Most public reactions to an oil-spill are dramatic - horror is expressed, hands are wrung, anguish is expressed. Large sums of money are then thrown around in attempts - usually focussed on public spectacle - to "clean-up" the oil. Alarm is announced about environmental impacts. Where the concerns are about issues of human health or about socio-economic issues such as tourism, this is all very well. In terms of ecological consequences, however, much of it flies in the face of known, objective information about oil-spills. Where spills occur in open, coastal waters, on hard rocky substrata, they have virtually no long-term effects. In contrast, attempts to clean-up after a spill are often sources of long-term damage.
In soft-sediments, such as mangrove forests and mud-flats, issues are more complex and there can be long-term consequences of the spill for animals and plants, but the effects of cleaning up are also potentially very damaging.
These issues will be very briefly introduced with demonstration of the sort of ecological work that needs to be done to measure the short- and long-term consequences of a spill and of attempts to clean it up. Examples from "Torrey Canyon", "Exxon Valdez" and "Laura d'Amato" will be illustrated.
