Oil spills happen all the time. I mean, they are just accidents after all. We don’t mean to harm the planet in such a way like that, killing tons of sea life. It just happens. What I just don’t get is why people don’t do a thing about it. It just sets me off. I hear sea turtles are getting killed, birds are unable to fly, and fish actually drown! Recently there was a huge gulf oil spill that has spread through the Gulf of Mexico to the mainland. That didn’t have to happen. We could have burnt it all about fifty miles off the coast saving so much marine life. But of course, the government just tries to ‘contain it’ but I honestly don’t see how you can contain oil in the middle of an ocean, sea, or gulf when it acts like the water. We could have done something yet no one actually did and now the Earth has to pay for our irresponsibility.

Oils spills happen for tons of different reasons and some are ok because it’s not our fault but other times it is our fault and we don’t do anything about it. Natural disasters believe it or not can cause oil spills (internet 1). Carelessness is a big reason tankards of oil are spilled. When we get careless we ‘accidentally’ tip a tankard and spill oil. Another factor could be the wind of a hurricane can knock over the tankard on an oil ship spilling it (internet 1). Or a tsunami just engulfs in its gigantic wave mouth. But, when a bigheaded terrorist would like to get a countries attention “glub glub glub glub!” They dump oil in that country’s waters to show them how they mean something or how they want something (internet1). Other times people just dump crude oil into the oceans because they don’t feel like spending their own money on decomposing the waste oil (internet 1). Because they don’t want to spend their own money they dump the oil into oceans, which is illegal. Dumping oil is cruel, unreasonable, costly, and stupid. I honestly want to know who would do such a thing.

Many different marine animals are affected by these cruel spills. Sea otters, sea birds, killer whales (SHAMOO!!!!!), and small organisms. The otters have little air bubbles in their fur so they can keep warm in cold waters and help them float. When oil gets in their fur they don’t float so well and begin to drown. Plus their body temperature lowers down dramatically and they die of the cold. When a sea bird gets oil in the feathers they will often try to clean it, which means they will eat it. The oil poisons their bodies killing them and this happens to all marine life, including ones I have mentioned. A whale will get oil in its own blowhole making it impossible to breath, suffocating it. It may eat a fish that swam through oil and end up getting poisoned by the oil. It is crazy how oil can affect the wild life (internet 1).

I just do not like the idea of this happening over widespread areas. Just like the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill. It spread over 470miles in just 56 days. This had a 60% less likely chance to happen if the ship was double hulled instead of single. A double hulled ship has a vacuumed air shell that protects the main hull so if a crack happened in the outer shell it might just barely affect the main hull yet this oil spill had a single hulled ship. The Braer spill off the Shetland Islands spilled 26,000,000 TONS of oil. We probably could have prevented it, too, yet we didn’t (internet 1).

I know oil spills are bad. I hate them. I feel hurt when they happen. I know millions of marine animals suffer from our mistakes. We, as humans, homosapiens, people, need to start taking responsibility like getting electric cars. But first we need to persuade the companies to convert to save our Earth, cause it’s the only one we got.




Dorfman, Andrea. "Oil Spills." Oracle ThinkQuest Library. Time for Kids, 2 Feb. 2001. Web. 18 May 2010. <http://library.thinkquest.org/CR0215471/oil_spills.htm>.