November 22, 2023 • 52 mins
Who do you call when an oil spill happens? And what would happen if we had a spill in the arctic ocean???
In this episode we discuss oil spill, how to clean them up, and what's being done to prevent future spills from happening. We speak with Dr. Nancy Kinner who is at the font lines of cleanup and prevention research and has been there to assist during all of the major recent spills around the United States.
Dr. Nancy Kinner is the Co-Director of Coastal Response Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. The Coastal Response Research Center stimulates innovation in spill preparedness, response, assessment, and implementation of optimum spill recovery strategies. The primary purpose of the Center is to bring together the resources of a research-oriented university and the field expertise of NOAA OR&R to conduct and oversee basic and applied research, conduct outreach, and encourage strategic partnerships in spill response, assessment and restoration.
For more information on how to get involved or find out more click the links below:
NOAA's Office of Response and Restoration
For more information on the East Palestine, Ohio train derailment click here.
EOS: Changes are coming for Arctic Shipping
CBC: Feds extend restrictions on Arctic offshore drilling
Canada Bans Heavy Oil in the Arctic
The ABP is establishing a conservation Aquarium in the Prairies to help tell the Story of Water.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
David Evans (00:06):
Welcome to today's deep dive episode, where we're
talking all about oil spills.
How you clean them up? What evenhappens? What are the steps? Dr.
Nancy Kinder will take usthrough all of them. Dr. Nancy
Kinder has been around and ableto talk to all of the major oil
spills off the coast of theUnited States that you can
probably name. Now I have toapologize because partway
through our call, the calldropped and we had to change
(00:28):
mediums and the audio qualitykind of went kaput, but you can
still hear everything. And it'sdefinitely worth a listen
because Dr. Kynar knows a heckof a lot about oil spills. And
it's absolutely fascinating. Sosit back relax and get ready to
learn a little bit more aboutoil spill 101 with Dr. Nancy
(00:53):
Fox, sir Barney, G. nippy for meto know, in zero marry a cheap,
(01:17):
Chinese way. Why net? Water wedoing? And how can we do better?
Your one stop shop foreverything water related from
discussing water its use and theorganisms that depend on it for
(01:39):
all the global issues that youreally never knew all had to do
with water. I'm your host, DavidEvans from the aquatic biosphere
project. And I just want to askyou something. What are we
doing? How can we do better?
(02:05):
Hi, and welcome to another deepdive episode of the what are we
doing podcast? So today we'respeaking with Dr. Nancy Kynar.
All about oil spills and oil andoil exploration. You name it, as
Dr. Nancy knows about it. So doyou mind just giving yourself a
bit of an introduction andtelling us a little bit about
what you do?
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal (02:25):
Okay, well, thanks so much for having
me on. So I work at theUniversity of New Hampshire.
Specifically, I am theUniversity of New Hampshire,
director of the coastal responseResearch Center. And I say the
University of New Hampshiredirector because there's also a
director from the NationalOceanic and Atmospheric
(02:47):
Administration, which in the USis the agency that really
oversees the science of theoceans and our large water
bodies. So that includes notonly the Arctic, and all of the
Bering Sea, etc. Gulf of Alaskaall the way down the west coast,
(03:08):
the Gulf of Mexico all the wayup the east coast. But it also
importantly, includes the GreatLakes, where we share a common
boundary with our Canadianneighbors. And obviously, we do
that also in in Alaska. And wedo that on the West Coast. And
we do that on the east coast.
But a lot of times people don'tthink about that particular area
(03:28):
of the Great Lakes as beingunder the purview of NOAA, but
it is. And so our center wascreated back in 2004, to be a
partner with Noah's office ofresponse and restoration. And
that office within NOAA ischarged with helping in
disasters of particularlydisasters that affect coasts
(03:53):
that affect the ocean thataffect the Great Lakes. And the
disasters might be oil spills,they might be chemical spills.
They might be things that resultlike sunken and displaced
vessels that could occur duringa hurricane or something like
that. There's a whole range ofthings that the Office of
(04:15):
response and restoration workson. And they they not only work
during the response, forexample, in an oil spill,
they're predicting where thatoil is going to go where it's
going to hit, what naturalresources that might impact
what's its fate, but they alsolook at in the United States,
there's a very specific set oflanguage in the law that
(04:39):
requires that if some kind of aspill occurs, that the spiller
is liable for the damages. Andin this particular case, they
have to actually Return theenvironment to where it was, but
(05:00):
for the spill, and that's theactual language but for the
spill, so that means that thedamage has to be assessed, which
the office of response andrestoration does. And that there
has to be a restoration plan anactivation to actually get back
(05:22):
to where you were. And you mightsay, well, you know, if animals
get killed off, or damaged, whatare you going to do? You can't
bring them back? And the answeris that restoration might, for
example, let's say there werecertain species of fish or
(05:43):
certain species of birds orsomething like that, that get
killed off, well, you want torestore habitat, so that they
can reproduce more effectively.
And maybe you create newhabitat, maybe you restore
existing habitat, the same thingoccurs with human resources. So
(06:07):
let's say people go to a beach,and there's some kind of an
event, that means they can't goto that beach, the beach gets
closed, then based on this law,which is in the Oil Pollution
Act of 1990, the damages areassessed how much compensation
needs to go to the public. Now,it's not paying individual
(06:31):
fishermen or individual shopowners or something like that.
It's restoring and making thepublic whole, as well as the
natural resources. So maybethey'd build a fish pier, maybe
they would build more prisonswhere people could shower or
whatever to improve, okay, youcouldn't go to the beach, but
(06:51):
now we're going to make going tothe beach better. So that's the
whole part of restoration. Okay.
And then there's anotherimportant part of the Office of
response and restoration. Andthat's disaster preparedness.
How do you prepare for adisaster? So and there's always
going to be damaged? But how doyou prepare more effectively to
(07:13):
minimize that damage? Okay, sowe work with the Office of
response and restoration andhave since 2004. And the reason
that we're doing it that waythat it's at UNH, is because we
have one of the top 10 marinescience programs in the country
in the US. And we also have avery strong program in
(07:35):
environmental engineering andenvironmental response. And and
this is the other importantfactor. We don't have any skin
in the game, which means wedon't have any oil, right? We
don't have any natural gas, wedon't have any of those things.
We don't have a big chemicalindustry. So when a spill
(07:58):
occurs, if someone needs tostand up and be the kind of the
independent honest broker, wecan do that, right? Because
there's no Governor calling theUniversity in New Hampshire and
saying, Oh, don't say that. Sothat's very important. I mean,
it seems silly, right? No, butyou can actually see where it
might be very, very important.
(08:23):
And there is a lot, a lot of oilshipped in and out of New
Hampshire. So that's kind ofwhat we're about. And we do a
variety of things. I mean, we dosome research here with some
graduate students. We're workingright now on a project of
movement of oil under ice, andsome work on oil thickness
measurements, validatingdifferent kinds of sensors that
(08:46):
vendors have. But we alsooversee research for NOAA. So no
one might get a project fundedto look, for instance, at how do
you sense oil in ice infestedwaters. And we will oversee that
project, working with NOAAscientists to make sure that the
(09:08):
work is done well, that the workis scientifically sound that
it's done on time and on budget,and kind of coordinating that.
Another thing we do is a lot ofworkshops. So since since that
period of time, in 2004. We'vedone about 80 Plus workshops on
a variety of topics, reallylooking for the most part at
(09:33):
what are the research gaps? Howcan we do things better? How can
we get people working togetherand facilitating those meetings
and one of the things that wetry to do is, again, we're the
independent honest broker, wedon't have a lot of skin in the
game. And we also have thescientific chops to be able to
say, Wait a second, that's alittle bit of BS there, right?
(09:55):
Yeah. When somebody gets going,we can say boo. Whereas a lot of
fun meditators are not kind ofexperts in the field, right? But
then if you get asked experts inthe field, lots of times they're
vying for resources andresearch, etc, which we're not
really, really doing. So andthen we, of course, have
(10:15):
students that we train that cango into the field. And we try to
act as a hub for variousagencies, both nationally and
internationally to tackle someof these problems. So those are
some of the things that we do.
David Evans (10:31):
Just a couple of things. Just a couple of things.
Yeah, but it's fun. It's a lotof fun. Yeah, that seems super
interesting. I really respectthe point that you brought up
that you really have no skin inthe game. There is no ulterior
motives that are beinginfluenced on you and your team.
Because, I mean, I'm recordingthis podcast in Edmonton,
Alberta. So we were a big oilcountry up here. So yeah, I
(10:55):
understand that.
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal (10:56):
Just to give you an example of how
important that is, every sixyears, the US, there's a
government group called theInteragency Coordinating
Committee on oil pollutionresearch, it's federally
mandated, and it includes CoastGuard, it includes Noah, it
includes EPA and includes FEMA,it includes everybody you can
(11:18):
think of who might be involved.
And they are charged with comingup with research needs that the
federal government sees for thenext six years. And there's a
lot of very long process a yearlong process that we go through,
we actually help those federalagencies, figure out what the
(11:39):
research needs might be. And oneof the reasons why we do it is
because we say we're not goingto apply for any of these
research needs. Anybody canapply, right? Or, you know,
whatever. But we're not goingto, we're not going to apply for
any of them. Now, NOAA maydecide to fund the research idea
(12:01):
and ask us to help them overseeit. But we don't apply to the
Bureau of Safety andEnvironmental Enforcement if
they have an RFP for a grant onthe topic. So we really try to
stay out of that, and just, youknow, help delineate help the
government in that particularcase through surveys and using
(12:22):
subject matter experts, about150 of them, what are their
needs, and then they kind ofcomb through them and figure out
which ones are priority. So wehelp facilitate that
conversation. But we try not tobe involved directly in, you
know, kind of the politics ofit, or competitions.
David Evans (12:45):
Right, right. Yeah, just keeping the level playing
field and keeping the guardrailson the conversation to make sure
that it's being conducted in themost efficient way. And yeah,
that's, that's really admirable.
I have so many more questionsfor you. I feel like I could
talk to you forever now.
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal (13:00):
Okay, okay, go go ahead.
David Evans (13:03):
I guess just to kind of focus our conversation
and just give a bit of a an ideaon, maybe we'll just kind of
focus on oil spills for now. Butoil releases, but just to kind
of give the listeners a littlebit of an idea. When we talk
about oil spills, I assume thatthere's human caused oil spills,
and those are the ones thatcapture the imagination of the
(13:24):
public. And that's what you seepictures of, and things like
that. But I also understand thatthere is natural release of oil
into the ocean, or intofreshwater systems. And just
Could you give us an idea of howmuch is released annually and
how like a human caused oilspill would differ from a
natural oil leak.
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal Re (13:42):
So the amount of oil that's
released naturally, I mean,there are lots of different
estimates. But I think what themost important thing to get
across here is that that oil isreleased over large areas, and
it's released relatively slowly.
Okay. Now, for example, if yougo off the coast of California,
(14:08):
okay, you can see around SantaBarbara, etc, there are these
natural now there are oil rigsthere. I don't mean to say that
there aren't oil production rigsas well. But there have been for
a long time, naturally occurringseeps. Now one can say, have
those been exacerbated by thedrilling or anything like that.
(14:31):
That's not what I'm talkingabout. There are natural seeps,
there are natural seeps in theGulf of Mexico. And really, what
we're doing is we're tapping into those reservoirs from which
the natural seeps are coming.
Okay.
David Evans (14:48):
But it makes a lot of sense. Yeah.
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coasta (14:50):
Right.
So So where you see thesenatural seeps is usually in
areas where we're drilling. Nowthat doesn't mean all the areas
because some of them are maybeless desirable to drilling,
because it's very deep orwhatever. But the main point
here is that when you have thosenatural seeps, they are
periodic. And they are notcatastrophic. Okay. Right,
(15:11):
periodic, but they're notcatastrophic. So basically, what
happens is there's the abilityof the natural environment to
degrade that oil to assimilateto handle that oil. Okay. And we
know, well, and we've known fora long time, that there are
(15:35):
naturally occurring microbesthat degrade oil, okay. And they
quite likely evolved, becausethere are these natural seeps of
oil. And they make a living offof degrading that oil. The
problem? The prompt, right,that's, that's the way it is the
product sense. Yeah, the problembecomes when we release oil in
(15:58):
large quantities over shortperiods of time. Now, one could
argue that the Deepwater Horizonin 2010 was not a short period
of time, 80 some odd days, butstill, relatively speaking,
these other leaks are over, youknow, over a long, long, long
periods of time, hundreds 1000sof years, right. And they're
(16:23):
slow, and they're periodic,right. So if you have a release
from a tanker, or from a brokenpipeline, something or even a
train to railing, it's acatastrophic release a lot of
oil in a short time in an area,okay. And that's when the damage
(16:43):
can occur. So if you think aboutmost birds, for example, or
marine mammals or anything likethat, they're not swimming
through plumes of oil, becausethe this oil for the most part,
is a simulated, it's not, youknow, gobs of oil coating the
(17:03):
surface so that it fouls beachesor something like that fouls,
nesting areas, fouls marshes.
The catastrophic releases arewhere there are the problems.
And the amount of the releasecan be highly variable. I mean,
(17:25):
there are a lot of spills thatare very relatively small, that,
you know, may come from a shipbeing loaded. And for a very,
very short period of time, oilsprays out, okay, when the
transport system is being hookedup to the shipper from the land,
or vice versa. But it's thespills where you're talking
(17:47):
about 1000s of gallons in asmall area. So for example, and
I'm not trying to say we shouldbe spilling oil here, I want
that to be very clear. If I hada ship offshore that released
1000 gallons of oil, right, thatin the middle of the storm, that
(18:08):
oil would be very, very quicklydispersed in the environment.
Okay, if I take that same ship,and have it release 1000 gallons
of oil in a very small harborthat's relatively enclosed. Oh,
my gosh, it's a totally right.
David Evans (18:29):
Yeah, that completely changes the entire
scenario. Yeah. Right.
Dr. Nancy Kinner, C (18:33):
Absolutely.
So that's where it's hard tomake broad generalizations. For
example, big tanker spills areway down. We have for the most
part, double hull tankers. Nowby law, and there are a lot of
systems in place to minimizeaccidents. A lot of systems have
been designed. But if you startthinking about, Oh, maybe we're
(18:59):
going to bring tankers throughice infested waters in the
Arctic. What Oh, that's atotally different game, right?
Because yeah,
David Evans (19:10):
that's a totally different ballgame.
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coasta (19:12):
Right?
We have ice, we have thesymmetry where we don't know
what the bottom even looks like.
It's not been mapped. Okay,totally. Yeah. So all of a
sudden, could be a verydangerous situation. And on top
of that, for many, many months,it's dark, right? And darkness
(19:35):
is a big part of the time. Sonow you want to have a response.
It's much harder to respond inthe dark than it is in the
light. And then you starttalking about things like it's
stormy up there, and it's coldup there. Even when it's warm.
It's cold, you know that you'reCanadian, right? Yep. Yeah. So,
(19:57):
all of these things and theother thing that always amazes
me is people, especially in thelower 48. I think this may be
different in Canada, but theydon't appreciate the vastness of
the area. And right, if you havea spill in the Gulf of Mexico,
(20:18):
you've got a lot of resources, alot of people a lot of things
that you can deploy, you takethat same spill, and you put it
on the coast of Alaska, or youput it up into my goodness, the
Canadian Arctic, and you havegot a way, way, way more
(20:40):
complicated situation. Becauseit's so vast, and there aren't,
you know, you can't just call upand say, Hey, ship over x. No
way. Yeah, I mean, for the US,just to give you an idea, the
closest major base of supportfor the Arctic is on Kodiak
(21:00):
Island, which is a lot of milesaway from the northern coast of
Alaska. So it's big, big. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, obviously, you canfly out of Anchorage to but if
you want, you know, militarytransports Coast Guard support,
that's where it's got to comefrom as Kodiak. So, wow. You
know, I'm not saying it would bethe same in Canada, but it's
(21:23):
similar. You have vast amounts.
I mean, compared to what wehave, you have vast amounts of
waterway in Canada, where, youknow, transport of ships is
potentially going to happen.
David Evans (21:37):
Yeah, with the opening of the Northwest Passage
and potential of transport upthere. I mean, I also believe
that most Canadians don't have agood understanding of the
vastness of Canada, or thevastness of the Arctic to begin
with. And I mean, myself, justhaving spent a lot of time in
the back country of Alberta. Andin working in, in remote areas
(21:59):
here. I'm, I mean, I've comeacross pipelines that have had
spills, and in the middle ofnowhere, and we tried to find a
way to report it. It's so muchbigger than even I can
appreciate, yes. And just theremoteness of being able to go
out and respond something likethat. And as you were saying to
just how even an oil spill wouldpotentially interact with
(22:21):
potentially interact with ice.
Oh, then, of course, we ran intosome technical difficulties. So
the audio might sound a littlebit different right after this.
But you still get the gist ofeverything. Oh, I guess getting
back to what we were discussingbefore. Yeah, with the opening
of the Northwest Passage, theunknown center surrounding
transport of chemicals aretransporting oil in an area that
(22:42):
mostly ice for most of the year,and you were discussing earlier,
you even brought up that you'reassisting with some projects
that are looking at how todetect oil under ice. And I
guess where this kind of leadsme to thinking is, what are some
of the ways that we would dealwith an oil spill, regardless of
where it is in the world? Andthen are there new technologies
(23:04):
that we're looking at developingspecifically for Arctic regions,
these vast areas that we can'trespond quickly? What, what are
we currently doing? And whatwhat does the future look like?
If you could look into yourcrystal ball? What would it look
like in the future of oil spillresponse?
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal Re (23:22):
So maybe the first thing to start
with is how we do respond now.
Right. And certainly, there havebeen major major improvements
since Deepwater Horizon withrespect to technology to cap
wells that are blowouts and thatkind of thing. For the most
(23:43):
part, there are now ways now I'mnot saying that there can't be
blowout spills there can. Okay,there's certainly but, you know,
one of the bad things thathappened in that spill in the
Gulf of Mexico was that that wasvery deep water, almost a mile
of water above a hole. And theholes aren't very big, you know,
(24:08):
I think we have this idea thatfive or 10 feet in diameter,
they're not small. And so oil iscoming out. It's hot. It's under
pressure, and it's shooting outof the hole. Well, it's not so
easy. I mean, in theory, theblowout preventer should have
shut it down. It didn't. So whenyou have that, and there's all
(24:31):
this pipe that's down there thatfell from the rig because that
was a rig that was actuallytrying to go from drilling to
get off. The whole solarproduction, rain could come on,
you'll have to be able to capit, and we didn't have the
technology, literally a billiondollars have been spent to get
that technology. Okay. Now, doesthat mean that there won't be a
(24:55):
release? No, but it means thatProbably it will take us
considerably less than 86 daysto get the things shut down. And
even in Deepwater Horizon, therewas a quote capping mechanism
that went on. But now this, theywould be able to shut the well
in more quickly. But again,that's the Gulf of Mexico, where
(25:19):
there's a lot of resources,right? We're not talking about
the Russian Arctic, where theydo that, or, you know, that kind
of thing. But I want to takethose kinds of spills right now
off the table, because whilethey are very have the potential
to be very catastrophic, theyare not as common. Now, pipeline
(25:41):
spills, on the other hand, aremore common than blowouts by a
longshot, for instance, thepipeline spills that you've seen
in Canada, there was one inKalamazoo, Michigan, that
probably is quite well known tofolks in Canada, it actually was
the line that was wastransporting material from
(26:03):
Canada. And the spill inHuntington Beach recently off of
California, those are bothpipelines spills caused by by
different for different reasons.
But nonetheless, pipelinespills. And of course, in a
pipeline spill, you have a lotof oil that can come out if it's
(26:26):
flowing. But you can shut thepipeline off. Right? And so you
can stop the flow. That's thedifference with a blowout, you
cannot control the flow. Okay.
Now, there's been, and still isbeing technology developed to
help us sense when you've got apipeline that's leaking, you
(26:50):
look for things like pressuredrops, etc. One of the problems
sometimes is that people kind ofoverride this detection system
and say, Oh, that couldn'tpossibly be a leak. So how do
you get smart systems thatreally can tell you you got to
leak and you have to shut down.
(27:11):
But the beauty of a pipeline,though, it can release a lot of
oil for a short period of time,is that it can be turned off.
Now, you still might have asection of the pipeline that had
oil in it, that's between theshutoff points, but at least you
can shut it off. Right. Um, aThe other thing about let's say,
(27:33):
a ship spill, it doesn't have tobe a tanker, it could be a ship
that that is transporting cargoof some sort, that will release
can potentially release fuelthat it's using to operate to
run. But again, you have afinite amount of oil. Right?
(27:57):
It's, it's what that ship had,okay. Whereas this blowout
scenario is the reservoir ismaybe not infinite. But from our
standpoint, from the spill, it'sinfinite, right? Until you shut
it off, it's going to keepflying out of there. Yeah, so.
So these other types of spills,the pipeline, the ship, the the
(28:20):
train car. So for example, ifyou have one of these trains
that has a lot of Bakken crudeor a lot of oil sands products,
and it's going to the coast, ormoving, you know, material
around from Alberta, let's say,but it has a finite amount of
(28:43):
oil in each car, a finite amountof material in each car,
typically, about 28,000 gallons,you know, something of that
order. So I'm not saying it's,it's great. I'm just saying when
you have a spill, there's afinite amount that can come out.
And of course, it can be likelocked McGinty can create, when
the runaway train, you've gotall these cars crashing, and
(29:04):
you've got a fireball, it stillcan be a horrific event. But
it's a finite amount. It's onlywhat's on that train. It's only
what's on the cars that leak,the train cars that leak etc. So
let's say we have a leak. Allright, what happens? Well, of
(29:26):
course, there's the notificationsystem. And as you rightly
pointed out, in some areas, likealong a pipeline, you were
saying you've come across thosefields, I mean, you know, those
spills can can occur. And ifthey're in a remote area, or in
the middle of some farmer'sfield, it might not be
(29:47):
discovered right away. There canbe a relatively quick
notification, or it can be arelatively slow notification,
depending on the remoteness ofthe site. So Once that
notification occurs, then ifit's a marine spill, the Coast
Guard is responsible. And Ibelieve that's the same in the
(30:10):
Canadian Coast Guard. Theyoversee the response. And if
it's an inland spill, it'soverseen in the United States by
EPA, US EPA. And I don't want toget talking about Canada because
I don't know the exact
David Evans (30:25):
know. Fair enough.
Yeah.
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal R (30:27):
And so we have a system here where
the Coast Guard then brings inNOAA, and the office of response
and restoration to advise it onthe spill. What's the science?
Where's this oil gonna go?
What's the kind of impact? Howthen can we have the least bad
situation? And that's the key,because once you release oil, or
(30:51):
any chemical, it's bad. We'retrying to make it the least bad.
I am not aware of any spill thathas been good. They just
David Evans (31:07):
Well, other for the other for that, that bacteria
that just loves it. And just,that's the only benefit. Yeah,
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal (31:14):
yeah, they might like it. And their
populations during deepwaterwent way up. And then they died
off, of course, as the oil wasdegraded. But, um, yeah, so what
we're trying to do is make itthe least bad. And so what, what
NOAA does is they basically takeand run what's called a
(31:34):
trajectory model. It's a modelthat says, here's where the oil
is coming out. And they actuallytrack the oil as if it's a lot
of little particles withbehaviors. And so they can have
things in there. Like, it'sdiesel fuel, for instance, or
gasoline, you and I both know,when you pump gasoline in a car,
there's a lot of vapors thatvolatilizes quickly into the
(31:57):
air. So in their model, it canactually take in the fate and
behavior, characteristics of theoil so they can put in the type
of oil, they can put in theamount of oil, they get
information on, what are thetides, what are the currents?
What are the winds in the area,and all of that can come from
(32:18):
ocean observing systems that cancome from the weather service, a
whole bunch of things that givethem that information, and help
decide how the waters gonnamove, right? If the oils in the
water, they also have what arecalled weathering processes,
that's the evaporation. And sothe oil becomes a little thicker
and more viscous, because thelighter stuff volatilizes off,
(32:41):
some of it might go intosolution, right? All of these
kinds of things. So theyactually not only figured out
where the spill is going, theyfigure out how the spill, the
slick is changing over time. Andthen when they get that
information in at first, they'regoing off of a very little
amount of of information, right?
So as spill occurs, you don'talways know how much oil is
(33:04):
going to come out. You don'talways know exactly what that
oil is, right? So all of thosethings are kind of up in the
air. But these modelers arereally, really super
experienced. And they actuallycan say, Okay, well, you know,
what we've heard is that this iscarrying a crude oil. And they
put in those characteristics.
(33:28):
And they say, Okay, how muchcould leak out? Well, they
talked to the people on thescene. And they say, worst case
scenario is all of the stufffrom a tank have come up with
all of the stuff from the fromthe ship, operating tank comes
out, you know, those kinds ofthings. And then they put in the
currents and the winds that theyhave from, from predicting
(33:48):
sources, like the weatherservice, and then they run the
model, and they see where itpotentially can go, and they put
uncertainty bounds on it. Sothey say, here's where we think
it's going to go, but it couldgo anywhere from here to here.
Okay, and here's how long it'sgoing to take. And then there
are these maps, that they'recalled environmental sensitivity
(34:13):
indices. And these mapsbasically show shorelines and
other areas, what's their, whatlives there and when do they
live there? So, we have certainbirds nesting their their
nesting there from you know, Maytill till September or something
like that. And what are thestatus of of these individuals?
(34:36):
Are they an endangered species?
You know, blah, blah, blah,blah, blah. What are the habits
they have? If they're going tobe eating stuff on the beach?
Could they be eating oil thatcomes up on the beach? Or, you
know, one of the other thingsthat's really happened sometimes
on an oil spill, is if they'returtles in the area, and the
Turtles have laid eggs, right?
(34:59):
Oh my goodness. This. Now therecould be a bad situation the
eggs could get oiled or thelittle baby turtles when they
hatch could get oiled. You know,all of these kinds of things.
And we not only think about whatare the legalities, of course,
we all feel terrible when wesee, you know, an oil bird or an
(35:20):
oil, you know, organism and wego, Oh my gosh, because it's
oftentimes dead. But even worse,sometimes, is the chronic
effects that you know, as abiologist, right. So I'll give
you an example of this. We neverknew, really, until the
Deepwater Horizon, there weresome NOAA scientists who were
(35:47):
monitoring marine mammals. Andthey were monitoring these
dolphins in a place calledBarrow tarea Bay. And they
realize there isn't a lot of oilthat came in there. But there's
some of oil and the dolphinsobviously move around, and that
kind of thing. And so they beganto do some health assessments.
And what they ended uprealizing, and there are some
(36:08):
really seminal publications onthis is that these dolphins, and
the same applies to whales andsome other organisms, but air
breathing organisms, they comeup under the oil slick, right?
That's floating on the water,because oil for the most part is
some of them can sink, but a lotof it floats. And they come up
(36:30):
underneath it. And there wasthis thought that, oh, maybe
they could avoid it. Well,that's not true. They don't
avoid it, they come upunderneath it. And what do you
do? If you're a Marine, now,you've been holding your breath
for a long time. All right. Andso you release this air that
you've been holding, and youmake little droplets, right? We
(36:55):
all know, we've seen thoseblows, you know, the movies and
such. And so now if there's oilthere, you aerosolized that oil
and make it into tiny droplets.
Okay. And we now know that thenext thing that they do, because
they want clean, fresh oxygen,right, is they breathe in. And
(37:16):
they breathe those oil dropletsin, and they get deep down into
their lungs. And so it doesn'tkill them. Right. But it causes
long term, chronic damage,miscarriages, all sorts of
things. So the birth rate ofthese dolphins is is much lower
(37:38):
post the spill. And there are alot of reasons for this.
There's, there's been anincredible amount of work done
that actually looks at thesimilarities of impacts across
fish and birds and marinemammals and humans. There's
this, this kind of continuum ofthe ways oil impacts and causes
(38:00):
toxicity issues. And we'retalking about chronic impacts,
right, so might not kill theorganism immediately with an
acute effect. But sometimesthose long term impacts can
really damage populations,impacting the reproductive
success, there's been some workdone that shows that if some of
(38:23):
these organisms get exposed tooil, when they're in the larval
stage, or egg stage, they getkind of a strange heart, their
heart deforms, and they mightgrow up. But they can't pump as
fast, right? Their hearts can'twork as efficiently. So they
(38:43):
can't swim as fast. So they geteaten. Like they become prey.
Wow. Yeah. So So there are allsorts of these impacts that can
really affect populations, andtherefore affect community
structure, etc. So these chroniceffects can be as bad as
(39:05):
anything else. So they want tofigure out how can we protect
these resources?
Where's this oil gonna go?
What's there? And of course,there's always this challenge
of, I've only got so muchresources that I can throw at
this. Where is the biggest bangfor the buck? Where is it most
(39:26):
important that I protect? Right?
And you will know, okay, I canimpact a lot of eggs and larvae,
right? But if I impact the fewendangered adults on the beach,
oh my goodness, or if I impactsome of the reproductive adults,
(39:49):
that's a bad scenario, right?
One of the things that's anexample here is if you think
about corals, okay? Corals arein Add Shape, if an oil spill
impacts corals. So let me giveyou a scenario. This is
something we talked about in aworkshop once once, which I
found fascinating. And we reallyhadn't thought about it this
(40:12):
way. So we got the coral expertstogether with the responders,
okay? So the thought was, well,these corals are really
sensitive. And so we know thatif there's an oil spill on the
surface, we definitely don'twant to have their eggs and
their larvae impacted. Becausecorals are so important. So
(40:34):
maybe what we should think aboutdoing is dispersing that oil. If
we know that the oil is cominginto an area, where there are
all these corals and theirlarvae, etc, might get killed.
But it turns out that if youkill an adult coral, that is
1000 years old, it takes a hellof a long time to get back to
(40:57):
where it was. Right. Right. Ifyou kill off a lot of larvae,
those adults might reproduceagain in six months or two
months or whatever, right? Soyes, you lose a section of
organisms. And this is true formany organisms, not saying it's
good, but remember, we'reinterested in the least bad.
David Evans (41:21):
It's a triage system, you have to figure out
what's the priority? And what isthe organism levels that are the
kind of the ecosystem engineersor the keystone species that you
need to maintain thoseecosystems and, and make sure
that they're still functioning?
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal (41:36):
Yes, that's exactly it. That's
exactly it, David. So that'swhat goes into some of these
response strategies. And youknow, there are ways to clean up
the oil, they're skimming it offthe surface, and you know, those
kinds of things, but you don'tusually want it to get on the
beach or get on there, themarshes, etc. And then,
(41:58):
concurrently, once that spilloccurs, the people are out there
assessing the damages, what'shappened to the organisms, etc,
that we talked about earlier?
And thinking right from the getgo, how are we going to restore
these environments, theseorganisms, these these human
resources, etc. So that's kindof what happens in a spill and
(42:21):
the damage assessment part andthe restoration can take years,
the response usually is overrelatively quickly. But you can
see that if you go to an area,like the Arctic, or an area
that's remote, then you becomemuch more vulnerable. Because
(42:44):
you don't have the responseequipment, you don't have the
intel on, what are the winds andthe currents? Right? If you
think about the Gulf of Mexico,etc, we have high frequency
radar, we have buoys offshore togive us a lot of information
about what's happening, you goto the Arctic, there aren't very
(43:05):
many buoys up there, it's veryhard to have them. Right. You
know, the information is verysparse. And so you're trying to
make a model. And that's veryhard. And then the other thing
is that we, when the models arebeing made, they're always being
compared to the reality. Here'swhat the model says, Here's what
(43:28):
our intel from satellites orIntel, from drones, etc, is
saying, about, or aircraftsaying about where the oil is.
And if there's a disconnectbetween them, they reinitialize
the model, they tweak the modelto say, okay, the model isn't
right, let's, let's get the mostup to date data. And so we can
(43:51):
read tweak it right. Well, okay,so let's try and do that in the
Arctic. Right? Well, you don'tjust go flying around zooming
around with drones. I mean, youcan potentially that's one of
the projects we're looking at,on the North Slope this June.
But it's not easy. I mean, therejust aren't drones sitting
(44:13):
around. Whereas in the Gulf ofMexico or California or
wherever, there's a lot morepossibilities. So it's really
and getting people up there andequipment up there is not easy,
either. And the weather isn'talways cooperative.
David Evans (44:32):
So bugs aren't cooperative, that's for sure.
Yeah.
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coasta (44:35):
That's right. So yeah, that answers the
question.
David Evans (44:40):
No, absolutely.
That completely that that. It'sabsolutely fascinating. And it
got me thinking too, of how canyou create a model when you
don't even know the depth of thewater and how the ocean currents
would potentially change withthe removal of all the sea ice
as we move into the future, andhow that can influence wind
patterns in climate and yeah,It's there's there's so many
compounding factors to beconsidered.
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal (45:03):
Yeah.
And, you know, there, there are,I'm sure there are within Canada
as well. There are bighydrodynamic models that are run
by the US Navy, and I'm sure bythe Canadian government, and by
NOAA, and then there are like,if you get into some, some
(45:27):
entertainment, right, I'm sure.
For example, in Halifax Harbour,there is a separate hydrodynamic
model that predicts how thewater will move back and forth.
But when you get up to theArctic, I don't think in Baffin
Bay, we have probably right, orthe Lincoln sea or whatever. It
(45:52):
just is just really difficult.
And then you've got the sea ice.
And actually, I do know that theCanadian government and the US
government, and some others havescientists who are all
cooperating on a model of seaice, it's called sea ice. Don't
(46:13):
ask me what that stands for. ButCIC, we did a project, we've
been doing a project on oilspill modeling in the Arctic.
And we've been getting sea icemodelers, together with oil
spill modelers to think abouthow best to do this modeling.
And sea ice isn't, is a modelthat's available, it's open. So
(46:34):
scientists from all over, forexample, I know that the Met
folks in Canada work on CIC II,we've worked with some of those,
those folks, they're excellent.
And the people in EnvironmentCanada also work. There's an
excellent oil spill folks there,and also in Department of
Fisheries and Oceans. So you'vegot some top people also working
(46:56):
on the same projects. And andthere's a lot of cooperation
between the Canadian governmentand the US government on some of
these questions. But this modelof sea ice is, is really a very
powerful model. But again, itneeds to have information on
which directions, the currentsare pushing the ice, and, you
(47:19):
know, the thickness of the iceand all of this kind of thing.
And it needs to be kind ofcompared just like we talked
about the oil spill models towhat the reality is. So how do
you get the thickness of the iceof the Arctic? Well, you have to
use satellites a lot of timesand how well do they work? And
then the undersurface of theISIS? Whoa, that's not flat.
(47:43):
That's all sorts of convolutionsunder there. But how do you know
what that is? We just had a teamof people who are talking about
that. And really, how do we evenkind of make some scientific
hypotheses about what it mightlook like so that we can maybe
start to think about how wewould model that in the spill.
(48:06):
So I keep going back to thearticles, I think actually,
probably folks in Canada wouldrelate to that. And of course,
there's a lot of ice on theGreat Lakes too. So, you know,
in both those cases, so that'sfreshwater ice. Those are all
big questions about how wouldall that oil move if there was a
ship accident on the GreatLakes?
David Evans (48:31):
Absolutely. And I mean, I think Canadians are
interested everywhere. I mean,we have a lot of snowbirds that
go down. So so the Gulf ofMexico is definitely a concern
as well. So
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal (48:41):
yes, they sure do go down to Florida
and the Gulf here, right? Yeah.
David Evans (48:47):
Well, I realized we've we've gone over our time,
and I don't want to keep youanymore. But maybe if you could
just one final quick question.
If someone listened to thispodcast, and they may have
already been concerned about oilspills, if they want to have
their voice heard, or if theydon't know how to get involved
in an oil spill response, orbeing able to change their
actions that might improve theoutcome of an oil spill, or
(49:09):
somewhere to donate, what wouldyou what would you pass along to
that individual?
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal Res (49:15):
I think the biggest thing that any
of us can do right now is todecrease our fossil fuel
footprint. You know, mystudents, remind me, Hey, you
are commuting from Maine down toNew Hampshire. Do you realize
how much gasoline you're using?
Etc, etc. So I take the trainnow? Well, it's a little less
(49:37):
convenient, I must say, but it'sgot its advantages, and on my
carbon footprint has beengreatly reduced. And I think we
each have to think about how somuch of what we do uses fossil
fuels if we get food from remotelocations, right instead of
using food grown locally. Howdoes it get there? Fossil fuels?
(50:01):
Right? All of those things ifyou want to decrease over time,
the number of spills, we alldecreased our fossil fuel usage,
there'd be less fossil fuelsshipped, and therefore, there
will be less this.
David Evans (50:19):
Absolute Absolutely. I couldn't say it
better myself. Thank you so muchfor speaking with me. Oh, sorry.
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal (50:25):
Thank you very much for speaking with
me, David. It's been a realpleasure. Call back anytime,
David. It's been a pleasure.
You've asked really, really goodquestions. And it's been
enjoyable.
David Evans (50:37):
Wonderful. Thank you so much. And I'll put links
in the show notes to everythingthat we talked about into your
to your group.
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coasta (50:44):
Thanks so much, David. You drink too
much. Yeah.
David Evans (50:47):
Bye bye.
Thank you so much for tuninginto today's episode all about
oil spill response. Thank you somuch to Dr. Nancy Kinder for
speaking with me was an absoluteblast and she persevered through
audio difficulties. If you wantto learn more about Dr. Nancy
(51:08):
kinders work, and what we'redoing here in Canada as well, in
terms of oil spill response,I'll leave links in the show
notes to all of that. So lookfor links to the coastal
response Research Center, Noah'soffice of response and
restoration DFO, and EnvironmentCanada. I'm the host and
producer David Evans. And I justlike to thank the rest of the
team, specifically Paul Polman,Lee Burton, and the rest of the
(51:32):
aquatic biosphere board. Thanksfor all of your help. And to
learn more about the aquaticbiosphere project and what we're
doing right here in Albertatelling the story of water, you
can check us out at aquaticbiosphere.ca. And we also have
launched our new media company,ABN quad a biosphere network,
which you can find that thepublic place dot online and
(51:56):
search for the aquatic biospherenetwork channel, where we will
actually be posting all of thevideo episodes that we're going
to be creating this year. Sotune in. They will be out for
the next little while but veryexcited to start sharing video
content as well as ourinterviews. If you have any
questions or comments about theshow, we'd love to hear them.
Email us at conservation ataquatic biosphere.org. Please
(52:20):
don't forget to like, share andsubscribe. Leave us a review. It
really helps us out. Thanks andit's been a splash
Welcome to today's deep dive episode, where we're
talking all about oil spills.
How you clean them up? What evenhappens? What are the steps? Dr.
Nancy Kinder will take usthrough all of them. Dr. Nancy
Kinder has been around and ableto talk to all of the major oil
spills off the coast of theUnited States that you can
probably name. Now I have toapologize because partway
through our call, the calldropped and we had to change
(00:28):
mediums and the audio qualitykind of went kaput, but you can
still hear everything. And it'sdefinitely worth a listen
because Dr. Kynar knows a heckof a lot about oil spills. And
it's absolutely fascinating. Sosit back relax and get ready to
learn a little bit more aboutoil spill 101 with Dr. Nancy
(00:53):
Fox, sir Barney, G. nippy for meto know, in zero marry a cheap,
(01:17):
Chinese way. Why net? Water wedoing? And how can we do better?
Your one stop shop foreverything water related from
discussing water its use and theorganisms that depend on it for
(01:39):
all the global issues that youreally never knew all had to do
with water. I'm your host, DavidEvans from the aquatic biosphere
project. And I just want to askyou something. What are we
doing? How can we do better?
(02:05):
Hi, and welcome to another deepdive episode of the what are we
doing podcast? So today we'respeaking with Dr. Nancy Kynar.
All about oil spills and oil andoil exploration. You name it, as
Dr. Nancy knows about it. So doyou mind just giving yourself a
bit of an introduction andtelling us a little bit about
what you do?
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal (02:25):
Okay, well, thanks so much for having
me on. So I work at theUniversity of New Hampshire.
Specifically, I am theUniversity of New Hampshire,
director of the coastal responseResearch Center. And I say the
University of New Hampshiredirector because there's also a
director from the NationalOceanic and Atmospheric
(02:47):
Administration, which in the USis the agency that really
oversees the science of theoceans and our large water
bodies. So that includes notonly the Arctic, and all of the
Bering Sea, etc. Gulf of Alaskaall the way down the west coast,
(03:08):
the Gulf of Mexico all the wayup the east coast. But it also
importantly, includes the GreatLakes, where we share a common
boundary with our Canadianneighbors. And obviously, we do
that also in in Alaska. And wedo that on the West Coast. And
we do that on the east coast.
But a lot of times people don'tthink about that particular area
(03:28):
of the Great Lakes as beingunder the purview of NOAA, but
it is. And so our center wascreated back in 2004, to be a
partner with Noah's office ofresponse and restoration. And
that office within NOAA ischarged with helping in
disasters of particularlydisasters that affect coasts
(03:53):
that affect the ocean thataffect the Great Lakes. And the
disasters might be oil spills,they might be chemical spills.
They might be things that resultlike sunken and displaced
vessels that could occur duringa hurricane or something like
that. There's a whole range ofthings that the Office of
(04:15):
response and restoration workson. And they they not only work
during the response, forexample, in an oil spill,
they're predicting where thatoil is going to go where it's
going to hit, what naturalresources that might impact
what's its fate, but they alsolook at in the United States,
there's a very specific set oflanguage in the law that
(04:39):
requires that if some kind of aspill occurs, that the spiller
is liable for the damages. Andin this particular case, they
have to actually Return theenvironment to where it was, but
(05:00):
for the spill, and that's theactual language but for the
spill, so that means that thedamage has to be assessed, which
the office of response andrestoration does. And that there
has to be a restoration plan anactivation to actually get back
(05:22):
to where you were. And you mightsay, well, you know, if animals
get killed off, or damaged, whatare you going to do? You can't
bring them back? And the answeris that restoration might, for
example, let's say there werecertain species of fish or
(05:43):
certain species of birds orsomething like that, that get
killed off, well, you want torestore habitat, so that they
can reproduce more effectively.
And maybe you create newhabitat, maybe you restore
existing habitat, the same thingoccurs with human resources. So
(06:07):
let's say people go to a beach,and there's some kind of an
event, that means they can't goto that beach, the beach gets
closed, then based on this law,which is in the Oil Pollution
Act of 1990, the damages areassessed how much compensation
needs to go to the public. Now,it's not paying individual
(06:31):
fishermen or individual shopowners or something like that.
It's restoring and making thepublic whole, as well as the
natural resources. So maybethey'd build a fish pier, maybe
they would build more prisonswhere people could shower or
whatever to improve, okay, youcouldn't go to the beach, but
(06:51):
now we're going to make going tothe beach better. So that's the
whole part of restoration. Okay.
And then there's anotherimportant part of the Office of
response and restoration. Andthat's disaster preparedness.
How do you prepare for adisaster? So and there's always
going to be damaged? But how doyou prepare more effectively to
(07:13):
minimize that damage? Okay, sowe work with the Office of
response and restoration andhave since 2004. And the reason
that we're doing it that waythat it's at UNH, is because we
have one of the top 10 marinescience programs in the country
in the US. And we also have avery strong program in
(07:35):
environmental engineering andenvironmental response. And and
this is the other importantfactor. We don't have any skin
in the game, which means wedon't have any oil, right? We
don't have any natural gas, wedon't have any of those things.
We don't have a big chemicalindustry. So when a spill
(07:58):
occurs, if someone needs tostand up and be the kind of the
independent honest broker, wecan do that, right? Because
there's no Governor calling theUniversity in New Hampshire and
saying, Oh, don't say that. Sothat's very important. I mean,
it seems silly, right? No, butyou can actually see where it
might be very, very important.
(08:23):
And there is a lot, a lot of oilshipped in and out of New
Hampshire. So that's kind ofwhat we're about. And we do a
variety of things. I mean, we dosome research here with some
graduate students. We're workingright now on a project of
movement of oil under ice, andsome work on oil thickness
measurements, validatingdifferent kinds of sensors that
(08:46):
vendors have. But we alsooversee research for NOAA. So no
one might get a project fundedto look, for instance, at how do
you sense oil in ice infestedwaters. And we will oversee that
project, working with NOAAscientists to make sure that the
(09:08):
work is done well, that the workis scientifically sound that
it's done on time and on budget,and kind of coordinating that.
Another thing we do is a lot ofworkshops. So since since that
period of time, in 2004. We'vedone about 80 Plus workshops on
a variety of topics, reallylooking for the most part at
(09:33):
what are the research gaps? Howcan we do things better? How can
we get people working togetherand facilitating those meetings
and one of the things that wetry to do is, again, we're the
independent honest broker, wedon't have a lot of skin in the
game. And we also have thescientific chops to be able to
say, Wait a second, that's alittle bit of BS there, right?
(09:55):
Yeah. When somebody gets going,we can say boo. Whereas a lot of
fun meditators are not kind ofexperts in the field, right? But
then if you get asked experts inthe field, lots of times they're
vying for resources andresearch, etc, which we're not
really, really doing. So andthen we, of course, have
(10:15):
students that we train that cango into the field. And we try to
act as a hub for variousagencies, both nationally and
internationally to tackle someof these problems. So those are
some of the things that we do.
David Evans (10:31):
Just a couple of things. Just a couple of things.
Yeah, but it's fun. It's a lotof fun. Yeah, that seems super
interesting. I really respectthe point that you brought up
that you really have no skin inthe game. There is no ulterior
motives that are beinginfluenced on you and your team.
Because, I mean, I'm recordingthis podcast in Edmonton,
Alberta. So we were a big oilcountry up here. So yeah, I
(10:55):
understand that.
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal (10:56):
Just to give you an example of how
important that is, every sixyears, the US, there's a
government group called theInteragency Coordinating
Committee on oil pollutionresearch, it's federally
mandated, and it includes CoastGuard, it includes Noah, it
includes EPA and includes FEMA,it includes everybody you can
(11:18):
think of who might be involved.
And they are charged with comingup with research needs that the
federal government sees for thenext six years. And there's a
lot of very long process a yearlong process that we go through,
we actually help those federalagencies, figure out what the
(11:39):
research needs might be. And oneof the reasons why we do it is
because we say we're not goingto apply for any of these
research needs. Anybody canapply, right? Or, you know,
whatever. But we're not goingto, we're not going to apply for
any of them. Now, NOAA maydecide to fund the research idea
(12:01):
and ask us to help them overseeit. But we don't apply to the
Bureau of Safety andEnvironmental Enforcement if
they have an RFP for a grant onthe topic. So we really try to
stay out of that, and just, youknow, help delineate help the
government in that particularcase through surveys and using
(12:22):
subject matter experts, about150 of them, what are their
needs, and then they kind ofcomb through them and figure out
which ones are priority. So wehelp facilitate that
conversation. But we try not tobe involved directly in, you
know, kind of the politics ofit, or competitions.
David Evans (12:45):
Right, right. Yeah, just keeping the level playing
field and keeping the guardrailson the conversation to make sure
that it's being conducted in themost efficient way. And yeah,
that's, that's really admirable.
I have so many more questionsfor you. I feel like I could
talk to you forever now.
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal (13:00):
Okay, okay, go go ahead.
David Evans (13:03):
I guess just to kind of focus our conversation
and just give a bit of a an ideaon, maybe we'll just kind of
focus on oil spills for now. Butoil releases, but just to kind
of give the listeners a littlebit of an idea. When we talk
about oil spills, I assume thatthere's human caused oil spills,
and those are the ones thatcapture the imagination of the
(13:24):
public. And that's what you seepictures of, and things like
that. But I also understand thatthere is natural release of oil
into the ocean, or intofreshwater systems. And just
Could you give us an idea of howmuch is released annually and
how like a human caused oilspill would differ from a
natural oil leak.
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal Re (13:42):
So the amount of oil that's
released naturally, I mean,there are lots of different
estimates. But I think what themost important thing to get
across here is that that oil isreleased over large areas, and
it's released relatively slowly.
Okay. Now, for example, if yougo off the coast of California,
(14:08):
okay, you can see around SantaBarbara, etc, there are these
natural now there are oil rigsthere. I don't mean to say that
there aren't oil production rigsas well. But there have been for
a long time, naturally occurringseeps. Now one can say, have
those been exacerbated by thedrilling or anything like that.
(14:31):
That's not what I'm talkingabout. There are natural seeps,
there are natural seeps in theGulf of Mexico. And really, what
we're doing is we're tapping into those reservoirs from which
the natural seeps are coming.
Okay.
David Evans (14:48):
But it makes a lot of sense. Yeah.
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coasta (14:50):
Right.
So So where you see thesenatural seeps is usually in
areas where we're drilling. Nowthat doesn't mean all the areas
because some of them are maybeless desirable to drilling,
because it's very deep orwhatever. But the main point
here is that when you have thosenatural seeps, they are
periodic. And they are notcatastrophic. Okay. Right,
(15:11):
periodic, but they're notcatastrophic. So basically, what
happens is there's the abilityof the natural environment to
degrade that oil to assimilateto handle that oil. Okay. And we
know, well, and we've known fora long time, that there are
(15:35):
naturally occurring microbesthat degrade oil, okay. And they
quite likely evolved, becausethere are these natural seeps of
oil. And they make a living offof degrading that oil. The
problem? The prompt, right,that's, that's the way it is the
product sense. Yeah, the problembecomes when we release oil in
(15:58):
large quantities over shortperiods of time. Now, one could
argue that the Deepwater Horizonin 2010 was not a short period
of time, 80 some odd days, butstill, relatively speaking,
these other leaks are over, youknow, over a long, long, long
periods of time, hundreds 1000sof years, right. And they're
(16:23):
slow, and they're periodic,right. So if you have a release
from a tanker, or from a brokenpipeline, something or even a
train to railing, it's acatastrophic release a lot of
oil in a short time in an area,okay. And that's when the damage
(16:43):
can occur. So if you think aboutmost birds, for example, or
marine mammals or anything likethat, they're not swimming
through plumes of oil, becausethe this oil for the most part,
is a simulated, it's not, youknow, gobs of oil coating the
(17:03):
surface so that it fouls beachesor something like that fouls,
nesting areas, fouls marshes.
The catastrophic releases arewhere there are the problems.
And the amount of the releasecan be highly variable. I mean,
(17:25):
there are a lot of spills thatare very relatively small, that,
you know, may come from a shipbeing loaded. And for a very,
very short period of time, oilsprays out, okay, when the
transport system is being hookedup to the shipper from the land,
or vice versa. But it's thespills where you're talking
(17:47):
about 1000s of gallons in asmall area. So for example, and
I'm not trying to say we shouldbe spilling oil here, I want
that to be very clear. If I hada ship offshore that released
1000 gallons of oil, right, thatin the middle of the storm, that
(18:08):
oil would be very, very quicklydispersed in the environment.
Okay, if I take that same ship,and have it release 1000 gallons
of oil in a very small harborthat's relatively enclosed. Oh,
my gosh, it's a totally right.
David Evans (18:29):
Yeah, that completely changes the entire
scenario. Yeah. Right.
Dr. Nancy Kinner, C (18:33):
Absolutely.
So that's where it's hard tomake broad generalizations. For
example, big tanker spills areway down. We have for the most
part, double hull tankers. Nowby law, and there are a lot of
systems in place to minimizeaccidents. A lot of systems have
been designed. But if you startthinking about, Oh, maybe we're
(18:59):
going to bring tankers throughice infested waters in the
Arctic. What Oh, that's atotally different game, right?
Because yeah,
David Evans (19:10):
that's a totally different ballgame.
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coasta (19:12):
Right?
We have ice, we have thesymmetry where we don't know
what the bottom even looks like.
It's not been mapped. Okay,totally. Yeah. So all of a
sudden, could be a verydangerous situation. And on top
of that, for many, many months,it's dark, right? And darkness
(19:35):
is a big part of the time. Sonow you want to have a response.
It's much harder to respond inthe dark than it is in the
light. And then you starttalking about things like it's
stormy up there, and it's coldup there. Even when it's warm.
It's cold, you know that you'reCanadian, right? Yep. Yeah. So,
(19:57):
all of these things and theother thing that always amazes
me is people, especially in thelower 48. I think this may be
different in Canada, but theydon't appreciate the vastness of
the area. And right, if you havea spill in the Gulf of Mexico,
(20:18):
you've got a lot of resources, alot of people a lot of things
that you can deploy, you takethat same spill, and you put it
on the coast of Alaska, or youput it up into my goodness, the
Canadian Arctic, and you havegot a way, way, way more
(20:40):
complicated situation. Becauseit's so vast, and there aren't,
you know, you can't just call upand say, Hey, ship over x. No
way. Yeah, I mean, for the US,just to give you an idea, the
closest major base of supportfor the Arctic is on Kodiak
(21:00):
Island, which is a lot of milesaway from the northern coast of
Alaska. So it's big, big. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, obviously, you canfly out of Anchorage to but if
you want, you know, militarytransports Coast Guard support,
that's where it's got to comefrom as Kodiak. So, wow. You
know, I'm not saying it would bethe same in Canada, but it's
(21:23):
similar. You have vast amounts.
I mean, compared to what wehave, you have vast amounts of
waterway in Canada, where, youknow, transport of ships is
potentially going to happen.
David Evans (21:37):
Yeah, with the opening of the Northwest Passage
and potential of transport upthere. I mean, I also believe
that most Canadians don't have agood understanding of the
vastness of Canada, or thevastness of the Arctic to begin
with. And I mean, myself, justhaving spent a lot of time in
the back country of Alberta. Andin working in, in remote areas
(21:59):
here. I'm, I mean, I've comeacross pipelines that have had
spills, and in the middle ofnowhere, and we tried to find a
way to report it. It's so muchbigger than even I can
appreciate, yes. And just theremoteness of being able to go
out and respond something likethat. And as you were saying to
just how even an oil spill wouldpotentially interact with
(22:21):
potentially interact with ice.
Oh, then, of course, we ran intosome technical difficulties. So
the audio might sound a littlebit different right after this.
But you still get the gist ofeverything. Oh, I guess getting
back to what we were discussingbefore. Yeah, with the opening
of the Northwest Passage, theunknown center surrounding
transport of chemicals aretransporting oil in an area that
(22:42):
mostly ice for most of the year,and you were discussing earlier,
you even brought up that you'reassisting with some projects
that are looking at how todetect oil under ice. And I
guess where this kind of leadsme to thinking is, what are some
of the ways that we would dealwith an oil spill, regardless of
where it is in the world? Andthen are there new technologies
(23:04):
that we're looking at developingspecifically for Arctic regions,
these vast areas that we can'trespond quickly? What, what are
we currently doing? And whatwhat does the future look like?
If you could look into yourcrystal ball? What would it look
like in the future of oil spillresponse?
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal Re (23:22):
So maybe the first thing to start
with is how we do respond now.
Right. And certainly, there havebeen major major improvements
since Deepwater Horizon withrespect to technology to cap
wells that are blowouts and thatkind of thing. For the most
(23:43):
part, there are now ways now I'mnot saying that there can't be
blowout spills there can. Okay,there's certainly but, you know,
one of the bad things thathappened in that spill in the
Gulf of Mexico was that that wasvery deep water, almost a mile
of water above a hole. And theholes aren't very big, you know,
(24:08):
I think we have this idea thatfive or 10 feet in diameter,
they're not small. And so oil iscoming out. It's hot. It's under
pressure, and it's shooting outof the hole. Well, it's not so
easy. I mean, in theory, theblowout preventer should have
shut it down. It didn't. So whenyou have that, and there's all
(24:31):
this pipe that's down there thatfell from the rig because that
was a rig that was actuallytrying to go from drilling to
get off. The whole solarproduction, rain could come on,
you'll have to be able to capit, and we didn't have the
technology, literally a billiondollars have been spent to get
that technology. Okay. Now, doesthat mean that there won't be a
(24:55):
release? No, but it means thatProbably it will take us
considerably less than 86 daysto get the things shut down. And
even in Deepwater Horizon, therewas a quote capping mechanism
that went on. But now this, theywould be able to shut the well
in more quickly. But again,that's the Gulf of Mexico, where
(25:19):
there's a lot of resources,right? We're not talking about
the Russian Arctic, where theydo that, or, you know, that kind
of thing. But I want to takethose kinds of spills right now
off the table, because whilethey are very have the potential
to be very catastrophic, theyare not as common. Now, pipeline
(25:41):
spills, on the other hand, aremore common than blowouts by a
longshot, for instance, thepipeline spills that you've seen
in Canada, there was one inKalamazoo, Michigan, that
probably is quite well known tofolks in Canada, it actually was
the line that was wastransporting material from
(26:03):
Canada. And the spill inHuntington Beach recently off of
California, those are bothpipelines spills caused by by
different for different reasons.
But nonetheless, pipelinespills. And of course, in a
pipeline spill, you have a lotof oil that can come out if it's
(26:26):
flowing. But you can shut thepipeline off. Right? And so you
can stop the flow. That's thedifference with a blowout, you
cannot control the flow. Okay.
Now, there's been, and still isbeing technology developed to
help us sense when you've got apipeline that's leaking, you
(26:50):
look for things like pressuredrops, etc. One of the problems
sometimes is that people kind ofoverride this detection system
and say, Oh, that couldn'tpossibly be a leak. So how do
you get smart systems thatreally can tell you you got to
leak and you have to shut down.
(27:11):
But the beauty of a pipeline,though, it can release a lot of
oil for a short period of time,is that it can be turned off.
Now, you still might have asection of the pipeline that had
oil in it, that's between theshutoff points, but at least you
can shut it off. Right. Um, aThe other thing about let's say,
(27:33):
a ship spill, it doesn't have tobe a tanker, it could be a ship
that that is transporting cargoof some sort, that will release
can potentially release fuelthat it's using to operate to
run. But again, you have afinite amount of oil. Right?
(27:57):
It's, it's what that ship had,okay. Whereas this blowout
scenario is the reservoir ismaybe not infinite. But from our
standpoint, from the spill, it'sinfinite, right? Until you shut
it off, it's going to keepflying out of there. Yeah, so.
So these other types of spills,the pipeline, the ship, the the
(28:20):
train car. So for example, ifyou have one of these trains
that has a lot of Bakken crudeor a lot of oil sands products,
and it's going to the coast, ormoving, you know, material
around from Alberta, let's say,but it has a finite amount of
(28:43):
oil in each car, a finite amountof material in each car,
typically, about 28,000 gallons,you know, something of that
order. So I'm not saying it's,it's great. I'm just saying when
you have a spill, there's afinite amount that can come out.
And of course, it can be likelocked McGinty can create, when
the runaway train, you've gotall these cars crashing, and
(29:04):
you've got a fireball, it stillcan be a horrific event. But
it's a finite amount. It's onlywhat's on that train. It's only
what's on the cars that leak,the train cars that leak etc. So
let's say we have a leak. Allright, what happens? Well, of
(29:26):
course, there's the notificationsystem. And as you rightly
pointed out, in some areas, likealong a pipeline, you were
saying you've come across thosefields, I mean, you know, those
spills can can occur. And ifthey're in a remote area, or in
the middle of some farmer'sfield, it might not be
(29:47):
discovered right away. There canbe a relatively quick
notification, or it can be arelatively slow notification,
depending on the remoteness ofthe site. So Once that
notification occurs, then ifit's a marine spill, the Coast
Guard is responsible. And Ibelieve that's the same in the
(30:10):
Canadian Coast Guard. Theyoversee the response. And if
it's an inland spill, it'soverseen in the United States by
EPA, US EPA. And I don't want toget talking about Canada because
I don't know the exact
David Evans (30:25):
know. Fair enough.
Yeah.
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal R (30:27):
And so we have a system here where
the Coast Guard then brings inNOAA, and the office of response
and restoration to advise it onthe spill. What's the science?
Where's this oil gonna go?
What's the kind of impact? Howthen can we have the least bad
situation? And that's the key,because once you release oil, or
(30:51):
any chemical, it's bad. We'retrying to make it the least bad.
I am not aware of any spill thathas been good. They just
David Evans (31:07):
Well, other for the other for that, that bacteria
that just loves it. And just,that's the only benefit. Yeah,
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal (31:14):
yeah, they might like it. And their
populations during deepwaterwent way up. And then they died
off, of course, as the oil wasdegraded. But, um, yeah, so what
we're trying to do is make itthe least bad. And so what, what
NOAA does is they basically takeand run what's called a
(31:34):
trajectory model. It's a modelthat says, here's where the oil
is coming out. And they actuallytrack the oil as if it's a lot
of little particles withbehaviors. And so they can have
things in there. Like, it'sdiesel fuel, for instance, or
gasoline, you and I both know,when you pump gasoline in a car,
there's a lot of vapors thatvolatilizes quickly into the
(31:57):
air. So in their model, it canactually take in the fate and
behavior, characteristics of theoil so they can put in the type
of oil, they can put in theamount of oil, they get
information on, what are thetides, what are the currents?
What are the winds in the area,and all of that can come from
(32:18):
ocean observing systems that cancome from the weather service, a
whole bunch of things that givethem that information, and help
decide how the waters gonnamove, right? If the oils in the
water, they also have what arecalled weathering processes,
that's the evaporation. And sothe oil becomes a little thicker
and more viscous, because thelighter stuff volatilizes off,
(32:41):
some of it might go intosolution, right? All of these
kinds of things. So theyactually not only figured out
where the spill is going, theyfigure out how the spill, the
slick is changing over time. Andthen when they get that
information in at first, they'regoing off of a very little
amount of of information, right?
So as spill occurs, you don'talways know how much oil is
(33:04):
going to come out. You don'talways know exactly what that
oil is, right? So all of thosethings are kind of up in the
air. But these modelers arereally, really super
experienced. And they actuallycan say, Okay, well, you know,
what we've heard is that this iscarrying a crude oil. And they
put in those characteristics.
(33:28):
And they say, Okay, how muchcould leak out? Well, they
talked to the people on thescene. And they say, worst case
scenario is all of the stufffrom a tank have come up with
all of the stuff from the fromthe ship, operating tank comes
out, you know, those kinds ofthings. And then they put in the
currents and the winds that theyhave from, from predicting
(33:48):
sources, like the weatherservice, and then they run the
model, and they see where itpotentially can go, and they put
uncertainty bounds on it. Sothey say, here's where we think
it's going to go, but it couldgo anywhere from here to here.
Okay, and here's how long it'sgoing to take. And then there
are these maps, that they'recalled environmental sensitivity
(34:13):
indices. And these mapsbasically show shorelines and
other areas, what's their, whatlives there and when do they
live there? So, we have certainbirds nesting their their
nesting there from you know, Maytill till September or something
like that. And what are thestatus of of these individuals?
(34:36):
Are they an endangered species?
You know, blah, blah, blah,blah, blah. What are the habits
they have? If they're going tobe eating stuff on the beach?
Could they be eating oil thatcomes up on the beach? Or, you
know, one of the other thingsthat's really happened sometimes
on an oil spill, is if they'returtles in the area, and the
Turtles have laid eggs, right?
(34:59):
Oh my goodness. This. Now therecould be a bad situation the
eggs could get oiled or thelittle baby turtles when they
hatch could get oiled. You know,all of these kinds of things.
And we not only think about whatare the legalities, of course,
we all feel terrible when wesee, you know, an oil bird or an
(35:20):
oil, you know, organism and wego, Oh my gosh, because it's
oftentimes dead. But even worse,sometimes, is the chronic
effects that you know, as abiologist, right. So I'll give
you an example of this. We neverknew, really, until the
Deepwater Horizon, there weresome NOAA scientists who were
(35:47):
monitoring marine mammals. Andthey were monitoring these
dolphins in a place calledBarrow tarea Bay. And they
realize there isn't a lot of oilthat came in there. But there's
some of oil and the dolphinsobviously move around, and that
kind of thing. And so they beganto do some health assessments.
And what they ended uprealizing, and there are some
(36:08):
really seminal publications onthis is that these dolphins, and
the same applies to whales andsome other organisms, but air
breathing organisms, they comeup under the oil slick, right?
That's floating on the water,because oil for the most part is
some of them can sink, but a lotof it floats. And they come up
(36:30):
underneath it. And there wasthis thought that, oh, maybe
they could avoid it. Well,that's not true. They don't
avoid it, they come upunderneath it. And what do you
do? If you're a Marine, now,you've been holding your breath
for a long time. All right. Andso you release this air that
you've been holding, and youmake little droplets, right? We
(36:55):
all know, we've seen thoseblows, you know, the movies and
such. And so now if there's oilthere, you aerosolized that oil
and make it into tiny droplets.
Okay. And we now know that thenext thing that they do, because
they want clean, fresh oxygen,right, is they breathe in. And
(37:16):
they breathe those oil dropletsin, and they get deep down into
their lungs. And so it doesn'tkill them. Right. But it causes
long term, chronic damage,miscarriages, all sorts of
things. So the birth rate ofthese dolphins is is much lower
(37:38):
post the spill. And there are alot of reasons for this.
There's, there's been anincredible amount of work done
that actually looks at thesimilarities of impacts across
fish and birds and marinemammals and humans. There's
this, this kind of continuum ofthe ways oil impacts and causes
(38:00):
toxicity issues. And we'retalking about chronic impacts,
right, so might not kill theorganism immediately with an
acute effect. But sometimesthose long term impacts can
really damage populations,impacting the reproductive
success, there's been some workdone that shows that if some of
(38:23):
these organisms get exposed tooil, when they're in the larval
stage, or egg stage, they getkind of a strange heart, their
heart deforms, and they mightgrow up. But they can't pump as
fast, right? Their hearts can'twork as efficiently. So they
(38:43):
can't swim as fast. So they geteaten. Like they become prey.
Wow. Yeah. So So there are allsorts of these impacts that can
really affect populations, andtherefore affect community
structure, etc. So these chroniceffects can be as bad as
(39:05):
anything else. So they want tofigure out how can we protect
these resources?
Where's this oil gonna go?
What's there? And of course,there's always this challenge
of, I've only got so muchresources that I can throw at
this. Where is the biggest bangfor the buck? Where is it most
(39:26):
important that I protect? Right?
And you will know, okay, I canimpact a lot of eggs and larvae,
right? But if I impact the fewendangered adults on the beach,
oh my goodness, or if I impactsome of the reproductive adults,
(39:49):
that's a bad scenario, right?
One of the things that's anexample here is if you think
about corals, okay? Corals arein Add Shape, if an oil spill
impacts corals. So let me giveyou a scenario. This is
something we talked about in aworkshop once once, which I
found fascinating. And we reallyhadn't thought about it this
(40:12):
way. So we got the coral expertstogether with the responders,
okay? So the thought was, well,these corals are really
sensitive. And so we know thatif there's an oil spill on the
surface, we definitely don'twant to have their eggs and
their larvae impacted. Becausecorals are so important. So
(40:34):
maybe what we should think aboutdoing is dispersing that oil. If
we know that the oil is cominginto an area, where there are
all these corals and theirlarvae, etc, might get killed.
But it turns out that if youkill an adult coral, that is
1000 years old, it takes a hellof a long time to get back to
(40:57):
where it was. Right. Right. Ifyou kill off a lot of larvae,
those adults might reproduceagain in six months or two
months or whatever, right? Soyes, you lose a section of
organisms. And this is true formany organisms, not saying it's
good, but remember, we'reinterested in the least bad.
David Evans (41:21):
It's a triage system, you have to figure out
what's the priority? And what isthe organism levels that are the
kind of the ecosystem engineersor the keystone species that you
need to maintain thoseecosystems and, and make sure
that they're still functioning?
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal (41:36):
Yes, that's exactly it. That's
exactly it, David. So that'swhat goes into some of these
response strategies. And youknow, there are ways to clean up
the oil, they're skimming it offthe surface, and you know, those
kinds of things, but you don'tusually want it to get on the
beach or get on there, themarshes, etc. And then,
(41:58):
concurrently, once that spilloccurs, the people are out there
assessing the damages, what'shappened to the organisms, etc,
that we talked about earlier?
And thinking right from the getgo, how are we going to restore
these environments, theseorganisms, these these human
resources, etc. So that's kindof what happens in a spill and
(42:21):
the damage assessment part andthe restoration can take years,
the response usually is overrelatively quickly. But you can
see that if you go to an area,like the Arctic, or an area
that's remote, then you becomemuch more vulnerable. Because
(42:44):
you don't have the responseequipment, you don't have the
intel on, what are the winds andthe currents? Right? If you
think about the Gulf of Mexico,etc, we have high frequency
radar, we have buoys offshore togive us a lot of information
about what's happening, you goto the Arctic, there aren't very
(43:05):
many buoys up there, it's veryhard to have them. Right. You
know, the information is verysparse. And so you're trying to
make a model. And that's veryhard. And then the other thing
is that we, when the models arebeing made, they're always being
compared to the reality. Here'swhat the model says, Here's what
(43:28):
our intel from satellites orIntel, from drones, etc, is
saying, about, or aircraftsaying about where the oil is.
And if there's a disconnectbetween them, they reinitialize
the model, they tweak the modelto say, okay, the model isn't
right, let's, let's get the mostup to date data. And so we can
(43:51):
read tweak it right. Well, okay,so let's try and do that in the
Arctic. Right? Well, you don'tjust go flying around zooming
around with drones. I mean, youcan potentially that's one of
the projects we're looking at,on the North Slope this June.
But it's not easy. I mean, therejust aren't drones sitting
(44:13):
around. Whereas in the Gulf ofMexico or California or
wherever, there's a lot morepossibilities. So it's really
and getting people up there andequipment up there is not easy,
either. And the weather isn'talways cooperative.
David Evans (44:32):
So bugs aren't cooperative, that's for sure.
Yeah.
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coasta (44:35):
That's right. So yeah, that answers the
question.
David Evans (44:40):
No, absolutely.
That completely that that. It'sabsolutely fascinating. And it
got me thinking too, of how canyou create a model when you
don't even know the depth of thewater and how the ocean currents
would potentially change withthe removal of all the sea ice
as we move into the future, andhow that can influence wind
patterns in climate and yeah,It's there's there's so many
compounding factors to beconsidered.
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal (45:03):
Yeah.
And, you know, there, there are,I'm sure there are within Canada
as well. There are bighydrodynamic models that are run
by the US Navy, and I'm sure bythe Canadian government, and by
NOAA, and then there are like,if you get into some, some
(45:27):
entertainment, right, I'm sure.
For example, in Halifax Harbour,there is a separate hydrodynamic
model that predicts how thewater will move back and forth.
But when you get up to theArctic, I don't think in Baffin
Bay, we have probably right, orthe Lincoln sea or whatever. It
(45:52):
just is just really difficult.
And then you've got the sea ice.
And actually, I do know that theCanadian government and the US
government, and some others havescientists who are all
cooperating on a model of seaice, it's called sea ice. Don't
(46:13):
ask me what that stands for. ButCIC, we did a project, we've
been doing a project on oilspill modeling in the Arctic.
And we've been getting sea icemodelers, together with oil
spill modelers to think abouthow best to do this modeling.
And sea ice isn't, is a modelthat's available, it's open. So
(46:34):
scientists from all over, forexample, I know that the Met
folks in Canada work on CIC II,we've worked with some of those,
those folks, they're excellent.
And the people in EnvironmentCanada also work. There's an
excellent oil spill folks there,and also in Department of
Fisheries and Oceans. So you'vegot some top people also working
(46:56):
on the same projects. And andthere's a lot of cooperation
between the Canadian governmentand the US government on some of
these questions. But this modelof sea ice is, is really a very
powerful model. But again, itneeds to have information on
which directions, the currentsare pushing the ice, and, you
(47:19):
know, the thickness of the iceand all of this kind of thing.
And it needs to be kind ofcompared just like we talked
about the oil spill models towhat the reality is. So how do
you get the thickness of the iceof the Arctic? Well, you have to
use satellites a lot of timesand how well do they work? And
then the undersurface of theISIS? Whoa, that's not flat.
(47:43):
That's all sorts of convolutionsunder there. But how do you know
what that is? We just had a teamof people who are talking about
that. And really, how do we evenkind of make some scientific
hypotheses about what it mightlook like so that we can maybe
start to think about how wewould model that in the spill.
(48:06):
So I keep going back to thearticles, I think actually,
probably folks in Canada wouldrelate to that. And of course,
there's a lot of ice on theGreat Lakes too. So, you know,
in both those cases, so that'sfreshwater ice. Those are all
big questions about how wouldall that oil move if there was a
ship accident on the GreatLakes?
David Evans (48:31):
Absolutely. And I mean, I think Canadians are
interested everywhere. I mean,we have a lot of snowbirds that
go down. So so the Gulf ofMexico is definitely a concern
as well. So
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal (48:41):
yes, they sure do go down to Florida
and the Gulf here, right? Yeah.
David Evans (48:47):
Well, I realized we've we've gone over our time,
and I don't want to keep youanymore. But maybe if you could
just one final quick question.
If someone listened to thispodcast, and they may have
already been concerned about oilspills, if they want to have
their voice heard, or if theydon't know how to get involved
in an oil spill response, orbeing able to change their
actions that might improve theoutcome of an oil spill, or
(49:09):
somewhere to donate, what wouldyou what would you pass along to
that individual?
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal Res (49:15):
I think the biggest thing that any
of us can do right now is todecrease our fossil fuel
footprint. You know, mystudents, remind me, Hey, you
are commuting from Maine down toNew Hampshire. Do you realize
how much gasoline you're using?
Etc, etc. So I take the trainnow? Well, it's a little less
(49:37):
convenient, I must say, but it'sgot its advantages, and on my
carbon footprint has beengreatly reduced. And I think we
each have to think about how somuch of what we do uses fossil
fuels if we get food from remotelocations, right instead of
using food grown locally. Howdoes it get there? Fossil fuels?
(50:01):
Right? All of those things ifyou want to decrease over time,
the number of spills, we alldecreased our fossil fuel usage,
there'd be less fossil fuelsshipped, and therefore, there
will be less this.
David Evans (50:19):
Absolute Absolutely. I couldn't say it
better myself. Thank you so muchfor speaking with me. Oh, sorry.
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal (50:25):
Thank you very much for speaking with
me, David. It's been a realpleasure. Call back anytime,
David. It's been a pleasure.
You've asked really, really goodquestions. And it's been
enjoyable.
David Evans (50:37):
Wonderful. Thank you so much. And I'll put links
in the show notes to everythingthat we talked about into your
to your group.
Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coasta (50:44):
Thanks so much, David. You drink too
much. Yeah.
David Evans (50:47):
Bye bye.
Thank you so much for tuninginto today's episode all about
oil spill response. Thank you somuch to Dr. Nancy Kinder for
speaking with me was an absoluteblast and she persevered through
audio difficulties. If you wantto learn more about Dr. Nancy
(51:08):
kinders work, and what we'redoing here in Canada as well, in
terms of oil spill response,I'll leave links in the show
notes to all of that. So lookfor links to the coastal
response Research Center, Noah'soffice of response and
restoration DFO, and EnvironmentCanada. I'm the host and
producer David Evans. And I justlike to thank the rest of the
team, specifically Paul Polman,Lee Burton, and the rest of the
(51:32):
aquatic biosphere board. Thanksfor all of your help. And to
learn more about the aquaticbiosphere project and what we're
doing right here in Albertatelling the story of water, you
can check us out at aquaticbiosphere.ca. And we also have
launched our new media company,ABN quad a biosphere network,
which you can find that thepublic place dot online and
(51:56):
search for the aquatic biospherenetwork channel, where we will
actually be posting all of thevideo episodes that we're going
to be creating this year. Sotune in. They will be out for
the next little while but veryexcited to start sharing video
content as well as ourinterviews. If you have any
questions or comments about theshow, we'd love to hear them.
Email us at conservation ataquatic biosphere.org. Please
(52:20):
don't forget to like, share andsubscribe. Leave us a review. It
really helps us out. Thanks andit's been a splash
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