Learning the lessons of the BP oil spill

structures emerging,” said Tinka Murk. The dirt sticks to the dead or living material in the water and these flakes then sink off to the bottom of the ocean. In filtered water, these cobweb structures don’t appear.

Wageningen University appointed three Ph.D. candidates to study how oil droplets move through the water column (with and without the addition of dispersants, in clean water and real sea water), what happens during the dissipation process (under different circumstances) and how toxic the oil and dispersants are for marine life, in the water and on the seabed. For their research, the Ph.D. students regularly receive sediment samples from the disaster-stricken area in the United States.

Wageningen University has added a fourth Ph.D. candidate to the project to examine the considerations that have to be made when an oil spill occurs. This part of the research is funded by Wageningen University’s marine research program TripleP@Sea. Information about the local conditions need to be gathered and the costs and benefits of various measures to act on the oil spill should be weighed; not only the costs of a cleaning operation, but also the impact on various ecosystem services such as the survival of important fish larvae, aquaculture, tourism and nature reserves.

What would an oil spill mean for St. Eustatius?
A case study is done for St. Eustatius, a small Caribbean island that is a special municipality of the Netherlands, since 2010. Murk: “Firstly, we will evaluate the threats are there. Oil drilling doesn’t happen there, so that drastically reduces the changes of an oil-related disaster. But there is an oil storage company. Secondly, the weather and currents have to be taken into account, because these have a great influence on how the oil spreads. Thirdly, the ecosystem services present in the area have to be mapped: which organisms live there and how sensitive are these to oil and dispersants.”

With all this information a Decision Support Tool is developed. This tool should help to take a well-informed decision when there is an emergency. Naturally, this model will be developed in consultation with experts from Rijkswaterstaat, the national service that decides on the actions that should be taken after an oil spill, also in the Dutch Caribbean.

Toxicologist Murk would also like to do a case study for the North Sea. At this moment, however, there are no funds to do so. “The North Sea is very busy and complex. In this respect, we chose to start in a more manageable area: St. Eustatius.”