Post by Moses on Jan 22, 2005 17:13:50 GMT -5
Mystery Oil Slick Kills Seabirds Off California
By Charlie LeDuff
The New York Times
Saturday 22 January 2005
A Western grebe that survived a Southern California oil spill was scrubbed down on Thursday at a bird care center in Los Angeles.
(Photo: David McNew/Getty Images) Los Angeles - A phantom oil slick floating somewhere along a 90-mile stretch of Southern California coastline is killing sea life as investigators scramble to find its whereabouts and origins.
More than 700 seabirds have died, another 700 are under care, and at least one sea lion has been taken to a marine mammal center, officials say.
Scientists were unaware that a killer blob was at sea until birds started turning up a week ago on the shoreline from Santa Barbara to Venice Beach. Most of the birds affected have been Western grebes, though a few are rare pelicans.
The Coast Guard has conducted an aerial search of the shoreline, and oil samples have been taken from the birds and shipped to laboratories for analysis. Still, officials are flummoxed.
"We haven't been able to eliminate anything," said Dana Michaels, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Fish and Game. "We've got a full-court-press investigation going, even things that sound silly on the surface."
Among the possible sources that investigators are looking into are pipes broken during the La Conchita mudslide that killed 10 people last week, leaking oil platforms in the ocean, seepage from the seafloor, abandoned oil wells, runoff from the Los Angeles metropolis, even cars and trucks that slid into the ocean during the torrential rains that recently pummeled California.
Officials have found no large concentrations of oil offshore, and there has been nothing like a grounding of an oil tanker. Nor have there been any reports of leaking or distressed vessels at sea.
After the rain subsided last weekend, aerial surveillance did spot at least two dozen small patches of oil off the shoreline. But investigators do not think those isolated patches could have harmed so many animals.
At last count, 733 birds had died, and 686 were convalescing at the Los Angeles Oiled Bird Care and Education Center in the San Pedro district, which abuts the busy Los Angeles Harbor. In addition, 13 endangered brown pelicans had been taken to Sea World in San Diego for treatment.
But all that is almost certainly not the final toll. Biologists believe that as many as 5,000 birds may have been harmed, said Ms. Michaels, the fish and game spokeswoman. Whatever the case, the phantom spill's damage to wildlife makes it the worst since a spill off the Orange County coast in 1990 killed about 3,400 birds.
A photograph this week showed an oil patch floating on the water near Platform Holly, one of 21 oil-producing platforms off the coast of Santa Barbara, Ventura and Orange Counties. But inspectors found no malfunctions by any of the rigs.
"None of the oil can be attributed to Platform Holly," said Ellen Faurot-Daniels, oil spill program supervisor for the California Coastal Commission.
Offshore drilling is a politically and environmentally delicate issue in California, where oil companies are pushing to develop 36 undeveloped tracts off the coast. The companies' leases on those tracts have been extended by the federal government and are due for review in coming months by the Coastal Commission.