What is an experiment that shows how to reduce the effects of an oil spill on waterfowl?

Answer 1

It really wouldn't be ethical to perform an experiment like this, since it would, at some point, involve dipping ducks and seagulls into crude oil and trying different ways to clean them off. At least where I live in Washington state, there are laws that say you go to prison for doing stuff like that. So, alas, this can only be a thought experiment.

Since you can't predict when an oil spill will occur, it's hard to plan ahead and have something already in place wherever it might happen, so there are only three things that you could do: alter the waterfowl themselves or their behavior so they are less susceptible to contamination by oil, alter the nature of the oil we transport so that it has less impact on wildlife in the event of a spill, or alter our means of transport to minimize the amount that is released into the environment in the event of a spill.

Let's address the first, since it's the most ludicrous. Genetically altering an entire species just so they can tolerate it when we spill millions of gallons of oil into the environment isn't exactly a humane, logical or even practical idea. Modifying behavior is slightly less ridiculous, since you could spend a few trillion dollars lining the shoreline where oil tanker ships sail with some sort of mechanism that discourages waterfowl from coming within a half mile in any direction. Rather impractical, as I'm sure you'll agree.

Modifying the oil itself is somewhat more practical, though whether it would happen any time soon is an entirely different question. You could process the oil more to try to remove as much of the toxicity as you can prior to shipping it, thereby making it less destructive in the event of a leak. How much of the toxic components you could reasonably remove is hard to say without a lot of experimentation, and my gut feeling is that, while possible, it would mean that our current $3/gallon price for gas would become a wistful dream of days gone by.

So the last (and I think best) answer is to modify the means of transport. Double-hulled ships help, as would transporting the oil in barrels (unlikely that all 10,000 barrels would rupture at once, right?) or smaller vessels would be more expensive, but would be less harmful to the environment if a spill were to occur. Building tankers with an emergency containment system installed might be another option, some sort of floating containment that keeps the spill in the area immediately around the ship, that inflates automatically if the tank level or pressure changes beyond a certain limit (imagine if you vacuum sealed the tanks once you filled them, and any air pressure meant you had a leak somewhere) How about that?