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In the past thirteen months there have been three significant oil spills into the Australian marine environment.
On the 11th of March 2009 the Pacific Adventurer lost around 100,000 litres of fuel oil into the waters off Brisbane, resulting in sixty kilometers of coast line in the area being impacted.
More seriously, the West Atlas oil rig off the Kimberley coast began leaking on August 21, 2009 and finally stopped ten weeks later on Nov 1 with hundreds and thousands of litres of oil spilled into the Timor Sea.
The current spill from the Shen Neng 1 off Rockhampton into the waters of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park has so far released about a thousand litres of fuel oil but there are fears that many thousands of litres of fuel oil still on board will also pollute the area.
Just a few days ago the national newspaper The Australian ran a major article on suspected major oil reserves in deep off shore waters off the Australian coast.
The impact of all this oil (and the dispersants used to break it up) on marine life is still to be fully documented but it is likely to last for years to come. Twenty years after the famous Exxon Valdez spill off the NW Coast of America oil is still having an impact on the local ecology, including on marine mammals. More than a third of local Orca populations are thought to have died as a result of the oil spill.
WDCS is extremely concerned about these multiple oil spills and their effects on Australian cetaceans. It is critical the Australian government undertake comprehensive surveys of cetacean distribution in order to better manage the extraction and transportation of oil in our waters.
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