Story at a glance:
- Stretching from Huntington Beach to Newport Beach, crude oil that burst underwater through a pipeline could have permanently affected the eco-life of several animals.
- There is not an official toll reported, but dead birds and fishes covered in black-splotched water washed up on shore.
- There is a massive team tasked with cleanup efforts, estimated to be 1,500.
The oil spill on the coast of California was preventable, officials say, and the damage may be permanent.
Stretching from Huntington Beach to Newport Beach, crude oil that burst underwater through a pipeline could have permanently affected the eco-life of several animals, ABC’s Good Morning America reported.
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There was a 13-inch gash in the pipeline that led to more than 144,000 gallons of crude oil spilling.
There is a massive team tasked with cleanup efforts, estimated to be 1,500.
A diving team discovered that the gash on the pipeline could have been caused by a ship’s anchor that dragged it for a mile.
”The recovery is going to be very uneven,” Steve Murawski, a fisheries biologist and marine ecologist at the University of South Florida, told The Guardian.
“Once the oil is in the marsh and it gets down below the level of the sediments,” Murawski told the outlet, “it is there pretty much forever.”
There is not an official toll reported, but dead birds and fishes covered in black-splotched water washed up on shore, according to some rescue workers. Seven birds were saved, but a pelican had to be euthanized.
The Los Angeles Times reported that marine life, specifically smaller animals like shovelnose guitarfish, bat rays ,and horn sharks, will suffer for generations due to their inability to adopt new homes and find food.
“The ecological and economic damage from this oil spill has the potential to reverberate for generations,” state Sen. Dave Min (D-Irvine) said this week, The LA Times reported.
“The legislation after the Santa Barbara damage [from the Refugio spill in 2015] was meant to prevent this,” he added. “It really speaks to the need to get rid of these oil rigs.”
The oil spill affected fishery and tourism along the coastline, many of whom are mom and pop businesses that cannot go through another shutdown.
“We have a high number of fishermen and women who are mostly recent immigrants, fishing for subsistence,” said Sean Anderson, chair of the Environmental Science and Resource Management Program at Cal State Channel Islands.
“[Fish such as white croaker] are in areas where they’re exposed to these substances, hang out onshore and are easily targeted by fishermen. They sequester the toxins in their tissues. It’s safer for the fish, but if we eat the fish, it’s a problem.”
On Tuesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom during a news conference at Bolsa Chica State Beach said that it’s “time once and for all to disabuse ourselves that [oil drilling] has to be part of our future.”
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