5 Animals Threatened by Pacific Oil Drilling
#Ecolist of Things We Love
California’s epic coastline is popular with international tourists, beach-loving locals and businesses, and a rich variety of wildlife. All would be threatened by the Trump administration’s reckless plan to offer the first offshore oil-drilling leases in the Pacific in more than 30 years.
California was an early adopter of offshore drilling, but the state has been phasing out this destructive practice. People here know how dirty and dangerous it is, after enduring deadly coastal oil spills near Santa Barbara in 1969 and then again in 2015, with countless smaller spills in between.
Heartbreaking images of oil-coated birds and marine life from those California oil spills helped spark the modern environmental movement. More drilling means more oil spills, which would do irreparable harm to the world’s fifth largest economy and set back the recovery of many vulnerable species.
Expanded offshore drilling also threatens marine life during the exploration phase, which uses deafening seismic airgun blasts, and during the transportation of oil and gas, which would increase vessel traffic and industrialize more of the coastline.
Meet some of the beloved animals threatened by expanded Pacific drilling:
Blue Whales — The Santa Barbara Channel is the heart of the largest aggregation of endangered blue whales in the world. Unfortunately, the area is also targeted by the oil industry. Blue whales are the largest animals that have ever lived on Earth, growing up to 100 feet long and 170 tons. An international ban on whale hunting helped save these marvels of nature from extinction, but there are still fewer than 2,000 on the West Coast.
Oil drilling would be a disaster for the ocean behemoths. Seismic airgun exploration surveys are a serious threat because high-intensity noise stops blue whales from foraging and can damage their hearing. Expanding offshore oil production in the Pacific will cause more ship strikes and expose these gentle giants to oil spills that foul their baleen plates with toxic hydrocarbons, making it difficult from them to filter-feed and contaminating the krill and zooplankton they need to survive.
Sea Otters — California sea otters are impossibly adorable, known for their expressive whiskered faces and lithe, evocative movements. They’re also more vulnerable to oil spills than any other marine mammals. Sea otters were once thought to have gone extinct after being hunted for their soft pelts and exposed to the oil pollution from California’s messy early offshore drilling projects.
The otters concentrated around California’s central coast have slowly bounced back to a population of about 3,000 with the help of strong conservation efforts, but that progress could quickly be reversed by an expansion of offshore drilling. They’re particularly vulnerable to oil spills, which cause their fur to mat and stop insulating their bodies. Exposed to oil, otters can quickly die from hypothermia. The toxicity of oil can also cause otters’ liver or kidneys to fail and do lasting damage to their lungs and eyes.
Pelicans — Pelicans are gorgeous, graceful birds, whether they’re flying in squadrons high overhead, plummeting into the ocean to snatch a fish, or gliding effortlessly along breaking waves. So it’s a shocking sight to see one covered in oil, desperately clinging to life. Many pelicans were among the more than 3,600 birds found dead after the big 1969 offshore oil spill in Santa Barbara.
At least 26 brown pelicans were found dead, coated in crude, after the Refugio Oil Spill in 2015. Another 47 were rescued and cleaned up, but their health may still have been fatally compromised. Studies have found birds exposed to oil develop a variety of health problems, and when a spill occurs during breeding season, pelicans will often carry that contamination back to the nest, causing mortality and developmental defects in their eggs and chicks.
Sea Turtles — Leatherback sea turtles are massive reptiles, the biggest of all the turtles, traveling the seas for 110 million years. But modern fishing and oil extraction practices have created major new threats to their continued survival. Oil spills and other toxic pollution from offshore drilling tends to float near the ocean’s surface, where sea turtles often swim.
Sea turtles inhale very deeply before diving and thus can inhale high concentrations of toxic fumes from an oily ocean surface, leading to respiratory ailments. They also tend to eat the tar balls created by offshore drilling, mistaking them for food, which can cause starvation or fatigue that makes them easier prey for predators.
Sea Lions — California sea lions often provide the soundtrack and floor show for coastal visitors, displaying a wide array of barking vocalizations and intelligent social behaviors. They’re ubiquitous up and down the coast, often gathering in large numbers on beaches, piers or rocky points and affectionately playing with one another. But such high concentrations also can cause mass die-offs during oil spills.
During the Refugio Oil Spill in 2015, at least 80 California sea lions were killed and at least another 52 had to be rescued and treated — the most of any affected species. Sea lions are also hit hard by warming seas and other climate change byproducts of our fossil fuel dependence. Thousands of sea lion pups were found emaciated and malnourished on California beaches during the El Niño year of 2015.
Selling decades-long offshore fossil fuel leases will only delay our transition to clean energy sources and create more dangerously warm and acidic ocean conditions in future years.
See also: 5 Animals Threatened by Arctic Oil Drilling.
