Technology for cleaning up sunken oil is inadequate, and that may be because few submerged oil spills have caused prominent damage, said the authors of a U.S. Coast Guard research and development report from June 2013.
But the potential for harm is severe. Heavy oils can destroy shellfish and other aquatic life, clog up water intakes at industrial facilities or power plants, and appear without notice on shorelines and in sensitive areas.
In 2011, the Coast Guard tested, off New Jersey’s shoreline, three prototypes for finding, mapping and recovering submerged oil, from three companies that each spent a year on the problem.
The idea was to replace the traditional method of divers using suction hoses to pump oil to the surface.
Safety, endurance or visibility issues may plague the efforts. And water and sediment tends to come up along with the oil.
One of the prototypes was a remotely operated vehicle called the Sea Horse — for Seagoing Adaptable Heavy Oil Recovery System, developed by Alion Science and Technology Corp.
Marine Pollution Control developed a manned submersible that could go deeper and stay down longer than a diver, but was too expensive to test.
And the Oil Stop Bottom Oil Recovery System Group designed the Ninja Mini-Dredge, which weighed 3,000 pounds and could hurt the subsurface floor, but could handle harsh wind and waves.
“Of all the strategies in traditional oil spill response that increase success, the timing of getting the appropriate equipment on scene will be a major challenge in maximizing response efficiency and effectiveness,” the report said.
The nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Credit should be given, in this format: “By Dee J. Hall, Wisconsin Watch”
- If published online, you must include the links and link to wisconsinwatch.org
- If you share the story on social media, please mention @wisconsinwatch (Twitter, Facebook and Instagram)
- Don’t sell the story — it may not be marketed as an individual product.
- Don’t sell ads against the story. But you can publish it with pre-sold ads.
- Your website must include a prominent way to contact you.
- Additional elements that are packaged with our story must be labeled.
- Users can republish our photos, illustrations, graphics and multimedia elements ONLY with stories with which they originally appeared. You may not separate multimedia elements for standalone use.
- If we send you a request to change or remove Wisconsin Watch content from your site, you must agree to do so immediately.
For questions regarding republishing rules please contact Andy Hall, executive director, at ahall@wisconsinwatch.org
