Exxon Valdez Oil Spill 20th Anniversary

On March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh reef (a maritime hazard named by Captain James Cook) and spilled 11 million gallons of oil in one of the most pristine and productive ecosystems in the world... Prince William Sound.

The spill set a wave of environmental disasters, policies, and research in motion... of which my little group here in British Columbia has played a small part during the last few years. I flew most of Prince William Sound in the summer of 2007 as part of our ShoreZone Coastal Habitat Mapping Program. This work was funded by the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, the Prince William Sound Regional Citizens Advisory Council, and NOAA.

During these busy, brimming weeks leading up to the 20th anniversary on March 24, we wrapped up the completed data set (5,885 kilometers of shoreline data and imagery!!) and prepared materials such as posters, flyers, videos, and press releases related to the official release of the ShoreZone data for Prince William Sound. We wrapped this enormous project up 2 months early in order to coordinate it with the anniversary events in Anchorage and Cordova. We have been interviewed three times! The two stories from our local papers are very different, but we made the front page in both cases, which is great! What better marketing tool can you ask for?

These are some links and images about the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 2009 if you are interested. Below that are links to our stuff, video and local stories.


Oil spill around Knight Island, southwest Prince William Sound.

Watch the "Black Wave" Documentary Trailer (5 minutes)

View a slide show with captions from the Anchorage Daily News, March 1989

Embedded below is a 3-minute video sample of our imagery from Port Valdez in May 2007. The audio will come across as two simultaneous channels... the geologist (me) in the left speaker and the biologist (Mary) in the right. If you have head phones you may be able to understand us better listening to one at a time. Warning... I sound ridiculous... this is an exercise in humiliation! I was astounded by the human alteration of the shoreline in Valdez.



You can see it says "YouTube" -- yes, we did this for YouTube! Just for fun and for outreach. If you are a you-tuber, you can search by "ShoreZone" and see all of the clips we have posted recently.

We were interviewed by the Peninsula News Review... there is an online version of our story "Mapping the Exxon tragedy," which also has video excerpts of yours truly (remember the camera adds 10 lbs... not sure how MANY cameras were on me!), as well as of John and Kalen (my right hand man). For the video, just press the little arrow to play when the black box comes up on that page. Unfortunately you don't get to see Sean on the cover of the paper version... he was pretty stoked!

We were also interviewed by the Victoria Times Columnist, and there is an online version of our story "Map of a marine disaster." In the paper version of this one, John made the front pager! Talk about great marketing! You never know what newspaper people are going to like or end up using... I'm just glad we made the news. Must have been a slow week...