Looking back 25 years ago this week: the "Sea Empress" oil spill

 

Today’s wet and increasingly stormy weather has provided us with a grim reminder that 25 years ago this week we were at the start of a major marine pollution incident, when the “Sea Empress” ran  aground near the entrance to Milford Haven on 15^th February 1996. Over the coming days, it released 72,000 tonnes of crude and 480 tonnes of fuel oil into the sea, much of which spread around the south Pembs coast and into Carmarthen Bay.   

Over many weeks that followed, teams of people (professionals and volunteers, including some regular contributors to this Blog site) surveyed bird and other wildlife populations along large parts of the coast. For the bird surveys, we initially undertook daily WeBS-type counts of the Milford Haven Waterway and Cleddau Estuary system, plus checks of beaches and seabird colonies. Sea and air-based surveys also provided important information on where seabirds were congregating in largest concentrations.

Not many affected birds had been observed by 19^th Feb., but this was all going to change very soon as the oil started to spread quickly around the coast, into Carmarthen Bay and beyond. By the spring bird casualties had been recorded over a wide geographical area of accessible coastline in south and west Wales, as well as from other areas such as Lundy and south-east Ireland. The true number of casualties probably being much higher than the c.7,000 birds that were known to have been impacted by the spring.

About 85% of the bird casualties were recorded in the first few weeks. The period between 23^rd Feb. and 4^th March being particularly hectic! Of 36 bird species known to have been affected, Common Scoters bore the brunt of the impact, with just under 4,600 known casualties. Many Auks were beginning to return to their colonies in late Feb. and, although c.1,600 Guillemots and c.340 Razorbills were known to have been hit, things could have been much worse had more of the oil spread farther out towards the major seabird islands. Only one Manx Shearwater and a single Puffin were known to have been directly impacted by the oil.

Details of numbers and locations of live and dead birds recovered were recorded each day, including the grim task of identifying corpses to species so that they could be bagged, catalogued and frozen for further study. Some of the less common/less numerous species affected included: Velvet Scoter (4), Red-throated Diver (81), Black-throated Diver (2), Great Northern Diver (8), Red-necked Grebe (3) and Eider (9).  

Collecting the records to help evaluate the environmental impacts of the spill was exhausting work, but it was a tremendous team effort. We shudder to think though, had “lockdown measures” been in place back then, goodness knows what might have been possible, or perhaps impossible!