Oil Spills Must Stop Now
Do you enjoy swimming in our beautiful oceans and rivers? Well, imagine one day you are swimming in the ocean and then you see some sticky, thick, peanut butter like substance goo getting on an animal and then you. You know these things happen all the time but they can do a lot of damage. Oil tankers bring oil all around the world for companies and some accidents happen. We need to have better protection on oil tanking ships.
To begin with, oil spills can cause damage to the ocean. For example, there was a oil spill in Prince William Sound in Valdez, Alaska. The Exxon Valdez spilled when they hit a rock and by the time the spill was over oil had traveled 550 miles of water. Another example was in 1979 when two tankers collided in the Caribbean Sea and caught fire and spilled nearly 90 million gallons of crude oil. Also, in 1991 another tanker caught on fire for three days and sank sending 80 million gallons of crude oil into the water. Oil spills cause damage to oceans.
Next, oil spills can hurt animals. One animal oil spills affect is the Sea Otter. The oil gets in their fur and when they try to get it out the oil ends up getting in their internal organs like the lungs, liver and kidneys. Other animals it affects are birds. Birds get stuck in the oil. In the Exxon Valdez oil spill 32,000 birds died. The last animal I know it affects is the dolphin. The oil gets in the dolphins eyes and it hurts them. Now you can see it hurts animals.
Finally, and most importantly, oil spills affect people too. Oil pollution affects the food chain from the smallest microscopic organisms to the largest animals, humans. For example, salmon eat smaller ocean species and then we end up eating everything that’s in the salmon. The oil pollution has elements such as nickel, iron, copper and arsenic. We need elements in our body to be healthy but too many or the wrong kind can make you sick.
As you can see, I care about animals, people and the environment so I really don’t want oil spills to happen. We need to have better protection on oil tank ships.
Jeannine
Third Grader in Vermont
