Nature Aids the Alaska Cleanup

By Jordan Bonfante

When breaks in the stormy weather permit, cleanup crews in a bay of Alaska's Eleanor Island come ashore in landing craft meant for infantry assaults. Off Kenai Peninsula, 200 miles away, the 425-ft. Soviet ship Vaydaghubsky stalks chocolate-colored oil on the high seas. At the top of Montague Strait, south of Valdez harbor, the 17,000-ton troopship U.S.S. Juneau has set anchor. The 400 men aboard are on an expedition to cleanse oil-stricken Smith Island before the annual arrival of seals.

A month after the Exxon Valdez disgorged 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound, the effort to combat the worst such spill in U.S. history assumed the tempo of a military operation. By last week Exxon alone had mobilized 460 vessels, 26 aircraft and the first 2,850 members of what is expected to be a 4,000-person cleanup brigade. Said a company executive: "We could invade a small country with what we have deployed here."

For all the show of force, however, the recovery drive has made little tangible progress. Exxon estimated that it had cleaned a scant 3,300 ft. of beach, leaving 304 miles of oil-covered shoreline to go in Prince William Sound alone. The company claimed that it would pick up the remaining seaborne oil within the next two weeks and scrub all the fouled shoreline before cold weather arrives in September. But Alaskan officials grimaced with skepticism. "Sounds too rosy," said Dennis Kelso, Alaska's environmental conservation commissioner. "Look at Exxon's track record till now -- too little, too late, and too many excuses."

Fortunately, nature itself, in fits and starts, seemed to be coming to the rescue. Four days of rain and snowstorms last week helped break up the floating oil and cleanse a number of shores. Moreover, the coming of the long / spring and summer thaw is sure to create a rush of rivulets and waterfalls that will help wash off the shoreline. Observed John Robinson, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: "In the end, nature has to do this job."

The job will be enormous. By last week the oil slick had traveled across an 1,800-sq.-mi. area. To stop its advance, "skimming" vessels sucked up the crude for transfer to dredging barges. Onshore, ten-man crews hosed down rocks with heated seawater. The two-pronged drive to clear sea and shore was plagued by snafus and logistical problems. As the weathered oil hardened into a debris-laden "mousse," the Soviet skimming ship found that the crude was too thick for its pumps and managed to recover only a few hundred barrels. And as the point of the oil slick advanced, it stretched supply lines farther and farther from the Valdez staging base. Without proper floating barriers to protect their harbor, fishermen in the village of Seldovia had to fashion their own out of logs, tarpaulins, sheets and towels.

While cleanup crews battled the slick, the toll on Alaskan wildlife continued to mount. The body count of 458 fallen otters and 2,889 dead birds represented only a fraction of the casualties. Up to 2,000 otters may have perished. More than 33,000 birds may have died in Prince William Sound alone. To save the 6.5 million sandpipers and 10 million other shorebirds starting to migrate through the region, wildlife experts are trying to scare them away from their favorite stopping-off sites. The naturalists have set up big- barreled propane-powered cannons that are timed to go off noisily at regular intervals. They even erected 37 scarecrows dressed in Salvation Army clothing.

The impact on fishing has been crippling. After tests showed possible contamination, Alaskan authorities canceled the fishing seasons for herring, herring roe and pot shrimp throughout Prince William Sound. The salmon season, due to start in mid-May, remains in doubt. "Sure, Exxon may pay in the end," fumed Sandy Cesarini, co-owner of the Sea Hawk Seafood Co. in Valdez. "But we sweated blood to build this place. What about the future? Everyone in the sound feels violated."

The long-term effect on fish and other wildlife is difficult to gauge. Nobody knows how much oil may be sinking to the seabed, for instance. One hopeful note was sounded by the National Marine Fisheries Service in Juneau. Tests showed that salmon eggs and crab larvae, at least, may have escaped contamination because the oil became diluted and degraded to nontoxic levels before those organisms were exposed to it.

In the village of Cordova, 500 fishermen and townspeople stood at the waterfront in a driving rain and staged a "requiem" for Prince William Sound. State environment commissioner Kelso, on hand to address the group, tried to ease the sense of gloom. He recounted to the throng that on a recent inspection trip to Knight Island he had seen a great pod of whales offshore. There were as many as 40, so close that he could hear the sound of their exhalations when they surfaced and the slap of their flukes when they dived once more. Seeing how the huge sea mammals were skirting the oil but not fleeing the area gave Kelso new optimism about Alaska's ability to recover. Said he: "I realized that there is hope."