Marine mammal response operations during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill

Abstract

When the Mississippi Canyon-252 Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill occurred in April 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico, wildlife professionals were quickly mobilized to assess, recover, and treat oiled marine mammals as part of the Incident Response operating under the Unified Command. There were significant challenges associated with the crisis, including the sustained response to a prolonged, uncontrolled oil release (from a deepwater wellhead rather than a controllable and finite source like a tanker); the large geographic scale of the oiled area and thus the response effort; and ensuring effectiveness without the benefit of previous experience of cetacean response in oil spills. The response phase for this spill lasted from April 2010 to May 2011, and the mobilization of field teams resulted in the confirmation of 13 live and 178 dead stranded cetaceans across 4 states and offshore waters. Four primary care centers were coordinated to de-oil animals, and additional facilities and personnel were mobilized to augment and support the effort. Numerous protocols were implemented to ensure appropriate animal care as well as documentation and sample collection, informing both response and Natural Resource Damage Assessment decisions. Additional efforts included the implementation of a wildlife observer program integrated into oil recovery operations (skimming and in situ burns) and behavioral observations of nearshore cetaceans. The unprecedented effort resulted in the first rehabilitation of an oiled dolphin and the coordination of a very large-scale response, with important information collected, and lessons learned for future oil spills in marine mammal habitat.

Spatio-temporal analysis identifies hotspots of marine mammal strandings along the Indian coastline: implications for developing a National Marine Mammal Stranding Response and Management policy

“…red tides, diseases) (Flewelling et al 2005;Gulland and Hall 2007;de la Riva et al 2009). Besides these, certain human activities such as oil spills (Wilkin et al 2017) , oil exploration, increased intensity of fishing (Leeney et al 2008), illegal fishing practices (Aragones et al 2010) and high-speed recreational vessel traffic (Groom et al 2004) pose localised threats affecting strandings . We cannot deny the possibility that these events might result in different spatial patterns of strandings across finer or greater spatial scales than the one chosen for the current study.…”

Review of petroleum toxicity and identifying common endpoints for future research on diluted bitumen toxicity in marine mammals

“…Ingestion of crude oil may also modify activity and sleep-like behaviours. DWH marine mammal response teams reported lethargy in oil-exposed live stranded dolphins they encountered (Wilkin et al 2017). In addition, oral ingestion of a single dose of 75 ml Norman Wells crude did not result in any adverse toxicological effects in ringed seals; however, sleep-like behaviour in dosed ringed seals was modified, specifically dosed seals were active for four hours longer than controls before sleeping (Geraci and Smith 1976).…”

Transport, Fate and Impacts of the Deep Plume of Petroleum Hydrocarbons Formed During the Macondo Blowout

“…These more observable types of exposure are linked to a range of effects including skin lesions, inhibited thermoregulation and death (Englehardt et al, 1977;Engelhardt, 1982). Surface observations following the DWH event and others suggest that marine mammals do not avoid oil in the environment (Wilkin et al, 2017), although they may be able to detect it (Geraci, 1990).…”