Factsheet: Exxon Valdez and Long-term Recovery after a Spill - Oceana USA
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May 11, 2010

Factsheet: Exxon Valdez and Long-term Recovery after a Spill

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The Exxon Valdez is to date the worst oil spill to have occurred in US waters. It has been well studied and provided twenty years worth of information on how ecosystems recover from oil spills.

Oil spills can have devastating impacts on fisheries. After the Exxon Valdez, fisheries for salmon, herring, crab, shrimp, rockfish and sablefish were closed in 1989 throughout Prince William Sound, Cook Inlet, the outer Kenai coast, Kodiak and the Alaska Peninsula. Shrimp and salmon commercial fisheries remained closed in parts of Prince William Sound through 1990.

One of the largest impacts to fisheries after the Exxon Valdez spill was from the perception of contamination. The whole state had trouble marketing their catches, and the suspension of one fishing season for most of the Gulf of Alaska had a devastating long-term impact that Exxon never recognized in their settlement offers.

Unfortunately, many species don’t recover well from spills, and even 20 years after the Exxon Valdez, there are still two species that continue to be listed as “not recovered” — the Pacific herring and pigeon guillemot.

There are ten species that are still “recovering”, including sea otters, killer whales, clams, mussels. There are also four human services listed as “recovering”, including commercial fishing and recreation and tourism.