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Exxon-funded scientists have released their own studies, which question the NOAA team's findings and claim that there is little oil left in the Sound. But Rice's studies have held up under peer review - and this reporter personally saw oil buried in a handful of beaches. Ironically, the Exxon spill has greatly enhanced scientists' understanding of the effect that crude oil can have on a vulnerable marine environment: it is more toxic to life than we thought, and harder to clean up. "Even the best cleanup will fall short," says Craig Tillery, a deputy attorney general...
...still visible - physically, on the beaches of Prince William Sound and in the animal populations in these sensitive waters that have yet to rebound fully. Using funds from the original spill settlement between Exxon and the state of Alaska, scientists from NOAA have carried out major studies that show oil still remains just beneath the surface in many parts of the Sound - close enough for animals to be affected by it. "The oil may not leak out in quantities that are immediately visible, but that doesn't mean it's not there," says Jeep Rice, a NOAA scientist...
Rice and his colleagues picked a sample of 90 random sites at beaches around the Sound and dug about 100 small pits at each site - more than 9,000 in all. They found oil in over half the places they sampled, despite the fact that only 20% of the beaches that had been hit hardest by the spill, like Death Marsh, were included in the study. Altogether, the NOAA scientists estimated that about 20,000 gallons of oil still remained around the Sound, usually buried between 5 in. and 1 ft. below the surface. (See pictures of the world...
Those 20,000 gallons, out of at least 11 million spilled, might not seem like much, and scientists initially assumed that whatever oil was left behind during the original cleanup would eventually break down naturally. But it turns out that crude oil - especially when it is spilled in a cold region like southeastern Alaska - lingers in the environment for years. And as long as the oil is there, it can harm the animals that might come into contact with it. Sea otters, for example - the face of the Valdez spill - dig millions of foraging pits in beaches around the Sound...
Scientists are still digging into the Sound's beaches, trying to get a better sense of how much oil might be left and whether it will be possible to finish the cleanup. And there are still other questions that need to be answered. The Sound's valuable commercial herring fishery collapsed completely a few years after the spill - there are just 10,000 tons of the fish left today, down from a peak of 150,000 tons before the accident - and researchers are trying to figure out what impact the oil might have had on the species' decline...