A wrecked supertanker, with a black tidal wave of volatile crude oil spilling from its side, has become a powerful symbol of the destruction of the ocean’s wildlife population and the natural environment. On a seemingly regular basis, the nation’s newspapers and television screens are wallpapered with vivid images of tankers spilling crude oil, also known as petroleum, and oil soaked sea birds in various stages of death and decay. Crude oil plays a vital role and has even become an absolute necessity in the modern industrial society. It is utilized to provide fuel and lubricants for machinery, manufacture asphalt, plastics, medicines, pesticides, paints, and is even used to aid in creating electricity. However, when this versatile and powerful resource is uncontrolled, it can annihilate marine life as well as decimate the environment and economy of an entire region. The basic facts are that the technology of oil, its extraction, transport, and refinery use, have outpaced laws to control that technology and prevent oil from polluting the environment. In an online article written by Stuart Baird, only about 20% of oil spills are the result of tanker accidents while the remaini

The utilization of chemical dispersants is also an extremely common countermeasure used in the event of an oil spill. Chemical dispersants act on detergents that tend to break oil slicks into millions of small droplets. Rather than removing the oil, dispersants simply spread the effects of the oil spill out over many different ecosystems thus extinguishing the primary danger. The initial reason for using dispersants was in response to public and governmental concerns of potential damage to marine life and contaminated drinking water due to inadequate cleanup methods. This made dispersants especially valuable due to the fact that it proves to be successful when other countermeasures fail. For instance, if an oil spill is moving onshore but waves are too high to allow the use of mechanical recovery, dispersants would be an effective alternative to breaking up the oil slick. Once the slick is split into millions of tiny droplets of oil, it will no longer pose an immediate potential threat to the environment or marine life. Another advantage to the use of dispersants, aside from its reliability, is that it can be applied and take effect on the oil spill much faster than the recovery of spilled oil by mechanical means. Dispersants are commonly applied by overhead aerial spraying, however its impact on the habitats being sprayed upon must first be examined. Although many marine ecosystems are extremely sensitive to damage by oil, the use of dispersants brings about questions of the relative environmental effects of dispersed oil. Nonetheless, chemical dispersants, when effectively used will, “aid in the recovery of oil, and also enhance the rate of biodegradation of oil by nature.”

Clearly the most effective method of reducing the number of oil spills would be for the world to use less oil. Increased energy efficiency and the utilization of renewable forms of energy such as solar and wind power are clean alternatives that could markedly reduce the world’s dependence on oil. However, as long as many countries in the industrialized world are dependent upon imported oil for a large part of their energy needs, accidental oil spills causing an extreme amount of damage to the environment and marine ecosystems will inevitably occur.

It is practically impossible to develop a single standardized countermeasure for the cleaning of oil spills for the reason that each situation must first be evaluated on the location of the spill and the potential environmental threat it poses. Taking this into account, there are several methods by which the damage can be limited and the oil cleaned up: mechanical containment and collection; use of chemical dispersants; and natural removal

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