Day 2 of Dubai Star Oil Spill

Day 2 has come and gone and it was a long one and eventful.  We had five teams of very experienced wildlife and recovery people go out, mostly along the east side of the Bay between just south of the Oakland Airport to about the Berkeley Marina.  We suspected that birds would come in today but the morning was relatively quiet.  However, soon after lunch things began to change.  We began seeing birds that we suspected were oiled out on the water.  These birds sit in the water and preen excessively and often lift their bodies out of the water and flap their wings.  That is because the oil is breaking down their insulating feather/down barrier and letting water chill them.

The first oiled birds that we sighted included a Western Grebe, an Eared Grebe, and a Surf Scoter.  These birds were active and we could not catch them.  By about 1400-1500, we had our first oiled birds beaching themselves along the Alameda shoreline, especially along the Crown Beach area.  One thing that we really appreciated is that many people heeded the warning notices and did not walk on their neighborhood beaches, instead letting us walk the beach trying to catch birds.  Quiet beaches allow for the birds to settle down and this is the point where we can come in and catch them.

At one section of Crown Beach we caught over 10 oiled American Coots and even some oiled shorebirds.  By 1600, we had a load of birds in one of the OWCN trucks headed for our primary treatment facility, the San Francisco Bay Oiled Wildlife Care and Education Center, by Cordelia.  Some of these birds were heavily oiled and needed rapid treatment.

Tomorrow will undoubtedly be a very busy day for us.  We will have at least eight teams of trained responders out on the beaches trying to capture any oiled wildlife that we might encounter.  Additionally, we will have a team of US Fish and Wildlife responders and their boat out with us, as well as members of the Golden Gate Audubon doing reconnaissance work around the shores of San Francisco.  They will help us by keeping an eye out for birds in distress in areas that we are not getting to regularly because there is no reported oil in those locations.

– Nils

Dubai Star Response Update: 1200, Oct 31

 

 

 

Things are progressing smoothly for the OWCN on this spill response, but activities are beginning to ramp up.

We have had 5 recovery & transportation teams out since this morning, covering between Oakland Airport and Berkeley by land and Treasure Island and over to San Francisco by boat.  Nils is in constant contact with each of these teams (from IBRRC, PRBO and UC Davis), and is also receiving info from the general public regarding sightings through the OWCN Wildlife Reporting Hotline.

So far, our teams have reported about a dozen oiled birds in the water, but no wildlife yet on shore or able to be captured.  Birds in the water are extremely difficult to capture at this stage in a spill, as they are still healthy enough to actively evade capture.  Our plan is to continue to cover these areas so we can recover any oiled birds as quickly as possible once they are able to be captured.  We are also planning to expand recovery efforts tomorrow morning as we are beginning to see oiled birds in the water.  Nils will be blogging more on this later today.

 

Laird Henkel, Wildlife Branch Director from DFG-OSPR, planning wildlife operations at the Command Post

On the animal care front, I am in Alameda ready to stabilize any wildlife that might be captured today, with January ready to come down and head up the effort should things expand. Greg Massey is readying the Fairfield facility to receive birds after stabilization.  Hopefully these efforts will just remain preparatory, but we are “planning for the worst – hoping for the best”.

 

More later today on these efforts.

– Mike

 

The first day at the Dubai Star Spill

It was a beautiful morning today, nice bike ride through Davis to my office, only to be interrupted by the dreaded call later in the morning that an oil spill of unknown amount had just occurred in San Francisco Bay.  The rest of the morning (and afternoon) was a blur of springing to action, packing supplies that we might need, hooking up a boat, notifying people, and heading out down the highway to the Coast Guard Island in Alameda.  A command center had been set up at the Coast Guard station and by the time we arrived there at around 1230, it was bustling with activity.  Phones lines were being installed, computers set up, and tables established with different components of the response teams.  Yvette Hernandez, Don Ballard, and I reported in and were soon in discussion with Laird Henkel who is the Wildlife Branch Director for California Department of Fish and Game’s Office of Spill Prevention and Response.  We were joined by another network group, PRBO Conservation Science, who provided two of their outstanding seabird biologists, Russ Bradley and Meredith Elliot, to help with wildlife recovery operations.

Russ and Meredith went out and searched shoreline segments around Alameda for oiled wildlife while Yvette and Don hitched a ride on a CDFG boat and searched for evidence of oiled animals out on the water.  One of the complicating factors that we face is that the Bay Bridge is closed.  That will complicate our search efforts on the other side of the Bay.

As of 1730 today, we had one report of a possible oiled Brown Pelican near Alameda but our teams did not see any oiled wildlife.  Tomorrow, we will expand our efforts with three additional search teams from International Bird Rescue and Research Center.  Let us hope that we continue to find no oiled wildlife; however at 2100 the command center at the Coast Guard Station was still bustling with activity.

– Nils

Dubai Star Spill Response Update: 2030, October 30

Field teams ended their activities at dusk this evening. There were no confirmed reports of oiled wildlife although numerous birds were seen in the area of the spill. The action plan for tomorrow is to deploy three additional teams. The OWCN’s portable oiled wildlife stabilization trailer will be deployed tomorrow morning to stand by near the spill site in case animals are collected. OWCN member organization WildCare’s staff and volunteers will also be standing by to stabilize oiled wildlife at their facility. The San Francisco Bay Oiled Wildlife Care and Education Center in Fairfield is the area’s primary care facility for oiled birds. It is being prepared in case animals are collected and require cleaning and long-term rehabilitation.

-Greg

Activity in the Situation Unit at the spill response command center (Nils Warnock)

Dubai Star Response Update: 1500, October 30

As of 3:00 PM the OWCN has two response teams performing reconnaissance in the spill area with the mission of capturing any oiled wildlife they encounter. One is on shore and the other on water. There is also a second on water team of US Fish and Wildlife Service employees participating in the effort. At this point, no oiled wildlife have been sighted by OWCN field teams, and no oiled wildlife have been reported via the telephone reporting hotline (877-823-6926).

-Greg

Oil Spill in SF Bay: OWCN Activated

It’s been a busy morning for the OWCN. Earlier this morning the OWCN was activated for an oil spill that occurred in the San Francisco Bay off of Anchorage 9. We are immediately deploying Recovery and Transportation teams. Since this is early in the spill, it is unclear what, if any, impacts have occurred to wildlife. We will know more in the next several hours once teams have arrived on site. We will keep you posted on the wildlife side of the response.

To learn more about the incident, check out the San Francisco Chronicle’s article here.

-Kaiti

2009 Annual Rehabilitation Conference

This past weekend the we successfully pulled off our second annual rehabilitation conference. The conference provides lectures and workshops to volunteers and staff of OWCN member organizations on subjects pertaining to oiled wildlife rehabilitation. This year the conference was co-hosted by the Hubbs SeaWorld Research Institute (HSWRI) and SeaWorld San Diego. I’d like to personally thank the HSWRI and SeaWorld staff involved for all their hard work, but Dr. Pam Yochem, Lauren Dubois and Diana Gailband deserve special thanks. They were key to making sure everything ran smoothly.

I also want to thank the speakers who gave presentations on Saturday and the instructors from Sunday’s workshops. Dr. Pam Yochem, Dr. Julia Burco, Dr. Dave Jessup, Dr. Becky Duerr, Michelle Bellizzi, Scott Buhl, Kaiti Ferguson and Curt Clumpner all delivered their presentations in person, but Sarah Tegtmeier joined us via the internet all the way from Delaware. Curt Clumpner, Wendy Massey, January Bill, Marie Travers, Diana Humple, Renee Cormier, Dr. Pam Yochem, Michelle Bellizzi, Julie Skogland, Dr. Mike Ziccardi, Dr. Nils Warnock, and Don Ballard all were instructors during Sunday’s workshops.

Without the time and hard work all of these people put into the conference it would not have been possible. I also need to acknowledge the hard work some of the UC Davis OWCN staff. Lavonne Hull managed logistics, Kaiti Ferguson dealt with registration and communicated with dozens of registrants to make sure they had the information needed, and January Bill organized the Sunday workshops.

I hope that everyone who was able to attend  learned something new and also had some fun. In case you’re interested, I’ve attached a short movie with a few pictures from the conference. Keep a look out on our website for details of next year’s conference. I hope to see you there.

-Greg

OR Bird Event

Just a quick post to alert our Members about a major bird event that OWCN partners are heavily involved with.

More than 450 birds have been transported to the San Francisco Bay Oiled Wildlife Care & Education Center from the Wildlife Center of the North Coast (near Astoria, OR) as a result of a phytoplankton bloom off of Oregon’s coast. This event appears to be similar in nature to the 2007 bird event in Monterey Bay, where more than 550 live birds were collected and cared for at OSPR’s Marine Wildlife Veterinary Care & Research Center in Santa Cruz (coincidentally, at the same time as the Cosco Busan spill).  Due to the small facilities available in Astoria, IBRRC has organized two transports (truck and C-130 air) to get these seabirds to CA so that they can receive care from IBRRC staff and volunteers at our purpose-built facilities.  An additional 100 birds were also sent to PAWS in Lynnwood, WA for additional care.  I have been in regular contact with Jay Holcomb of IBRRC, and the OWCN (via UC Davis’ staff and equipment) are supporting IBRRC’s efforts as we can.

To stay updated on this effort (and to see how you can best help), please keep tabs on IBRRC’s excellent blog. For more information on the results of the 2007 event in CA (including how a diatom can cause such problems in seabirds), please read Dave Jessup’s PLoS One article.

-Mike

Post-Release Studies of Rehabilitated Oiled Wildlife

As January and Mike’s last blogs indicated, many of us were in beautiful Tallinn, Estonia at the beginning of October attending the 10^th International Conference on the Effects of Oil on Wildlife.  I have attached a few pictures for your viewing pleasure

Main Square in old town section of Tallinn

Dave Jessup (OSPR), Yvonne Addassi (OSPR), Mike Ziccardi (OWCN), January Bill (OWCN), Greg and Wendy Massey (OWCN) standing in front of Town Hall.

At the conference, in a session on post release studies of rehabilitated oiled wildlife chaired by the eminent Kees Camphuysen, I was fortunate to be able to give a summary talk imaginatively titled (I jest): Post-Release Studies of Rehabilitated Oiled Wildlife.

For this talk, I summarized all of the studies that I could find (published or not) that looked at survival and behavior of animals that had been oiled, rehabilitated and released back into the wild.  In all, I have found about 35-40 studies on about 15 species of animals; however, half of the studies are on two species – the African Penguin and the Common Murre (or Guillemot as they are called in Europe).

Table.  Number of studies that looked at survival and behavior of animals that had been oiled, rehabilitated and released back into the wild.

Species	Number	Proportion
African Penguin	11	0.34
Guillemot/Common Murre	5	0.16
Little Penguin	3	0.09
American Coot	2	0.06
Brown Pelican	1	0.03
Cape Gannet	1	0.03
Harbor Seal	1	0.03
River Otter	1	0.03
Sea Otter	1	0.03
Snowy Plover	1	0.03
Surf Scoter	1	0.03
Swift Tern	1	0.03
Western Gull	1	0.03
ducks	1	0.03
seabirds	1	0.03
turtles	1	0.03

The largest and longest running data sets regarding the rehabilitation of oiled wildlife are almost all focused on the African Penguin.  Since 1968, the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB) has treated over 50,000 oiled African Penguins.  Using SANCCOB data, Peter Ryan (2003. in Rehabilitation of oiled African Penguins: a conservation success story. BirdLife South Africa and the Avian Demography Unit, South Africa) estimated that the wild African Penguin population (163,000 adults in 2002) was 19% larger than it would have been without rehabilitation work, clear evidence that the rehabilitation of oiled wildlife can have positive effects on populations of wildlife.  It is also clear that we need to continue to evaluate and to improve our techniques for treating oiled wildlife and to follow up efforts with well designed post-release studies.

– Nils

Murphy’s Law

This weekend the OWCN will host its second Annual Rehabilitation Conference. Although we had hoped to simulcast the lectures taking place on Saturday via the internet, technological roadblocks threw a wrench in our plans. I want to apologize to everyone who had hoped to view the conference from a distance, and I promise we’ll do our best to make this an option next year. We’ve come a long way in the past year and learned a lot about using this new technology, but as the saying goes “the devil is in the details”.

Next week we’ll give everyone an update on how this weekend goes, but in the meantime I figured I’d share a few more pictures from the Effects of Oil on Wildlife Conference in Estonia. I didn’t want folks to think I was the only one who presented.

-Greg

Dr. Nils Warnock discusses post-release survival at the Effects of Oil on Wildlife Conference

Dr. Mike Ziccardi presents research findings at the Effects of Oil on Wildlife Conference

January Bill describes the OWCN volunteer program during the Effects of Oil on Wildlife Conference