Tar "whip" found floating in the ocean offshore Point Conception in August 2005. |
Tar Balls from Southern California Seeps Appear on Central California Beaches
When tar balls appeared on California beaches south of San Francisco in late January 2008, beachgoers wondered whether the sticky black globs were residues of oil spilled nearly 3 months earlier by the container ship Cosco Busan in San Francisco Bay. On November 7, 2007, the Cosco Busan struck the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in heavy fog, tearing a 100-ft-long gash in the port side of the ship that punctured one ballast tank and two fuel tanks. Within 10 to 15 seconds, an estimated 58,000 gallons of oil (about the volume of two backyard swimming pools) spilled into the bay. In response to that spill, a Unified Command composed of the U.S. Coast Guard, the California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG), and a contractor hired to represent the ship's owner was established to coordinate and manage cleanup operations. Upon the appearance of tar balls on Pacific coast beaches on January 28, 2008, the Unified Command responded quickly, mobilizing more than 75 personnel to clean the affected shoreline over a 3-day period. At the same time, the Coast Guard collected samples of the tar balls for chemical analysis by the CDFG's Office of Spill Prevention and Response (OSPR)...
... the appearance of tar on beaches where it is not commonly seen arouses much curiosity. USGS WCMG research geologist Tom Lorenson, who leads a cooperative USGS-MMS effort to chemically fingerprint tar and oil seeps along the southern California coast, fielded several inquiries about the likely origin of the tar balls that appeared in late January. He was interviewed by newspaper reporters from the San Francisco Examiner and the TriValley Herald, as well as a television reporter from the San Francisco NBC affiliate (NBC 11)...
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