Volume 6, No. 4

Promoting Cooperation to Maintain and Enhance
Environmental Quality in the Gulf of Maine

Sea birds of Atlantic Canada face peril from oil pollution
But polluters beware: there are eyes in the skies

By Andi Rierden, Editor

As fall streams forward, a family of birds known as auks, or alcids, traverse down the

Once an oiled bird like this murre comes ashore, it indicates thousands more may be in jeopardy at sea. Photo courtesy of Tony Lock, Environment Canada

Apart from breeding in colonies on isolated islands and coastal cliffs, experts say these sea birds are loath to come to land, and only something as awful as being coated with oil will bring them to shore. And that is why sea bird ecologists in Atlantic Canada are deeply worried.

As sure as the auks will migrate each fall–some like the thick-billed murre to wintering grounds in southern Newfoundland, others like the razorbill to waters off Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick–tens of thousands will be poisoned by oil pollution en route. Experts say the fact that the birds are divers more than flyers makes them particularly vulnerable.

For Tony Lock, a marine issues biologist for Environment Canada, the reckless devastation of sea birds parallels the demise of the great auk, a flightless bird that was driven to extinction from hunting more than a century ago. “We drove out the great auk and we may be putting other birds down to perilously low levels over the next several decades simply by not controlling pollution,” Lock says.

It has become an old story that federal and provincial authorities have tried to fix for years: ship crews skirting regulations and cutting costs by emptying their oil bilges offshore, where no one sees them. Burdened by limited surveillance resources and a vast ocean space to patrol, officials say Canada is at a disadvantage, a fact shippers know all too well.

Most often, no one knows when the so-called “mystery spills” happen, or who is responsible. Most of the carcasses of the oiled birds wash out to sea or sink. A small number- researchers have estimated it at one-tenth or fewer of the total number of sea birds contaminated by oil- wash to shore. They are usually the first clues that there has been a spill.

In a report released this fall, World Wildlife Fund Canada (WWF) called the sea bird death rate from ship-source oil pollution in Atlantic Canada a catastrophe in slow motion. The report states that as many as 300,000 auks and other sea birds die in the waters off Newfoundland and Nova Scotia each year after landing in oil deliberately dumped at sea. That equals nearly the number that died in the Exxon Valdez spill off Alaska over a decade ago.

An oil spill in the Bay of Fundy where the majority of the North American razorbills winter could decimate the population. Photo: Catherine M. Devlin

“The average imposed fine, if caught illegally dumping in Canada is only $21,000,” says Francis Weise, a biologist who spent years researching the issue in Newfoundland and author of the WWF report. “The fine can be considered a business cost and is usually covered by insurance.”
Weise adds that fines in the United States are up to 1,000 times higher than those in Canada and as a result, the incidence of illegal spills much lower. In the late 1990s, for example, Royal Caribbean International, the cruise ship line, was found guilty of dumping oily wastes overboard and falsifying oil record books. All told, the company was fined more than $27 million U.S.
The frequency of aerial surveillance and other enforcement efforts is also higher in the United States, the report states, and vessels illegally discharging oily wastes are more likely to get caught.

Space technology as a deterrence

But in recent months, government officials in Canada have employed a new space technology designed for environmental monitoring that may go a long way to solving the problem. Following the discovery of the oiled birds last spring, a team of scientists from Environment Canada, the Canadian Space Agency, the Canadian Coast Guard and other federal departments launched a $640 million (CND) pilot project using satellite technology in hopes of deterring chronic and deliberate oil seepage. The technology, called Radarsat, allows officials to track spills in the dark and through poor weather conditions that might have once shielded vessels from detection. Operating on microwaves, Radarsat can detect flat surfaces on the ocean that are created by oil spills and also sense ships as they show up on satellite data as bright objects. Once they link those two pieces of information together, Environment Canada can dispatch a Coast Guard plane to look for signs that a vessel may be spilling bilge oil into the sea.

The six-month project began in early September. Nine days later, satellite data operators in Quebec spotted a 116-kilometer-long [72-mile-long], 200-meter-wide [660-foot-wide] slick trailing behind a vessel a few hundred kilometers from Cape St. Mary’s Seabird Ecological Reserve on Newfoundland’s south coast. Soon after, Coast Guard officials boarded a Bahamian-registered vessel, the Tecam Sea, and ordered it into port. Six pollution charges under the federal Fisheries Act, the Migratory Bird Conservation Act and the Canadian Environmental Protection Act have been laid against the ship's captain, Celeso Ruedas, and the chief engineer, Rayanaldo Galindo. The same charges have been laid against the ship's owner, Sea Quality SA of Panama, and its operator, Elmira Shipping and Trading of Greece. As well, two charges were laid against the ship under anti-pollution regulations in the federal Shipping Act. A second court hearing is scheduled December 10 in St. John’s.
Lock, who helped design the pilot project, says he hopes the word about Radarsat circulates throughout international shipping circles. He adds, “The great thing about Radarsat is that polluters can’t hide anymore. They can’t hide in the fog, they can’t hide at night, because we will see them.”

Lock stresses that the technology can only be used to enhance surveillance, not as an end-all solution. “No judge will go by a satellite image alone,” he says. “Foremost, you must have ample plane surveillance capability in place to follow through with an investigation.”

Beyond rehabilitation

In addition to using satellite technologies to verify oil spills and their severity, Weise’s findings in Newfoundland and other independent and government reports have bolstered efforts to quantify the long-term impact of oil spills and sea bird populations. Wayne Turpin, the head of enforcement for Environment Canada’s Canadian Wildlife Service, says in the past, “it was difficult [for a judge] to imagine the impact of a five to six mile long oil slick. Now there are many indications that we have a very severe problem.”

Turpin and other wildlife experts say they hope the findings will strengthen enforcement, tighten shipping regulations, and increase fines and convictions.

Until now, the focus has been on the rehabilitation of oiled birds, although studies show that such efforts are largely in vain. Bird censuses conducted by British and Dutch conservation groups suggest that only a small proportion of oiled and cleaned common murres survived for more than a week or so after being released into the wild. The type of oil in a spill, the temperature of the air and sea, and the degree of weathering a spill has undergone all affect the survival of exposed birds.

Oil kills birds, partly by destroying their insulation against cold, and partly by poisoning them. Feathers greedily absorb the oil and then cannot keep out the cold ocean water. Even a tiny spot can be fatal, like a small tear in a diver’s wet suit. The birds get cold, develop hypothermia and eventually become too weak to find food or fly away.

“Everyone likes to think we can help the birds by cleaning them so they are spotless and water proof again,” Lock says. “The only trouble is, a pelagic bird only comes on shore if it is in extreme stress. As horrible as it may seem, an oiled bird is a dead bird. Even those with their eyes open and their hearts beating are in essence dead.”

While the vast number of sea bird moralities occur off southern Newfoundland and the Scotian Shelf of Nova Scotia, researchers say the millions of sea birds that breed or winter at the mouth of the Bay of Fundy are highly vulnerable. Tony Diamond, a sea bird biologist at the University of New Brunswick is conducting a long-term study on the migration patterns and behavior of North American razorbills, the majority of which breed on the Gannet Islands in Labrador, and winter in huge flocks of more than 50,000 birds off Grand Manan Island at the mouth of the Bay. Robust and sturdy, the bird stands a foot high, weighs about 700 grams [about 1.5 pounds] and can live up to 20 years. Distinguished by colorful streaks on their beaks and a bright yellow lining of the mouth, razorbills, Diamond says, “are incredibly beautiful birds that live an extraordinary lifestyle,” adding they can dive up to 60 meters below surface and will find a school of herring when no other birds can.

In all the years he has researched sea birds in the Bay of Fundy, Diamond has yet to see an oiled bird “of any species.” But he adds that with the growing ship traffic plying through the mouth of the Bay, including international oil tankers, containers and cruise ships, it may only be a matter of time. “I’m very concerned,” he says. “An oil spill there during the winter would wipe out most of the North American razorbill population.”

The WWF report urges the federal government to increase fines, make satellite technology a permanent tool, combined with more surveillance aircraft and systems to track a ship’s position and routes. It also recommends routine inspection of oily waste disposal records and designating offshore areas where seabirds are most vulnerable as Particularly Sensitive Sea Areas under the International Maritime Organization. A copy of the report, Seabirds and Atlantic Canada’s Ship-Source Oil Pollution is available at www.wwf.ca.