Disaster in the Galápagos

"Once the fuel is out, it's very hard to do anything about it," says Peter Kramer, Ph.D., a zoologist with the World Wildlife Fund, and former president of the islands' Charles Darwin Foundation. "You can protect a few animals, and wash them, but once this has happened, one must not delude oneself. This is a catastrophe that has terrible consequences." Kramer says that while diesel spreads quickly and is a problem for days or even months, bunker fuel, which the ship was also carrying, is heavier, sinking down into the water and persisting for years. Oil can be deadly to animals that ingest it, either directly or by consuming other animals that were poisoned by the spill. In addition, Kramer says, if oil gets into the feathers or fur of an animal, it can lose its natural insulation and then die from the cold.

But even taken at its largest estimates, the total spill would be much smaller than the notorious Exxon Valdez spill. On March 24, 1989, the tanker ran aground in Alaska's Prince William Sound, dumping 11 million gallons of crude oil into the waters, killing an approximate 300 harbor seals, 2,650 sea otters, and hundreds of thousands of birds, most of which were never found. But it's not so much the amount of oil that is spilled that accounts for how big a disaster an oil spill is; environmentalists say it's where the accident occurs. "The Exxon Valdez is on record as causing the greatest kill of wildlife because the time of the year and the area in which it occurred, which had a great abundance of wildlife," says Paul Horsman, oil campaigner for Greenpeace International. "At this stage, it's difficult to put it on a rank of order. For sure we can say the potential impact is great because the Galápagos contain such a wide range of marine life and a lot of species, which only occur on the Galápagos Islands."

Dan Lawn was one of the first to arrive on the scene after the Exxon Valdez spill. At first, he says, it was difficult to ascertain how many animals had died because it was during migration season. The sound was still full with birds after the accident occurred; it was only much later, when migration ended, that they noticed the real degree of carnage. "If you have a population that has found a niche in the area and you oil them, they all die," Lawn says. "It's hard to see that they're all dead as you have new influx of animals during migration. But after migration is over you have the sound of silence."

But Kramer says that most of the wildlife in the Galápagos lives there year around, so he believes at least some of the damage will appear soon. The marine iguana, for example, lives within a space of 100 feet its whole life, feeding off algae in the water. But still, there are birds, like the phalarope, which migrate to the area every winter; and dolphins could also be affected because they could ingest contaminated fish. Of course, an oil spill can affect everything in the food chain from the microorganisms, like algae, to crabs to tortoises.

On Tuesday, Ecuadorean authorities reported that strong winds have been pushing the fuel out toward the open ocean, away from the fragile ecosystems of the Galápagos. Now environmentalists hope that rescue efforts to protect the wildlife will be successful. The problem, with diesel, they say, is that since it's clear, it's almost impossible to tell if an animal has been oiled yet -- even though it burns on the skin like gasoline.

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