Word: spilling
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...Thousands of sea otters, seals and eagles and a quarter of a million seabirds died as a result of the spill, one of the worst ecological disasters in history, and the populations of those species have yet to fully recover. The lucrative herring and salmon fisheries are still damaged - by one estimate, the spill cost local fishermen nearly $300 million. "On the surface, Prince William Sound looks like it has regained its majesty," says Keith Colburn, an Alaskan fisherman and one of the stars of the reality TV series The Deadliest Catch. "But below the surface it's completely different...
...Alaskans like Colburn are worried that on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the Valdez accident, the spill and its toll are in danger of being forgotten - even as new offshore oil and gas exploration is being considered in Alaska. In 2007, former President George W. Bush ended a long-standing executive ban on offshore oil drilling in Bristol Bay in the southeastern waters of the Bering Sea, potentially opening up what's been called America's "fish basket" to the fossil fuels industry. Although the Obama Administration has slowed the process, it hasn't stopped it - and Alaska...
...those lessons is that the Arctic ecosystems are unusually vulnerable to oil spills, according to long-term research funded by some of the $1 billion settlement from Exxon. Scientists found that, thanks in part to the cold environment, oil lingered in the area for years, some of it still biologically active and toxic. Because many Arctic species have long lifespans and slow reproductive cycles, wildlife recovery has been slow. Pacific herring - a keystone of both the commercial fishing industry and the marine food web in Prince William Sound - were spawning at the time of the spill, and were hit particularly...
...Another catastrophic spill or accident notwithstanding, even the work of setting up offshore oil drilling could impact the marine environment. The oil industry uses seismic blasts as part of initial exploration, and environmentalists fear that sound waves could harm nearby fish. But if there were an accident on the scale of the Valdez in Bristol Bay, where more than 40% of all wild seafood consumed in America is caught, the result would be not just an environmental disaster, but also an economic one. The Bristol fisheries bring in over $2 billion to the Alaskan economy annually - losing the bay even...
...this point, the troubles in the sub-prime sector seem unlikely to seriously spill over to the broader economy or the financial system." - in a speech on June 5, 2007 just months before the economy and stock market began to tumble as a result of the sub-prime mortgage crisis (New York Times, August...