WASHINGTON - Andy Wills was sleeping on a friend’s couch in Cordova, Alaska, on March 24, 1989, ready to head out and harvest spring herring in Prince William Sound.
“My buddy had just handed me a cup of coffee in the morning and we’re watching Good Morning America,” Wills said. “And there’s the Exxon Valdez on TV, spilling oil.”
“We were like, ‘No!’ It was just the start of a nightmare,” Wills said.
Prince William Sound’s herring population still hasn’t fully recovered. Neither have killer whales, which eat herring, and legal issues remain unresolved a quarter of a century later. Monday is the 25th anniversary of the disaster, in which the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reefand spilled at least 11 million gallons of crude oil into the pristine waters of the sound.
Prince William Sound today looks spectacular, a stunning landscape of mountainous fjords, blue-green watersand thickly forested islands. Pick up a stone on a rocky beach, maybe dig a little, though, and it is possible to still find pockets of oil.
“I think the big surprise for all of us who have worked on this thing for the last 25 years has been the continued presence of relatively fresh oil,” said Gary Shigenaka, a marine biologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The question of how well Prince William Sound has recovered from what at the time was the nation’s largest oil spill is a contentious one. Exxon Mobil Corp. cites studies showing a rebound.
“The sound is thriving environmentally, and we’ve had a very solid, complete recovery,” said Richard Keil, senior media relations adviser with Exxon Mobil.
Government scientists have a different view. The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, a state-federal group set up to oversee restoration of Prince William Sound, considers the pink and sockeye salmon to be recovered, as well as the baldeagles and harbor seals. Several other species are listed as recovering but not recovered.
Sea otters have had a rough time. Thousands died in the months after the spill, and the population has struggled to recover in the 25 years since. The U.S. Geological Survey reported earlier this month that the area’s sea otters had finally returned to their prespill numbers. Listed as still not recovering are the herring, a group of killer whales and the pigeon guillemots, a North Pacific seabird.
Among the scientific puzzles of the spill, the fate of the herring is a particular mystery. It’s a vital species for the ecosystem, giving protein to whales, salmon, birds and others. Prince William Sound was home to a lucrative spring herring fishery that supported fishermen badly in need of cash coming off the long winter in between fishing seasons.
Researchers found lesions and larval abnormalities in herring exposed to the oil. Then, four years after the spill, the herring population crashed dramatically. The reasons are a subject of intense debate, with suggestions that the effects of the spill could have made the herring vulnerable to disease.
The herring never really recovered, and the current population is too low to overcome predators. Herring fishing, with a brief exception, has been closed for more than 20 years.
The killer whales of Prince William Sound also have suffered. Two groups were hit especially hard. Scientists saw killer whales from one of the groups swimming through heavy sheens of oil. A Los Angeles Times photo showed whales from the other group swimming near the tanker as it gushed oil. Populations dropped dramatically in the year after the spill.
“The evidence is pretty compelling that it was a spill-related effect on those two groups of killer whales,” said federal marine biologist Shigenaka. The federal and state governments are still weighing the science of the spill’s effects and deciding whether to seek more money from Exxon Mobil for cleaning up remaining oil.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 03/23/2014