Simulation hopes to avoid real situation

A demonstration this weekend should highlight the havoc that would be brough to the north coast in the event of an oil spill.

The Living Oceans Society is in town this weekend to provide two days of information to locals on how our ecosystem could be at risk in the event of an oil spill. The society has set up shop at the Crest Hotel as part of the World Wildlife Federation's two day conference that gets underway Saturday night at 7pm. The Sunday session starts at Noon and continues on until 4 pm, both sessions are open to the public.

The Daily News featured a preview of the upcoming information weekend as part of the Friday paper.

OIL SLICK WOULD DEVASTATE NORTH COAST, SOCIETY CLAIMS

By Leanne Ritchie
The Daily News
Friday, September 28, 2007

Page one

The Living Oceans Society will be in Prince Rupert this weekend to demonstrate an online computer-generated model that shows how oil spills would harm ecosystems and communities on the North Coast of British Columbia.

The demonstration is part of a two-day conference being hosted by the World Wildlife Fund Prince Rupert.

It is open to everyone and takes place on Saturday, from 7 to 9 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. at the Crest Hotel.

The oil spill animation, built using leading edge computer modeling software and the most up to date oceanographic data available, is able to generate oil spill scenarios from oil tankers and drilling platforms in coastal waters.

"The oil spill model clearly demonstrates that Canada and the province of B.C. must strengthen and enforce the moratorium on oil tankers and offshore oil and gas in order to maintain the wealth of marine resources on B.C.'s coast," said Oonagh O'Connor, Living Oceans Society energy campaign manager.

.

"There is considerable pressure to open the coast to oil tanker traffic and offshore oil and gas. The federal government is already turning a blind eye to the tankers that are sailing into Kitimat to deliver condensate, a highly toxic petro-chemical product used to thin oil extracted from Alberta's tar sands."

However, oil spills are not the only way oil can get into the marine environment and the two-day forum will also focus on the impact of chronic oil on the marine environment, said Mike Ambach, WWF-Prince Rupert.

Exchange of oil bilge water and oil coming from motors are other sources, as well as shore-based oil entering the marine environment.

"The effects are cumulative, although a lot less catastrophic than the oil spills, but they are none-the-less significant," he said.

The impact of chronic oil spills on wildlife is something that has received more study on the Atlantic Coast because of the history and the larger ship volumes, he said.

Sarah Patton from Canada Parks and Wilderness will focus on what has happened on the Atlantic Coast while Patrick O'Hara from the Ministry of Environment be speaking about the impact of chronic oil spills on B.C. seabirds.

Then on Sunday, Peter Davidson from Bird Studies Canada will be conducting a hands-on workshop about shorebird surveys and beached bird surveys designed for citizen participation.
"For all those birders out there, this will be a great opportunity," he said.

The federal government is beefing up its enforcement arsenal in British Columbia to deter ship operators from illegally dumping oily bilge waste into the ocean - a practice that could be killing hundreds of thousands of seabirds every year.

This fall, Transport Canada's new $10-million Dash 8 began flying surveillance runs over B.C. waters and the western Arctic, as the government also peers at the Pacific using special satellite images supplied by the Canadian Space Agency's RADARSAT-1.

The new forms of surveillance, already in use in Eastern Canada, are meant to scare off unscrupulous bilge-dumpers trying to avoid the cost of disposal at port. The accumulated oil - a little here and a little there - creates chronic oil pollution, devastating for fragile seabirds, and likely, for other marine creatures.