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Marine Oil Spills

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1. Marine oil spills have short and long term effects on marine life and habitats. The short term effects are well known and predictable so they can be dealt with. Long term effects are known as ‘sub-lethal.’ A short term effect is something that can be dealt with in a short period of time. In terms of sandy shorelines, this includes using modern and natural cleaning methods to clean the oily contamination from the sand. Long term affects, on the other hand, are the opposite and include the left over oil that might be too deep in the sediment. This oil can be ingested or absorbed in some way by organisms such as crabs and reptiles. One example of a long term effect on marine life is that it is possible low levels of residual oil may affect an organism’s ability to reproduce successfully. Sandy shore lines are more exposed to the effects of oil because it is where it normally tends to accumulate. This is dangerous because the degree of the oil retention affects whether or not the oil is a short term impact or a long term impact (Dicks, 1998). If oil water reaches the shoreline or coast than the sandy sediment interacts with it which causes erosion as well as contamination. The oil is moved onto the …show more content…

The Moreton Island beach were sandy beach ecosystem which oil interacts well with. It gets mixed to the point of contamination. Because of this, one of the only viable ways to clean up the beaches is through completely removing the sand itself through either machinery or manually. As stated in question 2, the rocky boulder shore has a self-cleaning function through the wave flow onto the rocks. It can naturally rid itself of any contamination provided that it is not overly powerful. A few other ways aside from this natural process that may be used are suction devices, high pressure cold water or hot water flushing. Despite these techniques success in removing the oil however, large communities of organisms have been wiped out due to the rough nature of these

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