Abstract

In response to the devastation wreaked by oil spills such as the Exxon Valdez, California legislation passed in 1990 required the state’s Department of Fish and Game to establish the Office of Spill Prevention and Response (OSPR) to prevent and protect California’s coastline from the impact of such catastrophes. The OSPR was also charged with the establishment of rescue and rehabilitation stations to care for seabirds, sea otters, and other marine mammals that might be impacted by such events. The Oiled Wildlife Care Network (OWCN) was established by the OSPR in 1994 to ensure that wildlife exposed to petroleum products in the environment receive the best achievable treatment through access to permanent wildlife facilities and trained personnel that are maintained in a constant state of preparedness for oil spill response. During response, the OWCN receives assistance from many or all of its twenty-five participating organizations trained in state-of-the-art skills for wildlife care, and uses one or more of twelve regional facilities either built specifically for, or modified to accommodate, oiled wildlife. Since 1997, the OWCN has been administered by the Wildlife Health Center at the School of Veterinary Medicine, UC Davis, and has since become recognized as the world leader in oil spill response, rescue, and rehabilitation.

In addition to individual animal care during oil spills, the OWCN has spent considerable effort focusing on other issues critical to understanding and preventing the impact of oil on wildlife. Since 1996, the OWCN has led a competitive grants program focused on better understanding the effects of oil on wildlife. This program has funded more than 60 applied and hypothesis-driven research projects that have allocated over $1.5 million to increase knowledge of the consequences of oil exposure to wildlife (both at an individual as well as a population level), and to improve the quality of response technology for oil spill response. In addition to fostering research, the OWCN has been a key player in California (as well as internationally) for the development of protocols and procedures aimed at the collection of evidentiary and baseline information both before and during spills—information necessary for the better understanding of the “true” effects of spills at a population level and for any investigations necessary to determine the party responsible for such releases in the marine environment.

An example of the multifaceted impact of oiled wildlife care to overall spill response efforts was seen starting in the winter of 2001. In November, the OWCN was notified that a large number of oiled birds were being observed on the San Mateo county coastline, with no apparent fouling of the coastline. Search and collection teams were rapidly deployed to collect these animals, document specific location information on where animals were found, and identify information on the search effort. All affected animals were recovered as rapidly as possible and transported to the OWCN-managed San Francisco Bay Oiled Wildlife Care and Education Center so that the rehabilitation process could begin. This process includes comprehensive medical examination and detailed evidence of the collection process, including the collection of feather samples for gas chromatographic (GC-FID) “fingerprinting” to link the product with the oil in the environment.

While oiled animals continue to be collected throughout the central coast area, no apparent source of the oil has been identified even after extensive over-flights using fixed-wing aircraft. Oiled animals were reported on the Farallon Islands and have been collected as far north as the Point Reyes seashore and as far south as Monterey Bay, indicating that the source of the oil might be further offshore than previously expected. Additionally, greater numbers of affected animals follow significant storm events, lending evidence to a single point-source cause. The OSPR, in conjunction with the U.S. Coast Guard and other governmental agencies, quickly developed a joint task force to investigate the cause(s) of the event(s). Animal location and species data (collected by search and collection teams) and oceanographic data were used to “hindcast” the probable areas where the release(s) were occurring—an area immediately southeast of the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary. Feather samples collected during the animal intake process were analyzed using GC-FID and were determined to largely come from a single source. This information, combined with the evaluation of other available data (such as vehicular transit through the proposed area and the accessing of selected satellite images taken of the area), quickly pointed to a sunken vessel as the most likely cause. By combing thorough maritime data, the list of possible sources (over 1,600 wrecks off the California coast alone) was quickly narrowed to four possibilities. A remote operated vessel (ROV) was charted to investigate the most likely source and, through comparisons of oil found on the ROV’s tether to that on feather samples, the source was confirmed as the S.S. Jacob Luckenbach, a 148-meter freighter which collided on 14 July 1953 with its sister ship and sank in 55 m of water about 27 km west-southwest of San Francisco. Over the ensuing 8 months, the USCG, in collaboration with OSPR and other agencies and salvage companies, successfully embarked on an unprecedented effort to recover as much of the over 10,000 barrels of fuel oil that might be within the ship to reduce future impacts on the environment. However, the direct impact of the spill on wildlife was significant with over 2,100 live and dead birds collected over 9 months.

In addition to this acute impact during 2001–2002, further work by the OSPR has linked the Luckenbach as the cause of multiple “mystery spills” in and around the San Francisco Bay area, dating at least back to 1992 (the inception of the OWCN’s feather collection protocols) and possibly as far back as 1973. Through evaluating animal intake data, collected samples, beach search efforts (providing more precise animal impact estimates) and historic records from rehabilitation and ornithologic organizations, it appears total bird mortalities may be in excess of 90,000 animals since 1973 and, were the ship leaking at the same rate since its sinking, might have exceeded 150,000 animals in total.¹ These numbers may help to clarify the significant population decline that has been observed in the common murre (Uria aalge), the species most frequently collected during all northern California “mystery” spill events. This population impact further exemplifies the role of the OWCN, not only in caring for and returning to the environment healthy individuals, but for participating and playing an active role in the overall spill response effort.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Steve Hampton, Kim McCleneghan, and Julie Yamamoto (DFG-OSPR), Jay Holcomb and the staff of International Bird Rescue Research Center, and the staff, members, and volunteers of the Oiled Wildlife Care Network for their tremendous help and support during this spill event.

Literature Cited

1.  Hampton, S., R.G. Ford, H.R. Carter, C. Abraham, and D. Humple. 2004. Chronic oiling and seabird mortality from the sunken vessel S.S. Jacob Luckenbach in central California. Marine Ornithology. 31:35–41.