Nov 9, 2007

Oil spill is a disaster for wildlife

By Barbara Grady and Erik N. Nelson / MediaNews

The water off the Berkeley Marina pier had a silvery sheen to it Thursday afternoon, with patches of silver, gold and turquoise rainbows swirling in the current.

It was almost pretty, except the patches were fuel oil dangerous to wildlife living on the Bay.

The 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel that spilled into the Bay from the Cosco Busan container ship on Wednesday spread out across the Bay on Thursday, coating birds and collecting on rocks where small wildlife nest.

By 11 a.m., the Berkeley Animal Care Shelter had rescued a duck from the Berkeley Marina and a tiny grebe from the Albany waterfront. Rescuers housed the birds in warm, dry cages at the shelter until they were driven to the International Bird Rescue Center in Fairfield for cleaning. "There will be more birds," said Kate O'Connor, animal services manager at the Berkeley Animal Shelter. "I think there will be lots of calls," she added, noting that local residents called the shelter to report the oiled birds.

Elsewhere, authorities said that as many as six fouled birds had been found dead and another 21 were picked up for rehabilitation.

At the command center in Fort Mason on San Francisco's northern shore, wildlife rehabilitators demonstrated the process of evaluating and cleaning one of 20 surf scoters, a type of diving duck, that were picked up from oiled beaches. Wildlife rescue workers also picked up a common murre and brought it to a trailer at the fort designed to care for the oiled fowl.

For the birds that survive and are brought in, there is a 50- to 75-percent chance that they will recover enough to be released back into the wild, said Michael Ziccardi, director of the Oiled Wildlife Care Network that brought the trailer to San Francisco on Thursday.