A black cliff side faced Dave Valentine and his team earlier this week as they approached the Refugio State Beach area, where crude oil had spilled from a 24-inch onshore pipeline, cascading down the bluffs and into the ocean on May 19.
“You could certainly see where it happened,” said Valentine, who is a UCSB professor of earth science and biology and one of the scientists and researchers working to determine the spill’s impact on ocean life.
The oil spill’s effects are obvious above the surface — there are widely disseminated photographs and statistics of the oil-impacted mammals and birds that have been found dead or injured.
But the spill’s impact under the ocean surface is less clear. Response agencies are not offering data on how fish, invertebrates and kelp bed ecosystems have been affected by the spill.
As of Thursday night, there had been 40 live oiled birds and 22 dead oiled birds, according to the California Department of Fish & Wildlife.
Responders, including volunteers from the Oiled Wildlife Care Network, have reported a total of 28 live mammals and 14 dead mammals. Officials have said that most of the birds have been brown pelicans and most of the mammals have been sea lions.
Birds are being taken to the International Bird Rescue center in San Pedro for cleaning and rehabilitation, and mammals have been transported to Sea World in San Diego, according to state officials. Some birds and mammals have died in care facilities.
On the shore, UCSB staff and scientists announced this week that they are working to protect the western snowy plover, which is nesting right now near the Coal Oil Point Reserve.
The species is considered threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
Some of the plovers there have been seen with oil on their bodies, and they nest around high tide, near where oil has been deposited, according to reserve director Cristina Sandoval.
“We need to remove that oil because the plovers are getting tar on their wings and hair. Almost all of them have little black boots because their feet are black from oil,” she said.
“They’re getting oil in their beaks because they go peck to try to get the beach hoppers around the kelp and the kelp is tarred. We need to balance the cleaning up with not impacting the plovers too much while they nest.”
Sea birds and mammals aren’t the only wildlife being impacted by the spill, however.
“There’s a lot going on under the surface,” Capt. Mark Crossland of the Department of Fish & Wildlife told Noozhawk.
Crossland, who works with the department’s Oil Spill Prevention and Response, said dive teams will soon be sent out to gather information about the oil spill’s impacts on invertebrates, the kelp forest and fish, “in order to come up with an accurate count.”
He mentioned dead kelp bass, lobsters and other invertebrates washing up on shore in the first few days of the response.
The dive teams will rely on the expertise of the scientific community, including researchers from UCSB, Crossland said.
Valentine has significant experience with oil spills and studying their impacts on the ocean, including being part of the scientific response team that worked on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010.
At one point, Valentine was just 1,500 feet from the source of that spill and collected samples in the area. He also led expeditions to study the ocean floor and where the oil would end up.
Valentine said last week’s Refugio oil spill ran along the shore and “was a heavy oil to begin with.”
Crude oil is very adhesive, and any oil that picks up sand in the surf zone could end up sinking to the sea floor, he said.
So far, no one knows how much oil will end up there, or what that will mean to ocean life under the surface. It’s a big enough concern that officials are sending out dive teams to survey the coastline and look for submerged oil.
“It’s an issue of concern,” Valentine said. “It worries me and it’s something that needs to be looked at.”
As oil is moved to sea, it could change in form by gathering up as tar balls, which could be as small as a penny or as large as a basketball.
Valentine has already seen some of that coagulation occurring in the form of “tar pancakes,” which were seen up to 11 miles offshore.
Since submerged oil has been found along the coast in the spill area, response teams are planning ways to remove it without harming the environment more.
Plains All American Pipeline, which owns and operates the ruptured line causing the spill, is sending out dive teams to follow up on underwater areas where oil was found.
Divers searching near Refugio State Park observed pea-sized droplets of oil and oiled kelp in the area, said Rick McMichael, senior director of operations for Plains.
“We don’t know the amount of the oil at this time, but it’s approximately 20 feet under water and about 150 yards off the beach,” he said. “We respect the sensitive biological nature of the kelp beds, and regret this incident has affected them.”
Back near the shore, the rocky intertidal zone is home to many invertebrates and other creatures that make their home on some of the rocks that are now covered with oil.
Carol Blanchette, associate research biologist at UCSB’s Marine Science Institute, focuses on that intertidal habitat, which is home to algae, crabs and invertebrates such as barnacles, sea stars and snails. They all “vary in their sensitivity to things like oiling,” she said.
Her team was out sampling at some of their research sites last week, which include areas from Arroyo Hondo to Coal Oil Point.
Those locations haven’t seen much impact yet, but Blanchette said they likely won’t be able to see much until the next negative low tide, a few weeks away.
Blanchette said she plans to look at research from other spills impacting rocky shore areas, such as the Exxon Valdez spill, as they study local changes.
— Noozhawk staff writer Lara Cooper can be reached at lcooper@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
