For four months, oil has been appearing along the Brazil coastline. 2,700 miles of beaches, mangroves, wetlands, and reefs have been affected. According to the Brazilian Navy, more than 5,000 tons of oil have been removed from beaches, but no one is certain how much remains. The oil is dense crude, for the most part traveling below the surface of the water, making it difficult to track.
I’ve been following the story particularly because of its implications for shorebirds, although the danger to other ecosystems, wildlife, and local communities is also significant.
So far activists and government workers have rescued 159 oiled animals including 105 sea turtles and 39 birds. Of these, over 70% have perished. The problem is that much of the coast is remote, so the full impact on wildlife may never truly be known. From an article by WHSRN about the effect on shorebirds:
Reentrâncias Marenhenses, a WHSRN Site of Hemispheric Importance in Maranhão State, sits at the northern end of the spill’s detected range. The site encompasses more than 2.68 million hectares (6.6 million acres) of bays, estuaries, and sandy beaches. “Oil has been detected at several locations along the site’s coastline,” reported Juliana Bosi de Almeida of WHSRN partner organization SAVE Brasil, “but the area is remote and difficult to survey so very little is known about the impact of oil in this area, one of the most critical sites for shorebirds along Brazil’s northern coast.”
Thankfully, the Reuters article gives hope that the amount of oil on the beaches isn’t expected to further increase.
To Luiz Assad, professor at the research institute Coppe...believes that Brazil will see an end to the crisis soon, but warns that the country needs to be better prepared for future oil spills. “We haven’t been observing big new oil globs in the northeast,” said Assad. “It looks like we are close to the end, but with very important lessons to be learned.”