On February 15, 1995, a huge oil tanker called the Sea Empress sailed into some rocks off

the west coast of Wales. For the next six days it was stuck there. High winds and tides battered the ship. The accident put big holes in the ship's body and it spilled nearly 90 million litres of oil into the ocean. That's enough to heat 30,000 homes in Canada for one year. The storm quickly drove the oil out to sea and made it very difficult for clean-up and the crews to control the spill.

The crashing of the Sea Empress was a disaster, but it gets worse. A lot of the oil washed up on the shores of Milford Haven Estuary, a conservation area for birds and other wildlife close to where the ship crashed. This made many residents and nature lovers around the world very angry.

Oil and Water

People are upset because oil spills happen regularly. In North America, there are over 8000 spills each year. Not all of them are as big as the one caused by the Sea Empress. Most spills are quite small—they happen in marinas(小船坞) when motor boats fill up with gasoline. Bigger spills occur when oil barrels are accidentally dumped and when ships clean out their cargo holds. But no matter how much oil ends up in the water, plants and animals suffer or die.

In 1989, after an oil tanker called the Exxon Valdez spilled its load in Prince William Sound near Alaska, 425,000 sea birds died along with thousands of other animals, including sea otters. This ship dumped only half the oil the Sea Empress did! The Exxon spill covered 880 km of ocean and fouled about 2000 km of coastline. That's enough coastline to reach from Montreal all the way to Winnipeg.

Cleaning Up the Mess

When oil is spilled on water it forms a sheen. That's a very thin layer of oil that sits on top of the water's surface. One of the jobs of clean-up crews is to try to keep the sheen from spreading out to sea. The tool they use is a containment boom(栅栏网). They wrap this boom around the oil spill to keep it in place. Once the oil has been contained it can be burned off the water.

Another way to get rid of the oil is to sprinkle it with a product that absorbs it, like wood waste. The waste is then scooped away before it sinks. Naturally, some oil always escapes out to sea. Eventually, the oil breaks down and forms tar balls. These balls sink to the ocean floor, then sooner or later they are washed up onto shore.

With every oil spill, some oil reaches the shoreline. The mess is unbelievable. When cleaning up a spill, the hardest job is dealing with the onshore pollution. When oil lands on rocks or mixes with sand and seaweed, it becomes really difficult to remove. Volunteers use high-pressure hoses to blast the oil with hot water. They try to push the oil back into the water. If it's in the water they can burn it or skim it off the surface.

Caring for the Animals

After an oil spill, a lot of concerned people volunteer to help care for the animals. Very little can be done to save the crustaceans, mollusks(软体动物), and other small creatures that get smothered in oil. But the larger animals that are caught and cleaned can be saved.

Birds like western grebe need to have their feathers washed to survive. They’re given baths with plenty of soap and are scrubbed down using toothbrushes. Turtles, otters, and all kinds of other large animals go through the same process. Everyone's hard work pays off. Many animals are saved. But the pollution has a lasting effect—it gets into the food web and makes a lot of animals(including people) sick. Birds, fish, and scav

A．Y

B．N

C．NG