Oil Spills Associated Hazards and Cleaning - Essay Example

Kingston (2002), comments that crude oil is one of the most important fossil fuels on earth. Since not all the nations of the world are equally endowed with oil, hence for export and import oil is often carried through ships or through pipelines. I met with an accident; oil gets spilled in the sea and mostly remains on the surface of the seawater; though some of the oil gets carried down to the sea surface by sinking sands and clay and might form tarballs. It is worth mentioning that oil spills might also happen through irresponsible oil discharge to the seawater by the carriers (Operational Discharges of oil, 2014) but the writer has not mentioned that. The author proceeds to state that oil contamination is extremely harmful to the environment and numerous numbers of sea birds, mammals, and other sea creatures fall prey to the oil spill. However, there is no one-to-one correspondence between the volume of the spill and sea life lost. Often the nature of the pollution is long-term and affects sea life even after many years of the spill. Unless addressed with due importance it would surely trigger an environmental catastrophe. However, the author has not mentioned that not the immediate direct action but the indirect action in terms of habitat loss (Center for Biological Diversity, 2014; National Wildlife Federation, 2012) would also affect the sea life and environment. Read More