Summit County Citizens Voice

A school of Pacific herring. PHOTO COURTESY NOAA.

“These embryos were literally falling apart …”

By Summit Voice

SUMMIT COUNTY — Very low concentrations of oil from a 2007 spill in San Francisco Bay had an unexpectedly lethal impact on embryonic herring.  Ultraviolet light dramatically increased the toxicity of the bunker oil that leaked from a ship after it collided with the Bay Bridge, killing a high percentage of the young fish.

“Based on our previous understanding of the effects of oil on embryonic fish, we didn’t think there was enough oil from the Cosco Busan spill to cause this much damage,” said Gary Cherr, director of the University of California Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory.

The spill devastated a commercially and ecologically important species for nearly two years, according to a new study by the University of California, Davis, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The suggests that even small oil spills can have a large impact on marine life, and that common chemical analyses of oil spills may be inadequate.

“Our research represents a change in the paradigm for oil spill research and detecting oil spill effects in an urbanized estuary,” Cherr said.

The results of the study may also help shed light on the lingering impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, where questions remain about the effects of the oil on marine life.

The San Francisco Bay spill contaminated spawning habitats for the largest U.S. coastal population of commercially and ecologically important Pacific herring a month before spawning season. The study highlights the extreme vulnerability of fish in early life stages to spilled oil and the potential significance of sunlight interacting with oil compounds.

Pacific herring have since made a dramatic comeback in the Bay, according to this report in the Bay Area Citizen.

Specifically, the study found that components of Cosco Busan bunker oil accumulated in naturally spawned herring embryos, then interacted with sunlight during low tides to kill the embryos. Laboratory fertilized eggs, caged in deeper waters, were protected from the lethal combination of sunlight and oil, but still showed less severe abnormalities associated with oil exposure.

Crude oil is naturally occurring, liquid petroleum. Bunker oil is a thick fuel oil distilled from crude oil and burned on ships to fuel their engines. It is contaminated with various, sometimes unknown, substances.

The study builds on research following the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, which released up to 32 million gallons of crude oil into the comparatively pristine environment of Prince William Sound, Alaska. That research established a new paradigm for understanding the effects of oil toxicity on fish at early life stages.

The new study suggests that this old paradigm is inadequate to explain the dramatic, lethal effects of very low levels of oil on fish embryos, even in an urban estuary with preexisting background pollution.

Researchers began the new study in February 2008. They analyzed the levels of oil-based compounds in caged herring embryos at four oiled and two non-oiled subtidal sites, all of which were at least 1 meter below the water’s surface. Naturally spawned embryos from shallower sites were also analyzed.

Three months after the spill, caged embryos at oiled sites showed nonlethal heart defects typical of oil exposure.

But embryos from the shallower, intertidal zone not only exhibited the nonlethal heart defects, they also showed surprisingly high rates of dead tissue and mortality unrelated to heart defects.

“These embryos were literally falling apart with high rates of mortality,” said Cherr.

In 2008, almost no live larvae hatched from the natural spawn collected from oiled sites.

The high death rates did not seem to be caused by natural or manmade causes unrelated to the spill, the researchers report. No toxicity was observed in embryos from unoiled sites, even those near major highways.

Embryos sampled two years later from oiled sites showed modest heart defects but no increased death rates.

Pacific herring is a commercially and ecologically important species. The fish travel in large schools, typically from the San Francisco Bay north to the Bering Sea, and serve as a forage fish for humpback whales, other mammals, birds and salmon. After two years at sea, they spawn in shallow areas of bays and estuaries.

“In San Francisco, herring is one of the last urban fisheries, and herring is an indicator for the health of the Bay,” said Cherr.

Filed under: biodiversity, energy, Environment, Marine biology, oil drilling, Summit County news Tagged: | Cosco Busan, herrings and oil, marine biology, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, oil spills, San Francisco Bay