download 21.6mb - Oil-Spill-Info.com

LONG-TERM IMPACT OF THE AMOCO CADIZ CRUDE OIL SPILL ON OYSTERS
Cvassostvea gigas AND PLAICE Pleuroneotes platessa FROM ABER BENOIT
AND ABER WRAC'H, BRITTANY, FRANCE
I. OYSTER HISTOPATHOLOGY
II. PETROLEUM CONTAMINATION AND BIOCHEMICAL INDICES
OF STRESS IN OYSTERS AND PLAICE
by
1 2
Jerry M. Neff and William E. Haensly
1) Battelle New England Marine Research Laboratory, Washington Street,
Duxbury, MA 02332, USA
2) Texas A&M University, Department of Vetinary Anatomy, College Station,
TX 77843, USA
INTRODUCTION
On the evening of 16 March 1978, the. Liberian-registered supertanker
Amoco Cadiz (233,680 tons deadweight) ran aground and subsequently
broke up on Men Goulven rock, Roches de Portsall, approximately
2 km off Portsall on the Breton coast of France. Over a period of
several days the complete cargo of the supertanker, which consisted of
120,000 metric tons of light Iranian crude oil, 100,000 tons of light
Arabian crude oil and 4,000 tons of bunker fuel was spilled into the
coastal waters. By mid April the oil had spread to and contaminated in
varying degrees 375 km of the north and west coasts of Brittany (Hess,
1978; Spooner, 1978; Southward, 1978). At the time, it was the largest
oil spill in maritime history. There have been two larger spills since
then. Two estuaries in the heavily impacted area, l'Aber Benoit 6 km
east of the spill and l'Aber Wrac'h 9 km east of the spill, face west
and became heavily contaminated with spilled oil.
Aber Benoit and Aber Wrac'h are biologically rich and before the
spill supported large oyster mariculture operations and other commercial
fisheries. It was therefore of considerable economic and hygenic importance
to accurately assess the progress of the long-term recovery of the
estuarine biota from the impact of the oil spill.
Several factors relating to this spill, including the large volume
of oil spilled, the prevailing winds and currents which drove much of
the oil ashore, adverse weather conditions and large tidal prisms which
resulted in the incorporation of large amounts of oil into bottom sediments,
and the extreme biological richness of the impacted area, all
269