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Home | Image Galleries | Emergency Response
Mearns Rock Time Series
A photo time series of Mearns Rock, a large boulder located in the intertidal zone at Snug Harbor on Knight Island, Prince William Sound, Alaska.
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Mearns Rock 1991
What You See
In mid-1991, the entire boulder is covered with gold-brown Fucus. You can see darker species of seaweed forming an apron around the base of the boulder; the beach area surrounding the boulder (the "beach face") is also completely covered with other seaweed species. In the water behind the boulder, you can see a healthy eelgrass (Zostera marina) bed.
What's Happening
The boulder's condition appears to be improving, shown by the heavier covering of seaweed. One might conclude that this shoreline had recovered from the oil spill.
(07.01.91, Snug Harbor, Knight Island, Alaska)
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Related Pages on Our Site |
- Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Overview of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Includes links to many related resources, including photo galleries.
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- Graphing Changes in Marine Life Abundance Try your hand at some marine biology! Follow these steps, designed for middle and high school students, to make a study of the marine life occupying a section, or quadrat, of Mearns Rock.
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- Mearns Rock Time Series How does marine life recover from a major, one-time stress, such as an oil spill? As you will learn here, the answer is not simple.
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- Northwest Bay Study Site Photos of one of our study sites, a rocky beach on an islet in Northwest Bay, shortly after high-pressure, hot-water washing in 1989, and again in 1998.
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- Response to the Exxon Valdez Spill Within hours after the tanker Exxon Valdez spilled nearly 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989, a team of NOAA OR&R scientists arrived on-scene.
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