Publications

Traditionally oil spills have been cleaned up for a variety of reasons. Some of these reasons are: to protect life and to protect property, to protect amenities such as recreational areas, to recover a valuable spilled crude oil or product, to satisfy public expectations, to comply with environmental laws and regulations, and to protect the environment .The priorities of the above cleanup motivations vary with the individual circumstances of the spill. As world-wide awareness of the importance to man of protecting the environment has become more evident, a new concern emerges: Can the cleanup procedures be chosen so as to enhance and promote the quickest recovery of the oil damaged ecosystem? At the opposite extreme, can some oil spill cleanup methods result in increased damage to the environment and delayed ecosystem recovery? The answer to both questions is unequivocally yes. Concerning the second question, it is not implied that some cleanup techniques are intrinsically bad or ecologically harmful, merely that used in the wrong situation or place or time, they can cause negative results. The essential point and the central theme of this paper is that the basic objectives of response to oil spills are minimizing ecological damage and hastening ecosystem recovery rather than just cleaning up spilled oil. The only exceptions to this rule are those few oil spill situations where it is necessary to protect human life and health, or where the protection of property takes precedence because of its importance to the quality of human life.