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Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
Overview
At four minutes past midnight, on March 24, 1989, the Exxon
Valdez, loaded with 1,264,155 barrels of North Slope crude oil, ran
aground on Bligh Reef in the northeastern portion of Prince William
Sound. About one-fifth of the total cargo, 10.8 million gallons,
spilled into the sea. After three days of calm weather and smooth
seas, strong northeasterly winds arose and dispersed the oil
beyond any hope of containment. Much of the oil was converted
by wind-driven mixing of the oil and sea water into an emulsion
known as mousse that will not burn and which is very difficult to
remove from the surface of the sea or from shoreline. The spilled oil,
now in the form of thin sheens and thick mousse, continued to
spread to the southwest. The oil came ashore along an approximate
750 km (470 miles) trajectory that ran from Prince William Sound to
the southern Kodiak Archipelago and Alaska Peninsula.
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The distribution of the oil along the shoreline was discontinuous in
coverage and variable in depth both on the surface and within the
beach substrate. NOAA scientists estimated that 35% of the spilled
oil evaporated, 40% was deposited on beaches within Prince
William Sound, and 25% entered the Gulf of Alaska where it either
became beached or was lost at sea (Galt et al., 1991). Field surveys
conducted in the summer of 1989 identified 790 miles of shoreline
within Prince William Sound which had been oiled, over 200 miles
of which were classified as heavily oiled. In the Kenai
Peninsula-Kodiak region, more than 2,400 miles of shoreline
were found to be oiled. (EVOS Restoration Website)
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