Discussion
Lessard： I would like to know what your current recommendation is on the cleaning of heavily oiled beaches. Where do you come out on that, given some of your studies?
Mearns： I think we've seen many examples, from vacuuming, manual pick-up,use of various kinds of absorbents. We didn't cover all of those today. And washing. I think the question is, "How clean is clean enough?" I don't think we have to, in many places, necessarily to remove all of the oil. If we remove the fluid oil−the oil that is mobile at ambient temperatures and ambient pressures−and let nature come in and finish off the process, first of all we will save money, and second we will save a lot of marine life that can help recolonize and get some of these shorelines back to a recovery mode again−coupled with manual pick-up activities. And I think in the case of the EXXON VALDEZ, I wasn't around when the decisions were made, and so on, but I would have argued more for vacuuming, such as we have seen in the recent spills, including here in Japan.
Davies： The cormmunity was actually pushing for us to clean every rock individually. We were seeing some really extreme positions. I think what we did was a compromise solution at the time. But I think your work is useful.
Mearns： Thank you. I would like to underscore this one statement again.:"How clean is clean?"l guess that is just something to think about.
Davies： On the SEA EMPRESS incident, where rocky platforms and boulders had been impacted by oil, it appeared that they were recovering quite well, because there was a proliferation of green weed appearing on the rocks, but apparently that was not a natural situation. It was due to the slow return of naturally occurring grazing animals such as the limpets. Is that to be expected?
Mearns： Yes, it is. That happened in the EXXON VALDEZ spill, and we all learned all it from the TORREY CANYON, when it took even longer for recovery because the chemicals that were used in the TORREY CANYON incident killed the grazers, the animals that eat seaweed−very, very high mortality. I think what you saw in the SEA EMPRESS incident is just the short term, an eco-logical pulse of this green algae. The grazers should be coming back in great numbers right now, as long as you didn't treat it too heavily.
Observer (R.D. Tait, Exxon)： I have one comment. There is a real challenge for the biologists and scientists to go on and communicate the things that we are learning here today and have learned over the past 5 years or so of spills, 7 years since the EXXON VALDEZ. We really do have to get the message across on the natural recovery, and the ability of the environment to rebound from these insults that go on. And until we can do that effectively to the broader audience, we are always going to have the political and the community pressures to go out there and overreact. I think one of the real challenges is to be able to demonstrate that, and certainly through Tim's work that we are seeing now from the SEA EMPRESS, we are getting more scientific data out in a faster time frame that is helping to serve our cause in dealing with these events.
Mearns： I agree.
