Oil-covered birds are being washed up at an 'alarming rate', charity warns

Monday, 23 March 2020 - Environment

Seabirds covered in oil are being washed up on the island’s beaches at an alarming rate, a charity has warned.

The Manx Wild Bird Aid charity is currently dealing with some 17 guillemots that have been picked up.

The first cases were reported on Saturday lunchtime with distressed birds found on beaches along the east coast from the Point of Ayre to Port St Mary.

It is thought the oil spill originated near Anglesey, where there have been reports of oiled seabirds for a week or more.

David Cole, of Manx Wild Bird Aid, said he had reported the issue to the Coastguard.

Marine Operations have been notified and are in touch with the UK Coastguard. A spotter plane was expected to be sent up to investigate.

Mr Cole said: ’We picked up one bird from the Point of Ayre and one bird from Port St Mary but the epicentre seems to be around Laxey and Douglas.

’We treated more from the south on Sunday so the oil spill is obviously moving with the tide.

’On Saturday we just found the birds with no reports of oil on the beach but on Sunday people have reported finding tar on the beach.’

He added: ’It’s unusual that all the birds we have found have been guillemots.’

Some very small patches of what looked like heavy fuel oil were found on Port Soderick beach.

Mr Cole said there were two categories of bird - those that had been washed ashore that people have been able to pick up, and others which were obviously in distress but had gone back out to sea, preventing their recovery.

He said: ’The 17 are just the ones we have been able to pick up from the beach.’

Mr Cole, of Victoria Road, Castletown, admitted the birds’ chance of survival was ’not great’.

He explained the birds try to preen themselves and ingest the oil. They had to be hydrated and kept warm and fed before they were strong enough for the cleaning process to begin, which itself could be distressing for them.

Dog walkers are warned to be careful if they go on beaches.

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Refuelling under scrutiny as S.Africa penguins hit by oil spill

JULY 10, 2019

by Max Matavire

Rangers in wet suits have been searching for oil-tarred penguins in shallow water around St Croix Island off the South African coast as a refuelling spill highlights conservationists' fears over pollution.

Experts said an unknown number of penguins had been affected on the rocky, uninhabited island, which is home to the largest breeding colony of endangered African penguins in the world.

A Liberian-flagged ship spewed between 200 and 400 litres of oil into the sea off Port Elizabeth city during "bunkering" re-fuelling—the process of filling a ship with fuel from another vessel.

The small-scale leakage from the bulk carrier MV Chrysanthi vessel at dawn on Saturday was the second oil spill in the environmentally-sensitive area in three years.

"This is exactly the concern with offshore 'bunkering' that we have been voicing concerns about," Stacey Webb, of the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB) charity, told AFP.

"The danger is not over yet. Penguins forage up to 100 kilometres (60 miles) away from the islands (St Croix Island and Bird Island) so they could run into the spill out at sea."

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Penguins at risk from oil as ship sinks

Ben Webster, Oceans Correspondent

May 11 2017, 12:01am, The Times

A ship sinking near the Falkland Islands has put endangered penguins at risk of being contaminated by oil, the RSPB has warned.

The MV Reefer Uruguay, a 10,000-tonne refrigerated cargo vessel, was acting as a mother ship to fishing vessels close to the Antarctic Peninsula when she is believed to have struck floating ice. Her crew of 42 abandoned ship on Sunday.

The vessel, which is managed by Baltmed Reefer Services, based in Athens, is about 100 miles east of Stanley. She is understood to have 560 tonnes of heavy fuel oil and 180 tonnes of marine gas oil on board. The RSPB said that this could spill into the ocean if she broke up as she sank.

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Major oil spill in Turkey; emergency teams deployed

By Doğa Derneği, 19 Jan 2017 

A major oil spill is affecting coastal areas in western Turkey. Doğa Derneği (Birdlife Turkey) has deployed an emergency team of volunteers to help oiled wildlife.

In the clear waters of Izmit Bay in western Turkey, a major oil spill is putting human health and marine biodiversity at risk. The spill occurred last Friday near the rich Key Biodiversity Area of Kocaeli Tepeleri, affecting bird species such as European Shag Phalacrocorax aristotelis, Great Cormorant Phalacrocorax carbo and Common Coot Fulica atra.

Over the weekend, locals rang the alarm as oiled birds and deep-sea marine life started washing up ashore. As soon as the leakage began, Doğa’s Local Conservation Groups began work to rescue the affected wildlife, transferring them to the nearest wildlife rescue and rehabilitation centre, Faruk Yalçın Zoo.

Itri Levent Erkol, Conservation Manager at Doğa Derneği, visited the coast and surrounding marine areas as soon as they were informed of the disaster. “Even if officially the cleaning and rescue work is now considered finished, we are still finding dead bodies of cormorants and coots”, says Erkol. “We are even finding oiled birds alive and citizens are having to take them home to clean them up, which is not recommended.”

Zoo officials informed Erkol that 17 of 58 rescued birds died for different reasons related to the oil spill, but the conditions of the survivors are improving.  

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Bird reproduction collapsed after oil spill

Study of shag colonies on Spanish coast shows lingering effect of 2002 Prestige disaster.

Matt Kaplan

30 April 2014

Oil spills kill a lot of wildlife quickly, but their long-term effects are hard to establish because to compare the situation before and after a disaster, a study would need to have been already up and running before the disaster occurred. Fortunately, this was precisely the case for a Spanish team of researchers.

Back in 1994, marine biologist Álvaro Barros and his colleagues at Spain's University of Vigo started looking at the reproductive activity of 18 colonies of a diving bird known as the European shag (Phalacrocorax aristotelis). Then, on 13 November 2002, the hull of the Prestige oil tanker broke in half off the north-western coast of Spain, releasing 63,000 tonnes of oil. The oil heavily coated regions near seven of the colonies, and mostly missed the other 11, creating ‘oiled’ and ‘unoiled’ populations for the researchers to compare.

The team now reports in Biology Letters1 that reproductive success was 45% lower in oiled populations compared with unoiled colonies, whereas it had been much the same before the spill. The researchers measured reproductive success by counting how many fully grown young emerged from each nest. This number averaged 1.6 for both oiled and control colonies before the spill. Afterwards, while the control colonies maintained the 1.6 figure, the number for the birds in the oiled colonies dropped to 1.0.

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Bird body count still rising following Galveston Bay oil spill

By John UptonNOAA

There have been so many oil spills lately — from trains, from pipelines, from barges, from a refinery – that it’s easy to forget about the particulars of each one. Unless you’re an unlucky local resident or an emergency responder.

In Texas, where more than 100,000 gallons of heavy fuel spilled into Galveston Bay two weeks ago following a collision between a barge and a ship, the Coast Guard has recovered more than 300 oiled birds – nearly all of them dead. The Texas Tribune reports:

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Dead, oiled birds sighted 3 days into Texas oil spill cleanup

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

NEW: More than 15 miles of shoreline impacted, 750 cleanup workers involved

More than 100 ships are stuck in the Port of Houston after 168,000-gallon oil spill

Environmental watchdog: “Long-term monitoring” of spill will be necessary

Wildlife officials have found birds, some “oiled,” others deceased

(CNN) — Efforts to clean up a 168,000 gallons of thick, viscous oil that spilled into the Port of Houston near Galveston, Texas, stretched into a third day Tuesday, as wildlife rescuers sought to estimate the impact on birds and marine life.

The spill, which occurred over the weekend after two vessels collided, has forced the closure of the heavily trafficked port, putting dozens of ships in limbo as they wait in a queue to enter and exit the waterway early Tuesday afternoon.

The Houston Ship Channel was opened to limited barge traffic within the channel, U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Andy Kendrick said, but the channel remained closed to all other vessels, and the vessels in the port were not allowed to leave.

As of early Tuesday afternoon, 101 inbound and outbound vessels were stuck in the channel, Kendrick said.

Read more

Galveston Bay oil spill threatens bird migration

Published: Sunday, March 23, 2014 at 6:34 a.m.

Last Modified: Sunday, March 23, 2014 at 6:34 a.m.

McALLEN, Texas - Crews armed with infrared cameras planned to work through the night after a barge carrying nearly a million gallons of especially thick, sticky oil collided with a ship in Galveston Bay, leaking an unknown amount of the fuel into the popular bird habitat as the peak of the migratory shorebird season was approaching.

Booms were brought in to try to contain the spill, which the Coast Guard said was reported at around 12:30 p.m. Saturday by the captain of the 585-foot ship, Summer Wind. Coast Guard Lt. j.g. Kristopher Kidd said the spill hadn't been contained as of 10 p.m., and that the collision was still being investigated.

The ship collided with a barge carrying 924,000 gallons of marine fuel oil, also known as special bunker, that was being towed by the vessel Miss Susan, the Coast Guard said. It didn't give an estimate of how much fuel had spilled into the bay, but there was a visible sheen of oil at the scene.

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Duck oil spill rescue continues in Glyndyfrdwy

A rescue operation to save up to 500 ducks caught up in an oil spill on a lake is continuing in Denbighshire, says the RSPCA.

Nearly 200 have been rounded up so far following the incident in Glyndyfrdwy, between Corwen and Llangollen.

Most of the birds are heavily coated in engine oil and are being taken to the RSPCA's wildlife centre in Taunton, Somerset, for treatment.

The rescue started on Monday after last week's oil spill.

Natural Resources Wales (NRW) said the spill was confined to the lake and there was no impact on the wider environment.

The agency was called out to investigate the incident on Thursday and Friday and advised the landowner how to clean up the oil.

The ducks were originally reared for shooting but had been signed over to the RSPCA, said its officials.

It said they would be rehabilitated and survivors released back into the wild.

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