- But when oil accidentally spills into the ocean, it can cause big problems. Oil spills can harm sea creatures, ruin a day at the beach, and make seafood unsafe to...
- A heavy oil spill can also blanket estuaries and shoreline ecosystems, such as salt marshes and tidal pools, preventing gas exchange and blocking light.
- One of the causes of oil spills is natural disasters. For instance, a raging storm may sink an oil tanker, spill its contents, and cause pollution.
- An oil spill is a form of marine pollution that occurs when any type of oil spills into an open body of water. The oil floats on the water surface as a discrete mass.
- For this reason, oil spill is regarded as a form of pollution as the term is mostly applied to define spillage of oil in marine systems.
- As a cause of oil spill, explosions may occur as a result of unfavorable pressure dynamics and other conditions, in drilling rigs, storage vessels, or transport pipelines.
- The oil spill, which totalled 3.4 million barrels of crude oil, severely damaged marine life, including populations of octopi, dolphins, turtles and shrimp.
- Though the number of oil spills per decade has decreased, it has been estimated that around 706 mn gallons of oil leaked into the oceans.
- With better control and care, the number of oil spills have decreased greatly down to an average of 78.8 from the 1970s to 6.2 spills per year in the 2010s.
- Generally, there are two kinds of oil spills: Oil spill in water and oil spill in soil. The biggest different between them is the degree of spread.