue to struggle 10 years after the spill, so do the people who depend on them.

Lessons Learned
Although the Exxon Valdez spill was deadly, some good has come of it. The government has bought 650,000 acres of forest and coastal land to protect the animals that live there. That way, the natural recovery of those areas will not be disturbed by humans. In addition to the newly protected land, the spill has brought another benefit: a rich understanding of the area's ecosystem.

If disaster ever strikes again in Prince William Sound, that knowledge will save many a bird, fish and otter. "We could take a lot better care of Fred Jr. today than in 1989," says Terrie Williams. "We've learned a lot since then."

Next: A Historic Trial Ends