After a cargo ship hit the bay bridge Wednesday, 58,000 gallons of oil were leaked in to the bay. Beaches have been closed in the East Bay, San Francisco and Marin. Rescue efforts are under way to save as many of the bay's birds as possible and the spill has threatened the opening of the commercial crab season. Many are questioning why it took so long for the oil spill to be announced and efforts put in place to contain and clean it up.
For information on how you can help the bay's wildlife see baykeeper.org
You could see the oil in the water," McNertney said later. "This little duck bird was just stranded in the sand. The tide would come in and hit him, and he'd try to scramble. It was terrible. I felt I had to bring him in."
McNertney's friend, Maaike Snoep, 31, heated some water on a Coleman stove she had brought in the back of a van, and the two began trying to clean oil off the bird.
"It was all over his face, mouth and eyes," McNertney said. "We tried to get it off his beak and his eyes first, but it was just covered with oil. It was disgusting."
The seabirds, many of them recent arrivals after their annual winter migration, became the innocent victims of the aftermath of Wednesday's accident, when a container ship struck the Bay Bridge. The damaged ship spilled thousands of gallons of bunker fuel, which drifted across the San Francisco Bay to the Marin County shoreline and finally out the Golden Gate, soiling beaches along the coast.
Bird and animal lovers rushed to the beaches to help with the cleanup Thursday, only to find that there was little they could do without proper equipment.
Photo by Flickr user savethebay used under a Creative Commons license
No comments:
Post a Comment