Grace Lu
Alexandria, VA
2016, Senior, Creative Writing

Sticky black goo slick the curious fingers that dip into the indistinguishable oceans around the world, as air-bound birds flutter pitifully nearby, their majestic wings grounded under a suffocating drape of oil. Backtrack a billion years, and these struggles were nonexistent. Covering more than 70% of the Earth’s surface, the same oceans glistened under the sun’s glare, rich in phytoplankton, supplying food, and producing the majority of oxygen (Weeks). It nurtured the first signs of life and raised the first plants and animals. Over time, the ocean became a proud mother of the diverse marine flora and fauna flourishing in its depths. She provided housing and promoted biodiversity. She helped store carbon, control climate change, and regulated temperature and weather with her unique convection currents and high specific heat capacity (“Open Ocean: Importance”). As the human race gained traction on Earth, the ocean was – and still is – the center of trade, communication, food, transportation, medicine, and pleasure. Today, the oceans retain only a fraction of their former glory. Pollution of oil and plastic waste tarnishes their functionality and beauty. Over fishing and oil drilling depletes their resources. Unsurprisingly, the cause of these woes lies within our actions as individuals and collectively as a society. As we continue to interfere with the oceans through pollution, we will not only initiate the fall of our own society, culture of material-based comforts, and economy, but also threaten the survival of every other species on this planet as we change their food and oxygen availability, and significantly alter the climate.

Pollution arrived with humans as we struggled to rein in and control this planet to satisfy our needs and wants. We have caused irreparable damage in the form of global warming, carbon emissions, plastic littering, and habitat destruction. Although lesser known, oil spills are also a destructive monster to nature, especially the vital oceans where the problem can magnify and spread easily. We hear about oils in our everyday lives, from fueling airplanes to heating our houses. How could something so useful be so harmful for the environment? Although relatively harmless by itself when locked away in underground reserves, oil has been sought after and drilled by humans, greedy for its profits and uses. This drilling and subsequent movement of oil has the likelihood of spilling, thus contaminating the surrounding ocean waters with oil, a hydrophobic substance. Such substances aggregate together away from water, creating problematic sheets of sticky goo that catch onto the feathers of birds, suffocate fish, and disrupt ecosystems. We hear about these effects time after time when a new oil spill breaks the news, but unfortunately, away from the occasional spotlight, the oceans are constantly suffering from oil pollution. And the worst part? We are the root of many of the problems that plague the oceans, oil spills being just one.

Humans have inhabited this Earth for a mere 200,000 years, which is just a blip in the planet’s 4.5 billion year history (Howell). However, it is undeniable that we have done more damage than any other species that came before us. Our factories billow smoke into the atmosphere, pour toxic chemicals into local waterways, and manufacture the plastic goods that litter the ocean and choke wildlife (“Pollution”). We burn fossil fuels that release carbon dioxide into the air, which is then, absorbed the ocean. As a result, the Earth becomes warmer because of the greenhouse effect and the oceans acidify with increased carbon dioxide levels. Human activities are influencing the ocean so much that the acidity of the ocean has increased by 30% in the last 200 years alone. This in turn bleaches the coral reefs and kills other shelled organisms, like mussels and shellfish. Shelled organisms are the basis of food webs, so other organisms are at risk if they die off (“What Is Ocean Acidification?). Additionally, marine wildlife is disturbed by the boats that create excessive noise and light pollution on the open ocean (“Pollution”). The widespread use of nitrogen-containing fertilizers also cause eutrophication, a process that creates dead zones in aquatic environments by promoting the quick growth of algae which rapidly consume dissolved oxygen and block the sun, thus killing other organisms. Not only that, but the effects of air pollution from burning fossil fuels that release heat-trapping carbon dioxide is already evident in our greenhouse-like Earth, with both surface and ocean temperatures warming and sea levels rising 17 centimeters just in the last century due to melting ice sheets (Shaftel). Moreover, warmer ocean temperatures are bad news to shellfish and coral reefs, which are sensitive to changes in their environment (Weeks). However, to understand more of the effects of pollution, it is important to understand the source. Pollution and all these recent consequences form a tightening noose on the throat of Mother Nature and are all fueled by oil.

Oil is a liquid substance made up of solely carbon and hydrogen atoms, meaning that it is a hydrocarbon. This chemical is created by natural processes in the environment, and due to the Earth’s age and history, can be found in abundance around the world. Specifically, it formed when plants and animals living millions of years ago died and collected at the bottom of the ocean. Like living organisms, these remains were composed of carbon containing energy from the sun. Over time, layers of these dead plants and animals collected on the ocean’s floor. Eventually, the layers were buried deep enough into the Earth that massive amounts of pressure and heat were generated, thus turning what was biomass into oil or natural gas (“What Are Oil and Natural Gas?”). To this day, crude oil, which is then refined to create petroleum, can be found deep in the Earth and is highly sought after to fuel our endeavors.

Petroleum products are used to heat our homes, run our cars, and generate electricity. The majority of petroleum products are used to create gasoline. In fact, 76% of the United Sates’ petroleum consumption in 2014 was to form gasoline. However, petroleum is also used in the making of jet fuel, heating oil, diesel fuel, waxes, lubricating oils, asphalt, plastics, chemicals, and other synthetic materials. As a result, everything we buy and use most likely bears the mark of petroleum, making this naturally occurring chemical highly desirable to industries (“What Are the Products and Uses of Petroleum?”). The uses of oil are inescapable in everyday life, to the point where we collectively use 90 million barrels of it every day (“How Fossil Fuels Move the World”). It powers the alarm clock in the morning, makes the commute to work possible, and helps to microwave lunch and heat the office. While valuable, it is also clear that oil drilling is the root of many of the ocean’s woes. Drilling oil presents the possibilities of devastating spills and burning petroleum products releases carbon dioxides, which acidifies the ocean. Oil is also used to create plastics, another major pollutant of the ocean that chokes wildlife. However, oil is essential to society and the economy, and is constantly demanded. To obtain more petroleum, companies are resorting to drilling offshore in the ocean to tap into the hidden reservoirs of oil.

While oceans often harbor large reservoirs of oil, retrieving the oil is a problematic task. After settling territorial rights to exploit large amounts of oil, the first offshore well was built in the Pacific Ocean in the 1880s. The idea of offshore drilling became more favorable after World War II, when economic growth and development demanded oil (Cooper). Today, 30.2% of the United States’ oil consumption derives from offshore rigs (Thompson). As the concept of oil drilling spread and continues to spread, so does the risk of oil spills. The process of transporting crude oil from the depths of the Earth, refining it, and then pumping it into everybody’s gasoline tanks is a long process and leaves space for error. Oil spills can come from bursting pipelines, oil rig explosions, storage tank leaks, and ship collisions. As demand of oil increase, more storage tankers ship oil to the far reaches of the world, increasing the risk of shipwrecks that pour their oil cargo into the ocean and create massive spills that consist of up to several hundred thousand tons of oil. From tanker incidents alone from 1970 to 2009, 1.7 billion gallons of oil were spilled. The increase usage of offshore rigs also increases the likelihood of a spill into the ocean, and is more likely to occur than a tanker accident. However, in general, an offshore rig spill releases less oil than a tanker accident, which account for 45% of spilled United States’ oil (Thompson). Moreover, oil also finds its way into waterways through industrial runoff and the oil-contaminated wastewater deriving from factories refining oil (Cooper). Due to ocean currents, spilled oil can be spread far away from the source quickly and easily, thus magnifying the problem that directly and indirectly affects the health of the Earth (Billitteri).

Oil spills directly affect marine life negatively through the means of poisoning, drowning, and habitat contamination. Because oil spills in oceans are highly mobile, it is also hard to contain and clean up the spills as it spreads, making their effects long lasting and widespread. Birds and other coastal wildlife are prominent victims of oil spills because they are caught within the floating masses of oil. Their feathers become coated with suffocating oil which fill in the air pockets that usually keep them afloat, causing them to drown. In the case of fur, clingy oil reduces their insulating ability, thus exposing the animal to hypothermia. Those that do not perish immediately from drowning or hypothermia suffer a prolonged and painful death from the toxic oil they ingest while cleaning their contaminated feathers or fur. Similar fates befall other aquatic organisms, like seals, coral, shellfish, fish, oysters and grasses. Oil spills also alter the diversity and composition of an ecosystem. For example, in the recent BP spill in 2010, the biodiversity of worms and tiny invertebrates in the area around the spill was greatly reduced, showing how oil spills reduce species diversity of an area. There were also higher incidences of stranded dolphins in the region and fish becoming incompetent in finding food and reproducing, indicating that oil also physiologically alters organisms (Weeks). Fish also experienced fin erosion, enlarged livers, reduced growth, and alterations in heart and respiration rates (“How Does Oil Impact Marine Life?”). With all these physical affects, it is undeniable that oil spills are harmful for the environment.

However, oil spills do not only cause physical harm for wildlife with death, physiological alterations, and changes in biodiversity. Chemically, oil spills disturb the concentrations of dissolved gases in the ocean with its thin, impermeable film that coats the ocean surfaces. The film blocks light and prevents the exchange of gases between the atmosphere and ocean. Subsequently, oxygen cannot dissolve into the ocean from the atmosphere and aquatic plants cannot conduct photosynthesis, which produces oxygen, without light. As a result, marine organisms are deprived of oxygen. Death ensues and as the organisms at the bottom of the food chain, like phytoplankton, die from the lack of oxygen and light, others that depend upon these organisms die too from lack of food. For humans, this means that seafood would locally be unavailable or inconsumable. The surrounding environment would turn aesthetically displeasing with the oil and carcasses of dead animals and plants. Tourism would taper off, as seen recently with the BP oil spill, and local fishing economies would disintegrate as their fish die. Therefore, not only does the environment suffer from death, reduced biodiversity, and ecosystem disruption, but our actions also strain local economies (Cooper). It is evident how oil spills can physically, chemically, socially, and economically affect both marine ecosystems and our own lives.

With how much of the world’s economy and society depends upon oil for fuel, heating, and commercial products, it feels like we could never be weaned off our oil dependence. However, as long as we continue to use oil and petroleum products in our everyday lives and thus resort to drilling offshore, oil spills will always be an unintended consequence of our greed. While it may be easy to let oil spills slide to the bottom of our own problems, it is the responsibility of every one of us as citizens of the world to take a stand. Take a stand against excessive uses of plastics that promote oil usage. Take a stand against the corporate companies pushing to expand offshore drilling in the Arctic. Take a stand for renewable energy that will reduce our dependence on oil. Take a stand for better regulations of oil movement to prevent spills. Take a stand for widespread cleanup and restoration efforts to preserve biodiversity. Take a stand to make a difference, and one day, oil spills will become a distant memory and a blip in our legacy. We have more power than we think to do what is right.

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Spilling the Truth about Oil