page_title: 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill
section_title: Environmental effects
hierarchical_section_title: 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill / Consequences / Environmental effects
caption_attribution_description: English: Seals, sea lions, marine mammals in large colony at western end of San Miguel Island; photo by self; GFDL/equiv
context_page_description: The Santa Barbara oil spill occurred in January and February 1969 in the Santa Barbara Channel, near the city of Santa Barbara in Southern California. It was the largest oil spill in United States waters by that time, and now ranks third after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon and 1989 Exxon Valdez spills. It remains the largest oil spill to have occurred in the waters off California.
  The source of the spill was a blow-out on January 28, 1969, 6 miles from the coast on Union Oil's Platform A in the Dos Cuadras Offshore Oil Field. Within a ten-day period, an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 barrels of crude oil spilled into the Channel and onto the beaches of Santa Barbara County in Southern California, fouling the coastline from Goleta to Ventura as well as the northern shores of the four northern Channel Islands. The spill had a significant impact on marine life in the Channel, killing an estimated 3,500 sea birds, as well as marine animals such as dolphins, elephant seals, and sea lions.
context_section_description: The environmental effects of the spill were immediate and dramatic.  At least 3,686 birds died – those being the ones that were counted; an unknown number died unseen.  Some marine mammals, such as sea lions and elephant seals died, although the numbers are unknown.  Effects on other organisms varied.  Fish populations seemed to be unaffected in the long term, although data from 1969 showed a drop in counts of several species.  Authors of a Marine Fisheries Review study were unwilling to make a firm link with the oil spill, since other variables such as water temperature and a subsequent El Niño year could not be ruled out as causes of the divergence.  Intertidal organisms such as barnacles (Chthamalus fissus) were killed in large numbers, with mortality in some areas as high as 80 to 90 percent.
  Overall, long-term environmental effects of the spill seemed to be minimal.  In a "no strings attached" study funded by the Western Oil and Gas Association, through the Allan Hancock Foundation at the University of Southern California, the authors suggested several hypotheses for the lack of environmental damage to biologic resources in the Channel aside from pelagic birds and intertidal organisms.  First, creatures there may have evolved a tolerance to oil in the water due to the presence of natural seeps in the vicinity for at least tens of thousands of years; the area around Coal Oil Point has one of the most active natural underwater oil seeps in the world.  Second, the abundance of oil-eating bacteria in the water may be greater because of that routine presence of oil in the water.  Third, the spill happened between two large Pacific storms; the storms broke up the oil, scattering it more quickly than happens in many other oil spills, and additionally the sediment load in the seawater from freshwater runoff would have been greater, and this assisted the oil in quickly sinking.  Fourth, Santa Barbara Channel crude oil is heavy, having API gravity between 10 and 13, and is both minimally soluble in water, and sinks relatively easily.  Therefore, fish and other organisms were exposed to the oil for a shorter time than was the case with other oil spills, such as the 1967 Torrey Canyon spill in which the crude was lighter, and emulsified during treatment with massive quantities of toxic dispersants and detergents, causing it to remain in place longer.
  Reports that large sea mammals were largely unaffected by the spill were flatly contradicted by a story in Life magazine, published on June 9, 1969.  In late May, reporters and photographers from the magazine visited uninhabited San Miguel Island, the westernmost of the Santa Barbara Channel Islands, famous for its colonies of elephant seals and sea lions.  The team counted over one hundred dead animals in the stretch of beach they visited, which was still black with oil.
caption: Colony of marine mammals (elephant seals, sea lions) at western tip of San Miguel Island, 40 years after the spill.  This colony was affected by the oil spill; many of these animals were oiled, and an unknown number died.[13]:140–1
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