IncidentNews Home  >>  Incident  >>  Entry

Other Special Interest Issues

This incident prompted the English Government to take the initiative in
organizing an early meeting of the Intergovernmental Maritime Consultative
Organization to consider needed changes in international maritime law and
practice.  Relevant maritime laws were considered to be overly complex and out
of date in many respects.

An estimated 25,000 birds died as a result of the Torrey Canyon  spill because
the incident coincided with their northerly migration.  The coasts of southern
England and Brittany are nesting beaches for a variety of seabirds such as
guillemots, razorbills, shags, puffins, and Great Northern divers.  Thousands of
oiled birds were picked up from the beaches for treatment, but the survival rate
was only around one percent due to ingestion of oil, pneumonia, and improper
handling and cleaning.

The Torrey Canyon  incident was the first incident to draw universal attention
to the dangers of dispersants.  Extremely large quantities of dispersants were
used during the response, clearly for aesthetic and not ecological purposes. 
Contamination by oil without dispersants resulted in less adverse biological
effect than where dispersants were used.  Many herbivores, mainly limpets, and
some barnacles were killed due to the toxicity of the dispersant.  Widespread
mortalities on the West Cornish coast set the stage for a large-scale experiment
on the development of a mature community, normally found on rocky shores,  and
the influence of herbivores and predators on the ecosystem.  However, the
resultant statistical comparisons may be somewhat inaccurate due to the small
amount of pre-spill data, the lack of control sites where the oil was left
totally untreated, and uncertainties of how much dispersant reached marginal
areas.  Early estimates indicated rapid recovery of species along the beach,
while long term studies revealed extremely slow recovery.  Wave-beaten rocky
areas that received only light oiling took approximately 5-8 years to return to
normal while areas receiving heavy and repeated dispersant applications took
9-10 years to recover.  A 1978 study showed that a rare hermit crab species had
not re-appeared in the spill area.