Depuration of oil taint and muscle pigment from fish

1995 ◽  
Vol 31 (11) ◽  
pp. 23-28
Author(s):  
H. K. Davis

Fish in the vicinity of large oil spills acquire characteristic flavour taints but little is known about their subsequent depuration. In this study, trout were exposed to 3 different tainting treatments with diesel fuel, then transferred to clean water, and samples assessed for taint at intervals for up to 15 weeks. The observed depuration periods were 2 to 17 times longer than others have reported but less than was needed for some of the farmed salmon affected by the Braer oil spill. Comparison of taint depuration times with changes in flesh pigmentation showed that flesh colour cannot be used to predict clearance of taint.

1991 ◽  
Vol 1991 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-139
Author(s):  
Pamela Ann Bergmann

ABSTRACT The Alaska Regional Response Team (RRT) established the Wildlife Protection Working Group in September 1987 to develop and maintain guidelines to assist Alaska's federal on-scene coordinators (OSC) in dealing with potential wildlife impacts resulting from oil spills. The working group is composed of representatives of four federal and state agencies and three special-interest groups. The guidelines, which were adopted by the Alaska RRT on December 14, 1988, address three response strategies: controlling the release and spread of oil to protect wildlife, keeping wildlife away from spills through the use of deterrent techniques, and attempting to capture and rehabilitate oiled wildlife. Since adoption by the Alaska RRT, the guidelines have been used in conjunction with response activities associated with the following spills: the Swallow diesel fuel and fuel oil spill near Dutch Harbor on February 27, 1989, the Exxon Valdez crude oil spill in Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989, and the Milos Reefer fuel oil and diesel fuel spill on St. Matthew Island on November 15, 1989. In the Swallow incident, protective booming, bird hazing, and bird capture and rehabilitation programs were conducted in accordance with the guidelines. In the Exxon Valdez incident, information in the guidelines was used to establish the sea otter rescue program and to begin implementation of the bird capture and rehabilitation program. In the Milos Reefer spill, the guidelines were used as the basis for a decision not to initiate a rescue program for birds oiled as a result of the vessel's grounding. In October 1989, the working group met to conduct a review of the guidelines based on experience gained through the Swallow and Exxon Valdez incidents. As a result of this meeting, seven principal additions have been proposed for the guidelines.


2008 ◽  
Vol 2008 (1) ◽  
pp. 657-660 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leigh DeHaven ◽  
Rebecca Tirrell

ABSTRACT In light of the recently updated U.S. Coast Guard Regulation for Vessel Response Plans, which include requirements for vessel dispersant response capabilities and with the recent expansion of many U.S. Coastal Dispersant ?reauthorization Zones, it is important that both alternative oil spill chemical countermeasure product manufacturers and oil spill responders have an understanding of the National Oil and Hazardous Substance Pollution, Subpart J Product Schedule (NCP Product Schedule). The NCP Product Schedule lists alternative chemical countermeasures which may be used in oil spills in the United States if authorized by a Federal On-Scene Coordinator with consultation from the Regional Response Team including local Trustees. The product types currently listed on the NCP Product Schedule include dispersants, surface washing agents, bioremediation agents and miscellaneous oil spill control agents. Sorbents are also defined in the NCP Product Schedule, but they may or may not be required to be listed on the NCP Product Schedule depending upon their composition. The unauthorized use of oil spill chemical countermeasure products listed on the NCP Product Schedule on an on water oil spill is a violation of the Clean Water Act. In addition, the use of chemical products that are not listed on the NCP Product Schedule on oil spills on waters of the United States is also a violation of the Clean Water Act. Before a chemical countermeasure product is used during an oil spill in waters of the United States, new products must meet the data requirements stated in Subpart J of the NCP Product Schedule regulation (40 Code of Federal Regulations Part 300.900). The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) maintains and updates the NCP Product Schedule. The EPA reviews the required data packages for new products and regularly updates the NCP Product Schedule and Technical Notebook on the NCP Product Schedule website (www.epa.gov/emergencies). This paper and poster will outline the steps to list a new product and provide background information on the NCP Product Schedule.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 144-154
Author(s):  
Pingkan Mayestika Afgatiani ◽  
Fanny Aditya Putri ◽  
Argo Galih Suhadha ◽  
Andi Ibrahim

Oil spill is one of the most common marine environmental problems. Oil spills can be caused by leakage at oil refineries at sea or disposal of vessel waste. This event has an impact on various sectors, such as fisheries, tourism, and marine ecosystems. This study aims to determine the spectral reflectance of Sentinel-2 response to detecting oil spill on the sea. Oil identification in the sea can be made visually by looking at colored patterns at sea level. Sentinel-2 image reflectance was obtained by processing the image using the Google Earth Engine platform. The results were clipped according to the area of ​​interest and divided to get a value between 0 and 1. Bands combination is possible to identify the oil spill visually. The silvery pattern saw in the red-green-blue combination, but it is arduous to estimate its distribution because of the silvery pattern seen for thick oil. The combination of SWIR-NIR-red bands proved effective in showing the distribution of oil with a deep black pattern. Spectral measurements in the field were undertaken by taking samples in the areas of oil spills and clean water bodies. The oil layer had a lower reflectance than the clean water body. The blue band gave a high response, but the red band gave less response. In the NIR and SWIR bands, the reflectance of oil was lower than the water body. In conclusion, the SWIR - NIR - RED band combination is better used to determine oil spills due to it shows the characteristics of oil generally, either thin or thick oil.


Author(s):  
Alexander Ermolov ◽  
Alexander Ermolov

International experience of oil spill response in the sea defines the priority of coastal protection and the need to identify as most valuable in ecological terms and the most vulnerable areas. Methodological approaches to the assessing the vulnerability of Arctic coasts to oil spills based on international systems of Environmental Sensitivity Index (ESI) and geomorphological zoning are considered in the article. The comprehensive environmental and geomorphological approach allowed us to form the morphodynamic basis for the classification of seacoasts and try to adapt the international system of indexes to the shores of the Kara Sea taking into account the specific natural conditions. This work has improved the expert assessments of the vulnerability and resilience of the seacoasts.


1996 ◽  
Vol 34 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 203-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Al-Muzaini ◽  
P. G. Jacob

A field study was carried out involving seven fixed sampling stations. The sampling locations were selected to cover the distribution of pollutants in the Shuaiba Industrial Area (SIA), which was contaminated with oil released from oil wells and broken pipelines and with a vast amount of burnt and unburnt crude oil from the burning and gushing oil wells. The samples were collected biweekly between July 1993 and July 1994. The concentrations of V, Ni, Cr, Cd and Pb were determined and compared with the previously collected baseline data to assess the degree of environmental damage caused due to the oil spills during the Gulf war. The average concentrations (mg/kg) of various elements in the marine sediment were 17.3 for V, 30.8 for Ni, 55.5 for Cr, 0.02 for Cd and 1.95 for Pb. Our results show that even after the heavy spillage of oil, associated metal concentrations were not very high compared with previously reported base line values.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 6585
Author(s):  
Mihhail Fetissov ◽  
Robert Aps ◽  
Floris Goerlandt ◽  
Holger Jänes ◽  
Jonne Kotta ◽  
...  

The Baltic Sea is a unique and sensitive brackish-water ecosystem vulnerable to damage from shipping activities. Despite high levels of maritime safety in the area, there is a continued risk of oil spills and associated harmful environmental impacts. Achieving common situational awareness between oil spill response decision makers and other actors, such as merchant vessel and Vessel Traffic Service center operators, is an important step to minimizing detrimental effects. This paper presents the Next-Generation Smart Response Web (NG-SRW), a web-based application to aid decision making concerning oil spill response. This tool aims to provide, dynamically and interactively, relevant information on oil spills. By integrating the analysis and visualization of dynamic spill features with the sensitivity of environmental elements and value of human uses, the benefits of potential response actions can be compared, helping to develop an appropriate response strategy. The oil spill process simulation enables the response authorities to judge better the complexity and dynamic behavior of the systems and processes behind the potential environmental impact assessment and thereby better control the oil combat action.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 2044
Author(s):  
Marcos R. A. Conceição ◽  
Luis F. F. Mendonça ◽  
Carlos A. D. Lentini ◽  
André T. C. Lima ◽  
José M. Lopes ◽  
...  

A set of open-source routines capable of identifying possible oil-like spills based on two random forest classifiers were developed and tested with a Sentinel-1 SAR image dataset. The first random forest model is an ocean SAR image classifier where the labeling inputs were oil spills, biological films, rain cells, low wind regions, clean sea surface, ships, and terrain. The second one was a SAR image oil detector named “Radar Image Oil Spill Seeker (RIOSS)”, which classified oil-like targets. An optimized feature space to serve as input to such classification models, both in terms of variance and computational efficiency, was developed. It involved an extensive search from 42 image attribute definitions based on their correlations and classifier-based importance estimative. This number included statistics, shape, fractal geometry, texture, and gradient-based attributes. Mixed adaptive thresholding was performed to calculate some of the features studied, returning consistent dark spot segmentation results. The selected attributes were also related to the imaged phenomena’s physical aspects. This process helped us apply the attributes to a random forest, increasing our algorithm’s accuracy up to 90% and its ability to generate even more reliable results.


Polar Biology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 575-586
Author(s):  
Pepijn De Vries ◽  
Jacqueline Tamis ◽  
Jasmine Nahrgang ◽  
Marianne Frantzen ◽  
Robbert Jak ◽  
...  

AbstractIn order to assess the potential impact from oil spills and decide the optimal response actions, prediction of population level effects of key resources is crucial. These assessments are usually based on acute toxicity data combined with precautionary assumptions because chronic data are often lacking. To better understand the consequences of applying precautionary approaches, two approaches for assessing population level effects on the Arctic keystone species polar cod (Boreogadus saida) were compared: a precautionary approach, where all exposed individuals die when exposed above a defined threshold concentration, and a refined (full-dose-response) approach. A matrix model was used to assess the population recovery duration of scenarios with various but constant exposure concentrations, durations and temperatures. The difference between the two approaches was largest for exposures with relatively low concentrations and short durations. Here, the recovery duration for the refined approach was less than eight times that found for the precautionary approach. Quantifying these differences helps to understand the consequences of precautionary assumptions applied to environmental risk assessment used in oil spill response decision making and it can feed into the discussion about the need for more chronic toxicity testing. An elasticity analysis of our model identified embryo and larval survival as crucial processes in the life cycle of polar cod and the impact assessment of oil spills on its population.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 279
Author(s):  
Zhehao Yang ◽  
Weizeng Shao ◽  
Yuyi Hu ◽  
Qiyan Ji ◽  
Huan Li ◽  
...  

Marine oil spills occur suddenly and pose a serious threat to ecosystems in coastal waters. Oil spills continuously affect the ocean environment for years. In this study, the oil spill caused by the accident of the Sanchi ship (2018) in the East China Sea was hindcast simulated using the oil particle-tracing method. Sea-surface winds from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), currents simulated from the Finite-Volume Community Ocean Model (FVCOM), and waves simulated from the Simulating WAves Nearshore (SWAN) were employed as background marine dynamics fields. In particular, the oil spill simulation was compared with the detection from Chinese Gaofen-3 (GF-3) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. The validation of the SWAN-simulated significant wave height (SWH) against measurements from the Jason-2 altimeter showed a 0.58 m root mean square error (RMSE) with a 0.93 correlation (COR). Further, the sea-surface current was compared with that from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Climate Forecast System Version 2 (CFSv2), yielding a 0.08 m/s RMSE and a 0.71 COR. Under these circumstances, we think the model-simulated sea-surface currents and waves are reliable for this work. A hindcast simulation of the tracks of oil slicks spilled from the Sanchi shipwreck was conducted during the period of 14–17 January 2018. It was found that the general track of the simulated oil slicks was consistent with the observations from the collected GF-3 SAR images. However, the details from the GF-3 SAR images were more obvious. The spatial coverage of oil slicks between the SAR-detected and simulated results was about 1 km2. In summary, we conclude that combining numerical simulation and SAR remote sensing is a promising technique for real-time oil spill monitoring and the prediction of oil spreading.


Author(s):  
Emilio D’Ugo ◽  
Milena Bruno ◽  
Arghya Mukherjee ◽  
Dhrubajyoti Chattopadhyay ◽  
Roberto Giuseppetti ◽  
...  

AbstractMicrobiomes of freshwater basins intended for human use remain poorly studied, with very little known about the microbial response to in situ oil spills. Lake Pertusillo is an artificial freshwater reservoir in Basilicata, Italy, and serves as the primary source of drinking water for more than one and a half million people in the region. Notably, it is located in close proximity to one of the largest oil extraction plants in Europe. The lake suffered a major oil spill in 2017, where approximately 400 tons of crude oil spilled into the lake; importantly, the pollution event provided a rare opportunity to study how the lacustrine microbiome responds to petroleum hydrocarbon contamination. Water samples were collected from Lake Pertusillo 10 months prior to and 3 months after the accident. The presence of hydrocarbons was verified and the taxonomic and functional aspects of the lake microbiome were assessed. The analysis revealed specialized successional patterns of lake microbial communities that were potentially capable of degrading complex, recalcitrant hydrocarbons, including aromatic, chloroaromatic, nitroaromatic, and sulfur containing aromatic hydrocarbons. Our findings indicated that changes in the freshwater microbial community were associated with the oil pollution event, where microbial patterns identified in the lacustrine microbiome 3 months after the oil spill were representative of its hydrocarbonoclastic potential and may serve as effective proxies for lacustrine oil pollution.


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