wanted to respond to Benny1’s post but didn’t want to flood Herb’s “your favorite break” thread.
you’re absolutely right Benny, this is a CATASTROPHE. got to searching for what i
could do and found this http://barefootandlaughing.blogspot.com/…nse-information.html
i’m going to keep looking… we need to raise awareness…
please add any info that applies to cleanup, volunteer, letter writing, or ??? to this thread…
thanks,
Chris
DAWN is the preferred liquid detergent for cleaning oiled birds and wildlife by professional wildlife rescue operations. It has tremendous grease cutting properties and if fully rinsed off it’s not too harsh on skin.
Proctor and Gamble donates all product and provides additional professional help for animal rescues. Just buying their product will generate a donation and provides a path by which everyone everywhere can help.
I have absolutely no company affiliation with Proctor and Gamble whatsoever, but Dawn is what I buy for home and work. We use it professionally in our chocolate factory where I have had lots of personal professional contact with the product. It’s great stuff for home use as well. Here is a link to more information.
http://www.homemadesimple.com/sites/en_US/saveaduck/main.shtml
You’re right Chris, this is a better place for it.
We’ve got a nightmare of our own up here today… its scarier than any shark.
An 810-foot-long container ship crashed into the base of a tower of the Bay Bridge’s western span in heavy fog Wednesday, spilling 58,000 gallons of fuel into San Francisco Bay.
It was the first time in memory that an oceangoing ship had run into the bridge. There was no apparent major damage to the span, but the hull of Hanjin Shipping’s 65,131-ton Cosco Busan was ripped.
Within hours of the 8:30 a.m. crash, oil was showing up on the San Francisco waterfront and on Pacific Ocean beaches in Marin County. By nightfall, several beaches in San Francisco were closed to the public, and the state’s Office of Emergency Services had instructed Bay Area counties to begin assessing potential dangers to the public from contamination.
http://www.sfgate.com/…/11/08/MNUKT85I3.DTL
Quote
“By 1 p.m. oil hit the rocks at Alcatraz,” said Chris Powell, a spokeswoman for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. “By 2 p.m., the sheen was on the beach at Crissy Field. By 3 p.m., it was on the rocks at Fort Point.”
Powell said the National Park Service closed six beaches Wednesday afternoon: Crissy Field, China Beach, and Baker Beach in San Francisco, along with Rodeo Beach, Kirby Cove and Black Sands Beach in Marin County.
The sheen, she said, appeared to be moving west, under the Golden Gate and into the Pacific Ocean. Coast Guard reports also placed it as far north as Dillon Beach and as far south as Hunters Point.
http://www.mercurynews.com/…99949?nclick_check=1
The fuel that spilled from a container ship into San Francisco Bay on Wednesday is a “nasty” oil that breaks down slowly, is hard to clean up and could affect marine life for years, environmentalists and oil-spill experts say.
The heavy-duty bunker fuel oil that leaked from the Cosco Busan after it clipped the base of one of the Bay Bridge’s towers is what’s left over after oil is refined for gasoline, and “it’s the nastiest stuff around,” said Gerald Graham of Victoria, British Columbia, who has been trained by the Canadian coast guard as an on-scene commander for oil spill cleanups. “It doesn’t tend to break down very quickly,” Graham said. “It’s cheap, and it’s dirty. If the wind happens to blow it out into a channel or bay, it could spread, and then you could have miles of shoreline that could be affected.”
By 3 p.m. Wednesday, some of the 58,000 gallons that spilled from the Cosco Busan had already floated into the Pacific and along the Marin County coast near Tennessee Cove, according to party-boat skippers coming in from fishing and crabbing in the Gulf of the Farallones.
http://www.sfgate.com/…/11/08/MND7T870A.DTL
So its a good thing Log D & I had a nice session at dawn yesterday with this south swell coming in. The swell’s supposed to stick around for a few days… but Marin beaches are now closed. We’re also having the highest (7’) tides of the month right now, so its going to push the fuel oil all the way up the beaches & into the lagoons. The highs will push the oil all around the bay too, and then the 20 kt. currents of the outgoing tide will bring it out into the ocean.
To make it worse, we’re in the middle of the migratory waterfowl season. Thousands of non-resident ducks & geese are here to be contaminated. Oh, and crab season began Monday.
Catastrophe.
Fort Point, Deadman’s, Eagles, Rodeo (Cronkhite)… all well-known surf spots, and all shut down. Indefinitely. Ocean Beach, Stinson, Bo, Palo, Drakes, Limantour, Dillon… all likely to be contaminated as well. Unbelievable impact for Bay Area surfers.
Pretty hard, though, to even worry about the surf when so much environmental damage is done in such a short time. F—, I’m really, really depressed right now. This crap is washing in & out with the big tides and going simply everywhere.
Time to double-hull every freaking one of these things.
Couple other volunteer opportunities will soon be found at
http://www.marinemammalcenter.org/ and http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/owcn/
that sucks…in '69 we had a bad one along this stretch of california coast…every day we’d get birds completely soaked in oil and bring 'em to the yard and try and clean them up. fishing was eliminated.marine mammals wshing up coated in the slick. an experience i’ll never forget…
58,000 gallons sounds like a lot but like Blakestah posted on another forum, 600 billion gallons of water flow out of the bay everyday. so…one assumes long term effects will be quite minimal as the oil is moved out and about.
Got in the water at Ortega (that’s the middle of OBSF) at 2:30 pm today. Lasted about 1/2 hour as encountering chunks of oil floating by and a STRONG oil/gas smell drove me out of the water. Oil smeared on my board, booties, and hands. Quarter to small pancake sized oil chunks all in the waterline. Dead, oil soaked cormorant in the sand. Nasty!!!
never mind the fact that dawn is a detergent made from petrolium
I dunno, Slim… wishful thinking?
This is a beach a surf pretty often. My favorite bodysurfing spot, when everything else is Victory at Sea.
She’s pulling out a Surf Scoter and everything shiny is congealed bunker fuel. This is outside the Gate, more than 15 miles by boat from the spill.
I think its going to be a pretty long time before I want to whomp into the sand there.
Its also the same beach that hosts the Marine Mammal Center and the Hawk Hill Raptor Project. I have friends who work at both organizations… they’re pretty devastated.
Again - double hulls. The time has come.
I talked to a guy who got out of the water at OB because his skin was burning,He had not heard the news.
This was a great fishing spot last week.
Swimming in crude oil fuel can’t be good for the fishes.They say only 30% of the animals-fish-mammals-birds-invertebrates exposed will survive.Toxic sediment in the wet lands for years.
Not good,
Yep, it was wishful thinking on my part. Seems a lot worse than reported initially. An email from surfrider points Baykeeper.org as a place for us bay area types to volunteer:
Gutted.
the Bay Area is one of my favourite places on the planet, and one thing that has always impressed me is how the guys and gals that work in and around the bay strive to keep it in as good as condition as it usually is, given the huge variety of users the bay has.
Seems to me that it was all down to poor navigation on the part of the ship, coupled with poor design…I mean single skins? now after all the crap that we know will happen if anything breaches that skin?
It’s about time the US authorities [and others around the world - the UK/ EU included] just stopped allowing these disasters waiting to happen into their waters.
58,000 gallons sounds like a lot but like Blakestah posted on another forum, 600 billion gallons of water flow out of the bay everyday. so...one assumes long term effects will be quite minimal as the oil is moved out and about.
It is estimated at 400 billion gallons per tide change. The oil was released at the point of maximal outgoing current, at high tide. The late year morning high tide was particularly high, so the estimate was that 600 billion occured on that tide change.
Today, five days later (10 tidal cycles), without a storm, the oil is mostly dispersed. The model of this has a constant ratio of dilution per tide change People who surfed in SF this morning reported seeing no oil in the water, and tiny amounts on the sand going to or from the water.
Because the oil spill was not large relative to the tide flows, and because it was spilled at the place where the tidal currents are the largest (up to 6 knots at peak tide change). Something like a 30% reduction in toxicity every 12 hours. After 5 days it is down to 2-3% of its peak. After 10 days, 0.01%.
It was not great for the people and wildlife caught in the cross-hairs, but I don’t think this will go down in the history books at the disaster of the decade, or even of the year. It won’t really finish cleaning up until a good winter storm creates massive foamballs…but people are surfing today without regard for the oil.
It could certainly be worse…
The oil tanker (designed as a river barge) which broke in half in the Black Sea yesterday was carrying 4800 tonnes of oil - 1,451,520 gallons. Only half has spilled so far, but they expect eventually it will all come out.
http://www.agi.it/…cro-ren0059-art.html
http://ca.today.reuters.com/…L&archived=False
As for up here, is anyone really surprised that now that the USCG is part of the Sept. of Homeland Security, there was a slow response to pollution? Not me. The ship hit the bridge at 8:30 in the morning, and reported spilling about 150 gallons! The Coast Guard mobilized a couple of skimmers, but didn’t admit it was any more than that until after 9pm - when they said, ok, well, its actually 58 thousand gallons. What - they couldn’t see it all day? Ridiculous.
But at least we don’t have to live like this:
i was on the sand at Fort Funston yesterday (Sunday the 11th).
the oil down there was spotted all over the hightide mark and
closer to the water. touched it with my fingers and it took a lot of
scrubbing with soap to get it off. the stuff is sticky.
i’m highly skeptical that foam from waves is going to clean it off
the rocks at Fort Point, or on the other side of the bridge.
people being able to surf today is a moot point. this never should
have happened. the bridge has been there for 70 years. and it’s
probably foggy the majority of the year. the repercussions from
this spill will be felt for years. not just by surfers but also by people
fishing, boating, enjoying the shoreline, not to mention the wildlife.
like Benny1 said, the tides were reallly high around the time of the
spill so it stands to reason that the oil that wasn’t swept out to sea
ended up high on the beaches/rocks and maybe even in the many
lagoons along the shorline above and below that gate. no amount of
foam from winter storms is going to clean it out of there.
the tides were reallly high around the time of the
spill so it stands to reason that the oil that wasn’t swept out to sea
ended up high on the beaches/rocks and maybe even in the many
lagoons along the shorline above and below that gate. no amount of
foam from winter storms is going to clean it out of there.
I would presume that any oil that was swept out to see will eventually return to shore on winds and currents…dispersed a fair bit, maybe…but…
Gasoline takes it off hands and feet pretty well, as does a product called Carbona, but all I deal with is natural seepage…minimal at best. I would be very hesitant to use chemicals on wetsuits these days. Does anybody have any curent info on cleaning oil/tar off wetsuits?
i was on the sand at Fort Funston yesterday (Sunday the 11th).the oil down there was spotted all over the hightide mark and
closer to the water. touched it with my fingers and it took a lot of
scrubbing with soap to get it off. the stuff is sticky.
i’m highly skeptical that foam from waves is going to clean it off the rocks at Fort Point, or on the other side of the bridge.
people being able to surf today is a moot point. this never should have happened. the bridge has been there for 70 years. and it’s probably foggy the majority of the year. the repercussions from this spill will be felt for years. not just by surfers but also by people fishing, boating, enjoying the shoreline, not to mention the wildlife.
like Benny1 said, the tides were reallly high around the time of the spill so it stands to reason that the oil that wasn’t swept out to sea ended up high on the beaches/rocks and maybe even in the many lagoons along the shorline above and below that gate. no amount of foam from winter storms is going to clean it out of there.
I’ll revive this thread in about two months and we’ll play a game of “find the oil”. I predict it will be impossible.
There was a big oil spill in the North Atlantic on a coastline about 6-7 years ago. It occurred during a winter storm. No cleanup was necessary. The storm churned the oil into droplets small enough they were irrelevant. The same will happen here.
like i said, “i’m highly skeptical” based on actually touching the oil myself. whether
it’s there in 2 months or not i have no real educated opinion.
regardless, i don’t think that “out of sight out of mind” is how i should consider
this spill nor others. especially since it’s pretty well known that the negative effects
of chemical spills on living things usually arise well after the initial contamination…
usually very long after the spill can actually be seen.
further, best case scenario, if there are no longterm ill effects from this incident,
i think that there are things that i can do to help prevent this from happening in the
future and i plan on doing them.
obviously on a larger scale but, 10 years of storms far greater than those that we get…
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/302/5653/2082
http://www.afsc.noaa.gov/quarterly/jas2001/feature_jas01.htm
“The solution to pollution is dilution” was environmental science… 20 years ago. Dispersed is not the same as benign.
Able to find evidence or not, those hydrocarbons belong deep inside the ground, not dissolved in the same ocean where fish & birds and crabs live and where we surf. Its thinking like “It’ll be (apparently) gone in 2 months” that puts up with single-hulled ships and 13-hour response times.
Freaking ridiculous attitude, Blakestah. I’m disappointed in you.
"The solution to pollution is dilution" was environmental science... 20 years ago. Dispersed is not the same as benign.Able to find evidence or not, those hydrocarbons belong deep inside the ground, not dissolved in the same ocean where fish & birds and crabs live and where we surf. Its thinking like “It’ll be (apparently) gone in 2 months” that puts up with single-hulled ships and 13-hour response times.
Freaking ridiculous attitude, Blakestah. I’m disappointed in you.
If you take a big picture look at environmental pollutants and ecosystem alterations by man in the Bay Area, a 50,000 gallon oil spill is a very minor event.
Bay Area fish have mercury accumulations significant enough that we are warned against their regular consumption.
Rockfish and salmon populations are overfished to near extinction.
Groundwater is contaminated with MTBE.
PBDEs have accumulated to a substantial enough extent that many people have thyroid problems.
The list of chemicals that cause health problems that have accumulated in our lives in recent years goes on and on. Perchlorates. Heck, some people even breathe in styrene to get a pretty shine on a surfboard.
And this oil spill represents one part in eight MILLION of one tidal change. The concentrations of it are toxic, but the Bay swishes its tides around a lot, and after a little while longer I don’t think many will recall this oil spill as a major environmental catastrophe.
Hey Mark,
I use Dawn in my airbrush water.One or two gtts per gallon makes for a sweet running spray++++I clean all my airbrush equipment w/ it.
Good Stuff !!!
Pollution…huh…my fav break is and has always been a sewer…Jack Haley lived a very clean life and had no History of cancer in his background…Just before his passing on ,he blamed RayBay/River(SGRM) for his cancer…me too !..(GOOD FOR THE MIND…BAD FOR THE BODY)
Blakestah is absolutely correct !
And those organihalogens ,and heavy metals never leave your body …until you decompose !