Oil spills should not occur of course, but the main message in this story is that most of the efforts to clean up the spill were useless (volunteers cleaned birds only to see them die because they had already injested too much oil), or caused more damage than the spill itself (blasting oil off beaches). This hard-won experience should be remembered when treating any new oil spills.
The claim that the effects of the spill still linger 20 years after the event is difficult to believe. One observer says he can still dig a hole and watch it fill with oil. Eh? I have no doubt there are still traces which chemical analysis could detect but large scale amounts 20 years after the event? Maybe this statement should be checked. Similarly the statement about spills disappating at 4 per cent a year should be subjected to a reality check.
Certainly commercial fishing suffered but was that to do with the spill or with official restrictions placed on it after the event as part of efforts to help the area "recover"? Those bans, incidentally, are known to have affected inuit populations.

The initial efforts of removing the Valdez's oil from intertidal areas included flushing them with hot water, applied with high pressure, proved fatal for much of the marine life involved and natural rates of biodegradation and recovery have been slower than anticipated.

The hardest hit during most oil spills are the marine birds - few recover even if they are cleaned, fed until they molt (getting a new set of feathers) and released.

And in March, a new Queen's University study shows that detergents used to clean up spills of oil actually increase its toxicity to fish, making it more harmful.

Apart from the bioaccumulative chemicals released from the Valdez disaster, the cold Arctic environment has long been a sink for industrial contaminants which circulate around the globe and northward in air and ocean currents where marine life is seriously contaminated.

These biomagnifying contaminants settle out in Arctic waters, sea ice, and land, where they remain for long periods and break down very slowly because of the colder climate.

Organochlorines and heavy metals are also showing up in Alaska's wildlife. Additionally, several studies on the Greenland Inuits have revealed they have the highest body burdens of organochlorines in the world due to their marine diet.

These contaminants are then passed on to infants through breast milk. Who would have believed that man’s destructive actions could result in the compromise of infants’ health by their consumption of life-sustaining liquids from breast milk?

In February, coastguards in Britain and Ireland were on red alert after yet another spill of crude oil from a Russian aircraft carrier which spilt an estimated 1,000 tonnes of oil off the southern Irish coast.

The spill took place in international waters but the oil has since floated into Irish territory and is now heading for the Welsh coast where it could cause severe losses among breeding birds and marine animals including dolphins, porpoises and seals.

Yet we humans regard these ecological disasters with indifference (the lack of interest (and denial) on OLO is a good indication) while the omnicidal consequences of man's pollution are ignored.