The leak of at least 126,000 gallons of crude oil is one of the largest in recent years in California. The overall impact is still hard to assess at this point. But the amount of dumped oil is still only a small fraction of the worst spills in history.
1990: American Traderran over its anchor in relatively shallow water off Huntington Beach, spilling nearly 417,000 gallons of crude and fouling popular beaches along the Orange County coast. The oil killed fish and about 3,400 birds.
The American Trader, an 800-foot tanker leased by British Petroleum, struck its port anchor while riding in heavy swells about 7,200 feet off Huntington Beach. It was engaged in a complicated berthing maneuver that involved backing into a mooring where it would be secured to seven anchor buoys, then connected to an underwater pipeline to offload oil to a terminal near Newland Street operated by Golden West Refining Co.
The American Trader’s voyage began in Valdez, Alaska, where it took on a cargo of crude bound for oil-storage barges at the Port of Long Beach. The tanker arrived Jan. 29 and made stops in Long Beach’s harbor to unload oil. After that, it took on a new, 23-million-gallon load of oil from a supertanker moored off Long Beach.
It left Long Beach at 1 p.m. on Feb. 7 and headed south for the Golden West Offshore Mooring off Huntington Beach. There it was to offload 12.5 million gallons of oil to be piped to a refinery in Santa Fe Springs.After the spill, crews rushed to contain the oil slick and protect the beaches, but winds and currents eventually deposited oil on miles of beach. Rubberized booms were put in place to keep oil out of estuaries such as the Bolsa Chica wetlands and Upper Newport Bay.
While the oil largely skirted the coastal wetlands, locals found the spill depressing and frustrating, not only because of the catastrophic environmental damage, but because of the effect on local businesses.The cargo ship Cosco Busan struck the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in heavy fog and poured 58,000 gallons of fuel oil into the bay,A humpback whale lifts its fluke out of the water as it begins a dive off the coast of Santa Barbara in 2001.
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