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National Marine Fisheries Service, Alaska Regional Office

Prince William Sound, photo: Mandy Lindeberg

Office of Exxon Valdez Oil Spill (EVOS) Damage Assessment and Restoration

Research and Restoration Projects

The Trustee Council uses an annual cycle of soliciting proposals to help assess and restore species and services impacted by the 1989 oil spill. As established by the 1994 restoration plan, this is an adaptive process where by results from previous years are evaluated with respect to recovery goals and used to help inform the solicitation of project in subsequent years. The Trustee council will announce the next invitation on this website and through email distribution.


Phase V: 2008

The Trustee council is in the process of developing a strategic approach to deal with challenges still remaining from the spill. Amongst other things, these challenges include the failure of Prince William Sound herring to return to pre-spill abundance, and the lingering oil that remains locked within sediments and has not degraded through natural process as expected. It is anticipated that this strategic approach will provide guidance on spending priorities for the next several years. More information will be provided as it becomes available.


Phase IV: 2004 - 2007

During the development of the Gulf Ecosystem Monitoring (GEM) Program, a decision was made by the Trustees to attempt a quantitative assessment of oil remaining in Prince William Sound as a result of the spill. The reason for doing this stemmed from information provided by local residents and others that oil still remained under the sediment and produced a sheen on the water when holes were dug. This lead to the Trustees approval of a project to conduct, for the first time, a survey to specifically assess the oil not visible through surface inspection. An extensive field effort took place in the summer of 2001, involving local residents that dug close to 9,000 holes in a stratified randomized design on beaches, which had been identified as heavily oiled right after the spill.

The results were not expected - beaches that looked clean, contained pools of oil below the surface. The pools were not under the entire beach, but rather in patches that seemed to be centered in the biologically rich lower intertidal zone. The survey and subsequent follow-up work suggested that approximately 27 acres (11 hectares) of beaches were still contaminated with surface and/or subsurface oil, and most notably, the subsurface oil (covering 20 acres ) was not weathered, but contained volatile components that could potentially harm animals upon exposure. More information >>.

Around the same time, researchers monitoring sea otters and harlequin ducks, noticed that populations were not recovering in the most heavily impacted areas. The researchers employed methods to determine whether continued exposure to oil could be a factor. The methods involved the physical examination of individuals encountered in those areas and detection of chemical biomarkers, such as cytochrome P4501A (CYP1A), an enzyme that is produced by animals when they have been exposed poly-aromatic hydrocarbons, a volatile component of unweathered oil.

These studies were merged into an intensive investigation that lead to both the federal and state governments to make a reopenor claim under the terms of original settlement with Exxon in the fall of 2006. As result of these efforts, as well as having new set of State Trustees from the change in Alaska Administration in 2004, emphasis was renewed to review damages to natural resources and identifying restoration options – prior to engaging in the long-term monitoring studies that GEM envisioned. The GEM program was effectively placed on hold, although multi-year projects which began under the GEM initiative were allowed to continue through completion. In 2008, the Trustees are now considering future program direction – which will be Phase V.


Phase III: 2002 - 2004

A third phase called the Gulf Ecosystem Monitoring (GEM) program began as the outgrowth of Council decision documented in a 1999 resolution to establish a long term restoration reserve account. That same year congress established public law 106-113 which allowed the reserve to be managed in high yield investment account for the purpose of funding “marine research, including applied fisheries research, monitoring, and restoration, other than habitat acquisition … consistent with the Consent Decree”. Funding for Habitat acquisition was treated as a separate account.

The rationale for establishing the GEM program was: 1) marine productivity can undergo profound natural changes on decadal scales and identifying and preparing for these changes can best be achieved through long-term observations and, 2) evaluating the impact of human activity on the environment - in the form of either catastrophic events or more continuous activity - requires careful collection and documentation of physical and biotic data, collected over many years to establish a long-term baseline of information. As articulated in the 1994 restoration plan, GEM was to be the monitoring component of the restoration that would take and ecosystem approach in consider factors that might be limiting recovery from the initial and chronic impacts of the spill. At its outset, GEM did not specify what to monitor, but segregated the affected environment into watershed, nearshore, the Alaska coastal current and offshore habitats, and established a program structure that would incorporate scientific advice, community input and involvement to identify what to monitor and what products to provide to the affected communities that would stem from the monitoring effort.

The GEM program document was several years in development and reviewed by the Natural Research Council before formal adoption by the Trustee Council in July 2002.

Research


Phase II: 1993 - 2002

In 1994, the Exxon Valdez Trustee Council adopted a comprehensive restoration plan, which was completed under the auspices of the federal environmental assessment process. During this process the Council recognized that there were fewer opportunities to effectively speed up the recovery process and that the species and habitats affected by the spill would probably be best left alone. At the same time, herring and salmon populations in the sound suffered a collapse. When trying to determine the cause of the collapse, it was recognized that very little was known about how key components of the marine ecosystem in Prince William Sound interacted with each other. This lead to a second phase of studies, which involved more integrated cross-disciplinary approaches to examine interrelationships and seasonal changes.

Research and Restoration


Findings


Phase I: 1989 - 1993

Scientists researched the fate and toxicity of the oil in the aftermath of the spill and during the period of litigation. After the settlement and the creation of the EVOS Trustee Council, investigations continued on the effects of the spill on key species and habitats, as well as the impacts of the clean-up methods.


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