Oil Pollution and Marine Ecology

During the dozen years in which I have been actively interested in oil pollution, not only has the quantity of petroleum products con­ sumed in industrially developed nations (and thus the volume of crude oil shipped to them) greatly increased; disastrous accidents, particularly the wreck of Torrey Canyon in the approaches to the English Channel and the blow-out of Well A-21 off Santa Barbara, California, have made the public in general aware for the first time of the implications of their growing appetite for oil and the goods made from it. Concern over the pollution of coastal waters and sea-shores has been expressed ever si nce the 1920s by a small but active band of ornithologists, wildfowlers and seaside hotel-keepers but, even now, the international legislation which their efforts initiated adequately regulates only a fraction of the world's tanker traffic. In Britain, Torrey Canyon sparked off an interest in oil pollution and, by extension, other environmental troubles which had previously been aired only rarely in the mass communications media. Biologists and workers in various technologies were stimulated to carry out a wide variety of investigations both in the field and the laboratory, while even the most laggard member of the oil industry must now feel bound to give some thought to the effect of spills and discharges on human amenity or the natural environment.