As many people may know, there are many various issues that surround and contribute to the pollution of our ocean. When thinking about one that matters to me I decided that I would like to speak about issue of oil spills. Oil spills are a release of liquid petroleum Hydrocarbon into the environment, especially the marine ecosystem, due to human activity, and is a form of pollution. Oil spills are can also found in rivers, bays and are most often caused by accidents that involve tankers, barges, pipelines, refiners, drilling rigs and various storage. Sounds harsh doesn’t it? It really is. When these oil spills happen various lives in our marine ecosystems are forced to polluted and toxic live conditions. Sea otters, sea birds, and any other animal the lives most of its life in the surface of the water are most affected by oil spills. This is because they can be found on the sea surface or on different shorelines when the oil comes ashore. During the most detrimental oil spills, seabirds are killed in greater numbers than any other species of sea creature. Although there are not many cases where otters are killed due to oil spills, they are also greatly affected, like the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill. Otters are affected because the food they are eating is contaminated and no longer healthy for them to eat. Oil spills deteriorate the quality of life for many different marine species, other than the two mentioned above, which means that we as the world need to do better and be more cautions of the things we do when working for companies that create oil. There are many ways we can do to make sure that we have the proper practices to ensure that we prevent oil spills, like having your oil tanks cleaned every 10 years to make sure the oil is tightly sealed. The best way to prevent oil spills is to make sure oil does not get out of ships, engines etc. or change how much we depend on oil. The use of clean energy would drastically change our need for an oil based economy. We should continue to educate people on this issue and as more people become aware, we can then collectively become better at caring for the environment. By: Nykell Jones
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