Recently, the isolation was shattered when a ship carrying 700,000 litres of oil and diesel fuel grounded offshore. Much of that fuel poured into the ocean, spreading a slick across more than 500 square kilometres of sea, threatening to upset the balance of life in the islands and the survival of rare and unique wildlife such as marine iguanas. These were the immediate causes of the spill and they need to be addressed, but the ultimate source of the problem is our reliance on oil for so much of our energy needs. Oil and other liquid fossil fuels like diesel and gasoline are readily portable and pack a powerful energy punch, but they are also toxic. And because we use, store and transport such huge quantities of these fuels, they end up in our air, soils, ground water, rivers and oceans.
Oil spills occur every day, all over the world.
Some are quite large, while others can be as small as a leaky gasket or the little bit that remains in each of the millions of one-litre oil containers we discard every year. But it adds up. Big oil spills can be tremendously damaging to a local area, but they account for only about five per cent of the oil that leaches into our oceans. Every year, for example, oil tankers, freighters and cruise ships dump millions of litres of oil through routine exchanges of bilge water and other ship activities. Other sources of oil spills include off-shore drilling and even natural oil seepage from the ocean floor far below the surface.