Deep Dive: Dr. Nancy Kinner, Oil Spills, Cleanup, Prevention and the Arctic

Who do you call when an oil spill happens? And what would happen if we had a spill in the arctic ocean???

In this episode we discuss oil spill, how to clean them up, and what's being done to prevent future spills from happening. We speak with Dr. Nancy Kinner who is at the font lines of cleanup and prevention research and has been there to assist during all of the major recent spills around the United States.

Dr. Nancy Kinner is the Co-Director of Coastal Response Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. The Coastal Response Research Center stimulates innovation in spill preparedness, response, assessment, and implementation of optimum spill recovery strategies. The primary purpose of the Center is to bring together the resources of a research-oriented university and the field expertise of NOAA OR&R to conduct and oversee basic and applied research, conduct outreach, and encourage strategic partnerships in spill response, assessment and restoration.

For more information on how to get involved or find out more click the links below:
NOAA's Office of Response and Restoration
For more information on the East Palestine, Ohio train derailment click here.
EOS: Changes are coming for Arctic Shipping
CBC: Feds extend restrictions on Arctic offshore drilling
Canada Bans Heavy Oil in the Arctic

The Aquatic Bisophere Project
The ABP is establishing a conservation Aquarium in the Prairies to help tell the Story of Water.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

David Evans: 0:25

Welcome to today's deep dive episode, where we're talking all about oil spills. How you clean them up? What even happens? What are the steps? Dr. Nancy Kinder will take us through all of them. Dr. Nancy Kinder has been around and able to talk to all of the major oil spills off the coast of the United States that you can probably name. Now I have to apologize because partway through our call, the call dropped and we had to change mediums and the audio quality kind of went kaput, but you can still hear everything. And it's definitely worth a listen because Dr. Kynar knows a heck of a lot about oil spills. And it's absolutely fascinating. So sit back relax and get ready to learn a little bit more about oil spill 101 with Dr. Nancy Fox, sir Barney, G. nippy for me to know, in zero marry a cheap, Chinese way. Why net? Water we doing? And how can we do better? Your one stop shop for everything water related from discussing water its use and the organisms that depend on it for all the global issues that you really never knew all had to do with water. I'm your host, David Evans from the aquatic biosphere project. And I just want to ask you something. What are we doing? How can we do better? Hi, and welcome to another deep dive episode of the what are we doing podcast? So today we're speaking with Dr. Nancy Kynar. All about oil spills and oil and oil exploration. You name it, as Dr. Nancy knows about it. So do you mind just giving yourself a bit of an introduction and telling us a little bit about what you do?

Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal Response Research Center: 2:44

Okay, well, thanks so much for having me on. So I work at the University of New Hampshire. Specifically, I am the University of New Hampshire, director of the coastal response Research Center. And I say the University of New Hampshire director because there's also a director from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which in the US is the agency that really oversees the science of the oceans and our large water bodies. So that includes not only the Arctic, and all of the Bering Sea, etc. Gulf of Alaska all the way down the west coast, the Gulf of Mexico all the way up the east coast. But it also importantly, includes the Great Lakes, where we share a common boundary with our Canadian neighbors. And obviously, we do that also in in Alaska. And we do that on the West Coast. And we do that on the east coast. But a lot of times people don't think about that particular area of the Great Lakes as being under the purview of NOAA, but it is. And so our center was created back in 2004, to be a partner with Noah's office of response and restoration. And that office within NOAA is charged with helping in disasters of particularly disasters that affect coasts that affect the ocean that affect the Great Lakes. And the disasters might be oil spills, they might be chemical spills. They might be things that result like sunken and displaced vessels that could occur during a hurricane or something like that. There's a whole range of things that the Office of response and restoration works on. And they they not only work during the response, for example, in an oil spill, they're predicting where that oil is going to go where it's going to hit, what natural resources that might impact what's its fate, but they also look at in the United States, there's a very specific set of language in the law that requires that if some kind of a spill occurs, that the spiller is liable for the damages. And in this particular case, they have to actually Return the environment to where it was, but for the spill, and that's the actual language but for the spill, so that means that the damage has to be assessed, which the office of response and restoration does. And that there has to be a restoration plan an activation to actually get back to where you were. And you might say, well, you know, if animals get killed off, or damaged, what are you going to do? You can't bring them back? And the answer is that restoration might, for example, let's say there were certain species of fish or certain species of birds or something like that, that get killed off, well, you want to restore habitat, so that they can reproduce more effectively. And maybe you create new habitat, maybe you restore existing habitat, the same thing occurs with human resources. So let's say people go to a beach, and there's some kind of an event, that means they can't go to that beach, the beach gets closed, then based on this law, which is in the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, the damages are assessed how much compensation needs to go to the public. Now, it's not paying individual fishermen or individual shop owners or something like that. It's restoring and making the public whole, as well as the natural resources. So maybe they'd build a fish pier, maybe they would build more prisons where people could shower or whatever to improve, okay, you couldn't go to the beach, but now we're going to make going to the beach better. So that's the whole part of restoration. Okay. And then there's another important part of the Office of response and restoration. And that's disaster preparedness. How do you prepare for a disaster? So and there's always going to be damaged? But how do you prepare more effectively to minimize that damage? Okay, so we work with the Office of response and restoration and have since 2004. And the reason that we're doing it that way that it's at UNH, is because we have one of the top 10 marine science programs in the country in the US. And we also have a very strong program in environmental engineering and environmental response. And and this is the other important factor. We don't have any skin in the game, which means we don't have any oil, right? We don't have any natural gas, we don't have any of those things. We don't have a big chemical industry. So when a spill occurs, if someone needs to stand up and be the kind of the independent honest broker, we can do that, right? Because there's no Governor calling the University in New Hampshire and saying, Oh, don't say that. So that's very important. I mean, it seems silly, right? No, but you can actually see where it might be very, very important. And there is a lot, a lot of oil shipped in and out of New Hampshire. So that's kind of what we're about. And we do a variety of things. I mean, we do some research here with some graduate students. We're working right now on a project of movement of oil under ice, and some work on oil thickness measurements, validating different kinds of sensors that vendors have. But we also oversee research for NOAA. So no one might get a project funded to look, for instance, at how do you sense oil in ice infested waters. And we will oversee that project, working with NOAA scientists to make sure that the work is done well, that the work is scientifically sound that it's done on time and on budget, and kind of coordinating that. Another thing we do is a lot of workshops. So since since that period of time, in 2004. We've done about 80 Plus workshops on a variety of topics, really looking for the most part at what are the research gaps? How can we do things better? How can we get people working together and facilitating those meetings and one of the things that we try to do is, again, we're the independent honest broker, we don't have a lot of skin in the game. And we also have the scientific chops to be able to say, Wait a second, that's a little bit of BS there, right? Yeah. When somebody gets going, we can say boo. Whereas a lot of fun meditators are not kind of experts in the field, right? But then if you get asked experts in the field, lots of times they're vying for resources and research, etc, which we're not really, really doing. So and then we, of course, have students that we train that can go into the field. And we try to act as a hub for various agencies, both nationally and internationally to tackle some of these problems. So those are some of the things that we do.

David Evans: 10:50

Just a couple of things. Just a couple of things. Yeah, but it's fun. It's a lot of fun. Yeah, that seems super interesting. I really respect the point that you brought up that you really have no skin in the game. There is no ulterior motives that are being influenced on you and your team. Because, I mean, I'm recording this podcast in Edmonton, Alberta. So we were a big oil country up here. So yeah, I understand that.

Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal Response Research Center: 11:16

Just to give you an example of how important that is, every six years, the US, there's a government group called the Interagency Coordinating Committee on oil pollution research, it's federally mandated, and it includes Coast Guard, it includes Noah, it includes EPA and includes FEMA, it includes everybody you can think of who might be involved. And they are charged with coming up with research needs that the federal government sees for the next six years. And there's a lot of very long process a year long process that we go through, we actually help those federal agencies, figure out what the research needs might be. And one of the reasons why we do it is because we say we're not going to apply for any of these research needs. Anybody can apply, right? Or, you know, whatever. But we're not going to, we're not going to apply for any of them. Now, NOAA may decide to fund the research idea and ask us to help them oversee it. But we don't apply to the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement if they have an RFP for a grant on the topic. So we really try to stay out of that, and just, you know, help delineate help the government in that particular case through surveys and using subject matter experts, about 150 of them, what are their needs, and then they kind of comb through them and figure out which ones are priority. So we help facilitate that conversation. But we try not to be involved directly in, you know, kind of the politics of it, or competitions.

David Evans: 13:05

Right, right. Yeah, just keeping the level playing field and keeping the guardrails on the conversation to make sure that it's being conducted in the most efficient way. And yeah, that's, that's really admirable. I have so many more questions for you. I feel like I could talk to you forever now.

Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal Response Research Center: 13:20

Okay, okay, go go ahead.

David Evans: 13:23

I guess just to kind of focus our conversation and just give a bit of a an idea on, maybe we'll just kind of focus on oil spills for now. But oil releases, but just to kind of give the listeners a little bit of an idea. When we talk about oil spills, I assume that there's human caused oil spills, and those are the ones that capture the imagination of the public. And that's what you see pictures of, and things like that. But I also understand that there is natural release of oil into the ocean, or into freshwater systems. And just Could you give us an idea of how much is released annually and how like a human caused oil spill would differ from a natural oil leak.

Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal Response Research Center: 14:02

So the amount of oil that's released naturally, I mean, there are lots of different estimates. But I think what the most important thing to get across here is that that oil is released over large areas, and it's released relatively slowly. Okay. Now, for example, if you go off the coast of California, okay, you can see around Santa Barbara, etc, there are these natural now there are oil rigs there. I don't mean to say that there aren't oil production rigs as well. But there have been for a long time, naturally occurring seeps. Now one can say, have those been exacerbated by the drilling or anything like that. That's not what I'm talking about. There are natural seeps, there are natural seeps in the Gulf of Mexico. And really, what we're doing is we're tapping in to those reservoirs from which the natural seeps are coming. Okay.

David Evans: 15:08

But it makes a lot of sense. Yeah.

Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal Response Research Center: 15:09

Right. So So where you see these natural seeps is usually in areas where we're drilling. Now that doesn't mean all the areas because some of them are maybe less desirable to drilling, because it's very deep or whatever. But the main point here is that when you have those natural seeps, they are periodic. And they are not catastrophic. Okay. Right, periodic, but they're not catastrophic. So basically, what happens is there's the ability of the natural environment to degrade that oil to assimilate to handle that oil. Okay. And we know, well, and we've known for a long time, that there are naturally occurring microbes that degrade oil, okay. And they quite likely evolved, because there are these natural seeps of oil. And they make a living off of degrading that oil. The problem? The prompt, right, that's, that's the way it is the product sense. Yeah, the problem becomes when we release oil in large quantities over short periods of time. Now, one could argue that the Deepwater Horizon in 2010 was not a short period of time, 80 some odd days, but still, relatively speaking, these other leaks are over, you know, over a long, long, long periods of time, hundreds 1000s of years, right. And they're slow, and they're periodic, right. So if you have a release from a tanker, or from a broken pipeline, something or even a train to railing, it's a catastrophic release a lot of oil in a short time in an area, okay. And that's when the damage can occur. So if you think about most birds, for example, or marine mammals or anything like that, they're not swimming through plumes of oil, because the this oil for the most part, is a simulated, it's not, you know, gobs of oil coating the surface so that it fouls beaches or something like that fouls, nesting areas, fouls marshes. The catastrophic releases are where there are the problems. And the amount of the release can be highly variable. I mean, there are a lot of spills that are very relatively small, that, you know, may come from a ship being loaded. And for a very, very short period of time, oil sprays out, okay, when the transport system is being hooked up to the shipper from the land, or vice versa. But it's the spills where you're talking about 1000s of gallons in a small area. So for example, and I'm not trying to say we should be spilling oil here, I want that to be very clear. If I had a ship offshore that released 1000 gallons of oil, right, that in the middle of the storm, that oil would be very, very quickly dispersed in the environment. Okay, if I take that same ship, and have it release 1000 gallons of oil in a very small harbor that's relatively enclosed. Oh, my gosh, it's a totally right.

David Evans: 18:48

Yeah, that completely changes the entire scenario. Yeah. Right.

Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal Response Research Center: 18:52

Absolutely. So that's where it's hard to make broad generalizations. For example, big tanker spills are way down. We have for the most part, double hull tankers. Now by law, and there are a lot of systems in place to minimize accidents. A lot of systems have been designed. But if you start thinking about, Oh, maybe we're going to bring tankers through ice infested waters in the Arctic. What Oh, that's a totally different game, right? Because yeah,

David Evans: 19:30

that's a totally different ballgame.

Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal Response Research Center: 19:31

Right? We have ice, we have the symmetry where we don't know what the bottom even looks like. It's not been mapped. Okay, totally. Yeah. So all of a sudden, could be a very dangerous situation. And on top of that, for many, many months, it's dark, right? And darkness is a big part of the time. So now you want to have a response. It's much harder to respond in the dark than it is in the light. And then you start talking about things like it's stormy up there, and it's cold up there. Even when it's warm. It's cold, you know that you're Canadian, right? Yep. Yeah. So, all of these things and the other thing that always amazes me is people, especially in the lower 48. I think this may be different in Canada, but they don't appreciate the vastness of the area. And right, if you have a spill in the Gulf of Mexico, you've got a lot of resources, a lot of people a lot of things that you can deploy, you take that same spill, and you put it on the coast of Alaska, or you put it up into my goodness, the Canadian Arctic, and you have got a way, way, way more complicated situation. Because it's so vast, and there aren't, you know, you can't just call up and say, Hey, ship over x. No way. Yeah, I mean, for the US, just to give you an idea, the closest major base of support for the Arctic is on Kodiak Island, which is a lot of miles away from the northern coast of Alaska. So it's big, big. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, obviously, you can fly out of Anchorage to but if you want, you know, military transports Coast Guard support, that's where it's got to come from as Kodiak. So, wow. You know, I'm not saying it would be the same in Canada, but it's similar. You have vast amounts. I mean, compared to what we have, you have vast amounts of waterway in Canada, where, you know, transport of ships is potentially going to happen.

David Evans: 21:57

Yeah, with the opening of the Northwest Passage and potential of transport up there. I mean, I also believe that most Canadians don't have a good understanding of the vastness of Canada, or the vastness of the Arctic to begin with. And I mean, myself, just having spent a lot of time in the back country of Alberta. And in working in, in remote areas here. I'm, I mean, I've come across pipelines that have had spills, and in the middle of nowhere, and we tried to find a way to report it. It's so much bigger than even I can appreciate, yes. And just the remoteness of being able to go out and respond something like that. And as you were saying to just how even an oil spill would potentially interact with potentially interact with ice. Oh, then, of course, we ran into some technical difficulties. So the audio might sound a little bit different right after this. But you still get the gist of everything. Oh, I guess getting back to what we were discussing before. Yeah, with the opening of the Northwest Passage, the unknown center surrounding transport of chemicals are transporting oil in an area that mostly ice for most of the year, and you were discussing earlier, you even brought up that you're assisting with some projects that are looking at how to detect oil under ice. And I guess where this kind of leads me to thinking is, what are some of the ways that we would deal with an oil spill, regardless of where it is in the world? And then are there new technologies that we're looking at developing specifically for Arctic regions, these vast areas that we can't respond quickly? What, what are we currently doing? And what what does the future look like? If you could look into your crystal ball? What would it look like in the future of oil spill response?

Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal Response Research Center: 23:41

So maybe the first thing to start with is how we do respond now. Right. And certainly, there have been major major improvements since Deepwater Horizon with respect to technology to cap wells that are blowouts and that kind of thing. For the most part, there are now ways now I'm not saying that there can't be blowout spills there can. Okay, there's certainly but, you know, one of the bad things that happened in that spill in the Gulf of Mexico was that that was very deep water, almost a mile of water above a hole. And the holes aren't very big, you know, I think we have this idea that five or 10 feet in diameter, they're not small. And so oil is coming out. It's hot. It's under pressure, and it's shooting out of the hole. Well, it's not so easy. I mean, in theory, the blowout preventer should have shut it down. It didn't. So when you have that, and there's all this pipe that's down there that fell from the rig because that was a rig that was actually trying to go from drilling to get off. The whole solar production, rain could come on, you'll have to be able to cap it, and we didn't have the technology, literally a billion dollars have been spent to get that technology. Okay. Now, does that mean that there won't be a release? No, but it means that Probably it will take us considerably less than 86 days to get the things shut down. And even in Deepwater Horizon, there was a quote capping mechanism that went on. But now this, they would be able to shut the well in more quickly. But again, that's the Gulf of Mexico, where there's a lot of resources, right? We're not talking about the Russian Arctic, where they do that, or, you know, that kind of thing. But I want to take those kinds of spills right now off the table, because while they are very have the potential to be very catastrophic, they are not as common. Now, pipeline spills, on the other hand, are more common than blowouts by a longshot, for instance, the pipeline spills that you've seen in Canada, there was one in Kalamazoo, Michigan, that probably is quite well known to folks in Canada, it actually was the line that was was transporting material from Canada. And the spill in Huntington Beach recently off of California, those are both pipelines spills caused by by different for different reasons. But nonetheless, pipeline spills. And of course, in a pipeline spill, you have a lot of oil that can come out if it's flowing. But you can shut the pipeline off. Right? And so you can stop the flow. That's the difference with a blowout, you cannot control the flow. Okay. Now, there's been, and still is being technology developed to help us sense when you've got a pipeline that's leaking, you look for things like pressure drops, etc. One of the problems sometimes is that people kind of override this detection system and say, Oh, that couldn't possibly be a leak. So how do you get smart systems that really can tell you you got to leak and you have to shut down. But the beauty of a pipeline, though, it can release a lot of oil for a short period of time, is that it can be turned off. Now, you still might have a section of the pipeline that had oil in it, that's between the shutoff points, but at least you can shut it off. Right. Um, a The other thing about let's say, a ship spill, it doesn't have to be a tanker, it could be a ship that that is transporting cargo of some sort, that will release can potentially release fuel that it's using to operate to run. But again, you have a finite amount of oil. Right? It's, it's what that ship had, okay. Whereas this blowout scenario is the reservoir is maybe not infinite. But from our standpoint, from the spill, it's infinite, right? Until you shut it off, it's going to keep flying out of there. Yeah, so. So these other types of spills, the pipeline, the ship, the the train car. So for example, if you have one of these trains that has a lot of Bakken crude or a lot of oil sands products, and it's going to the coast, or moving, you know, material around from Alberta, let's say, but it has a finite amount of oil in each car, a finite amount of material in each car, typically, about 28,000 gallons, you know, something of that order. So I'm not saying it's, it's great. I'm just saying when you have a spill, there's a finite amount that can come out. And of course, it can be like locked McGinty can create, when the runaway train, you've got all these cars crashing, and you've got a fireball, it still can be a horrific event. But it's a finite amount. It's only what's on that train. It's only what's on the cars that leak, the train cars that leak etc. So let's say we have a leak. All right, what happens? Well, of course, there's the notification system. And as you rightly pointed out, in some areas, like along a pipeline, you were saying you've come across those fields, I mean, you know, those spills can can occur. And if they're in a remote area, or in the middle of some farmer's field, it might not be discovered right away. There can be a relatively quick notification, or it can be a relatively slow notification, depending on the remoteness of the site. So Once that notification occurs, then if it's a marine spill, the Coast Guard is responsible. And I believe that's the same in the Canadian Coast Guard. They oversee the response. And if it's an inland spill, it's overseen in the United States by EPA, US EPA. And I don't want to get talking about Canada because I don't know the exact

David Evans: 30:44

know. Fair enough. Yeah.

Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal Response Research Center: 30:47

And so we have a system here where the Coast Guard then brings in NOAA, and the office of response and restoration to advise it on the spill. What's the science? Where's this oil gonna go? What's the kind of impact? How then can we have the least bad situation? And that's the key, because once you release oil, or any chemical, it's bad. We're trying to make it the least bad. I am not aware of any spill that has been good. They just

David Evans: 31:27

Well, other for the other for that, that bacteria that just loves it. And just, that's the only benefit. Yeah,

Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal Response Research Center: 31:33

yeah, they might like it. And their populations during deepwater went way up. And then they died off, of course, as the oil was degraded. But, um, yeah, so what we're trying to do is make it the least bad. And so what, what NOAA does is they basically take and run what's called a trajectory model. It's a model that says, here's where the oil is coming out. And they actually track the oil as if it's a lot of little particles with behaviors. And so they can have things in there. Like, it's diesel fuel, for instance, or gasoline, you and I both know, when you pump gasoline in a car, there's a lot of vapors that volatilizes quickly into the air. So in their model, it can actually take in the fate and behavior, characteristics of the oil so they can put in the type of oil, they can put in the amount of oil, they get information on, what are the tides, what are the currents? What are the winds in the area, and all of that can come from ocean observing systems that can come from the weather service, a whole bunch of things that give them that information, and help decide how the waters gonna move, right? If the oils in the water, they also have what are called weathering processes, that's the evaporation. And so the oil becomes a little thicker and more viscous, because the lighter stuff volatilizes off, some of it might go into solution, right? All of these kinds of things. So they actually not only figured out where the spill is going, they figure out how the spill, the slick is changing over time. And then when they get that information in at first, they're going off of a very little amount of of information, right? So as spill occurs, you don't always know how much oil is going to come out. You don't always know exactly what that oil is, right? So all of those things are kind of up in the air. But these modelers are really, really super experienced. And they actually can say, Okay, well, you know, what we've heard is that this is carrying a crude oil. And they put in those characteristics. And they say, Okay, how much could leak out? Well, they talked to the people on the scene. And they say, worst case scenario is all of the stuff from a tank have come up with all of the stuff from the from the ship, operating tank comes out, you know, those kinds of things. And then they put in the currents and the winds that they have from, from predicting sources, like the weather service, and then they run the model, and they see where it potentially can go, and they put uncertainty bounds on it. So they say, here's where we think it's going to go, but it could go anywhere from here to here. Okay, and here's how long it's going to take. And then there are these maps, that they're called environmental sensitivity indices. And these maps basically show shorelines and other areas, what's their, what lives there and when do they live there? So, we have certain birds nesting their their nesting there from you know, May till till September or something like that. And what are the status of of these individuals? Are they an endangered species? You know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What are the habits they have? If they're going to be eating stuff on the beach? Could they be eating oil that comes up on the beach? Or, you know, one of the other things that's really happened sometimes on an oil spill, is if they're turtles in the area, and the Turtles have laid eggs, right? Oh my goodness. This. Now there could be a bad situation the eggs could get oiled or the little baby turtles when they hatch could get oiled. You know, all of these kinds of things. And we not only think about what are the legalities, of course, we all feel terrible when we see, you know, an oil bird or an oil, you know, organism and we go, Oh my gosh, because it's oftentimes dead. But even worse, sometimes, is the chronic effects that you know, as a biologist, right. So I'll give you an example of this. We never knew, really, until the Deepwater Horizon, there were some NOAA scientists who were monitoring marine mammals. And they were monitoring these dolphins in a place called Barrow tarea Bay. And they realize there isn't a lot of oil that came in there. But there's some of oil and the dolphins obviously move around, and that kind of thing. And so they began to do some health assessments. And what they ended up realizing, and there are some really seminal publications on this is that these dolphins, and the same applies to whales and some other organisms, but air breathing organisms, they come up under the oil slick, right? That's floating on the water, because oil for the most part is some of them can sink, but a lot of it floats. And they come up underneath it. And there was this thought that, oh, maybe they could avoid it. Well, that's not true. They don't avoid it, they come up underneath it. And what do you do? If you're a Marine, now, you've been holding your breath for a long time. All right. And so you release this air that you've been holding, and you make little droplets, right? We all know, we've seen those blows, you know, the movies and such. And so now if there's oil there, you aerosolized that oil and make it into tiny droplets. Okay. And we now know that the next thing that they do, because they want clean, fresh oxygen, right, is they breathe in. And they breathe those oil droplets in, and they get deep down into their lungs. And so it doesn't kill them. Right. But it causes long term, chronic damage, miscarriages, all sorts of things. So the birth rate of these dolphins is is much lower post the spill. And there are a lot of reasons for this. There's, there's been an incredible amount of work done that actually looks at the similarities of impacts across fish and birds and marine mammals and humans. There's this, this kind of continuum of the ways oil impacts and causes toxicity issues. And we're talking about chronic impacts, right, so might not kill the organism immediately with an acute effect. But sometimes those long term impacts can really damage populations, impacting the reproductive success, there's been some work done that shows that if some of these organisms get exposed to oil, when they're in the larval stage, or egg stage, they get kind of a strange heart, their heart deforms, and they might grow up. But they can't pump as fast, right? Their hearts can't work as efficiently. So they can't swim as fast. So they get eaten. Like they become prey. Wow. Yeah. So So there are all sorts of these impacts that can really affect populations, and therefore affect community structure, etc. So these chronic effects can be as bad as anything else. So they want to figure out how can we protect these resources? Where's this oil gonna go? What's there? And of course, there's always this challenge of, I've only got so much resources that I can throw at this. Where is the biggest bang for the buck? Where is it most important that I protect? Right? And you will know, okay, I can impact a lot of eggs and larvae, right? But if I impact the few endangered adults on the beach, oh my goodness, or if I impact some of the reproductive adults, that's a bad scenario, right? One of the things that's an example here is if you think about corals, okay? Corals are in Add Shape, if an oil spill impacts corals. So let me give you a scenario. This is something we talked about in a workshop once once, which I found fascinating. And we really hadn't thought about it this way. So we got the coral experts together with the responders, okay? So the thought was, well, these corals are really sensitive. And so we know that if there's an oil spill on the surface, we definitely don't want to have their eggs and their larvae impacted. Because corals are so important. So maybe what we should think about doing is dispersing that oil. If we know that the oil is coming into an area, where there are all these corals and their larvae, etc, might get killed. But it turns out that if you kill an adult coral, that is 1000 years old, it takes a hell of a long time to get back to where it was. Right. Right. If you kill off a lot of larvae, those adults might reproduce again in six months or two months or whatever, right? So yes, you lose a section of organisms. And this is true for many organisms, not saying it's good, but remember, we're interested in the least bad.

David Evans: 41:40

It's a triage system, you have to figure out what's the priority? And what is the organism levels that are the kind of the ecosystem engineers or the keystone species that you need to maintain those ecosystems and, and make sure that they're still functioning?

Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal Response Research Center: 41:55

Yes, that's exactly it. That's exactly it, David. So that's what goes into some of these response strategies. And you know, there are ways to clean up the oil, they're skimming it off the surface, and you know, those kinds of things, but you don't usually want it to get on the beach or get on there, the marshes, etc. And then, concurrently, once that spill occurs, the people are out there assessing the damages, what's happened to the organisms, etc, that we talked about earlier? And thinking right from the get go, how are we going to restore these environments, these organisms, these these human resources, etc. So that's kind of what happens in a spill and the damage assessment part and the restoration can take years, the response usually is over relatively quickly. But you can see that if you go to an area, like the Arctic, or an area that's remote, then you become much more vulnerable. Because you don't have the response equipment, you don't have the intel on, what are the winds and the currents? Right? If you think about the Gulf of Mexico, etc, we have high frequency radar, we have buoys offshore to give us a lot of information about what's happening, you go to the Arctic, there aren't very many buoys up there, it's very hard to have them. Right. You know, the information is very sparse. And so you're trying to make a model. And that's very hard. And then the other thing is that we, when the models are being made, they're always being compared to the reality. Here's what the model says, Here's what our intel from satellites or Intel, from drones, etc, is saying, about, or aircraft saying about where the oil is. And if there's a disconnect between them, they reinitialize the model, they tweak the model to say, okay, the model isn't right, let's, let's get the most up to date data. And so we can read tweak it right. Well, okay, so let's try and do that in the Arctic. Right? Well, you don't just go flying around zooming around with drones. I mean, you can potentially that's one of the projects we're looking at, on the North Slope this June. But it's not easy. I mean, there just aren't drones sitting around. Whereas in the Gulf of Mexico or California or wherever, there's a lot more possibilities. So it's really and getting people up there and equipment up there is not easy, either. And the weather isn't always cooperative.

David Evans: 44:51

So bugs aren't cooperative, that's for sure. Yeah.

Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal Response Research Center: 44:55

That's right. So yeah, that answers the question.

David Evans: 44:59

No, absolutely. That completely that that. It's absolutely fascinating. And it got me thinking too, of how can you create a model when you don't even know the depth of the water and how the ocean currents would potentially change with the removal of all the sea ice as we move into the future, and how that can influence wind patterns in climate and yeah, It's there's there's so many compounding factors to be considered.

Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal Response Research Center: 45:22

Yeah. And, you know, there, there are, I'm sure there are within Canada as well. There are big hydrodynamic models that are run by the US Navy, and I'm sure by the Canadian government, and by NOAA, and then there are like, if you get into some, some entertainment, right, I'm sure. For example, in Halifax Harbour, there is a separate hydrodynamic model that predicts how the water will move back and forth. But when you get up to the Arctic, I don't think in Baffin Bay, we have probably right, or the Lincoln sea or whatever. It just is just really difficult. And then you've got the sea ice. And actually, I do know that the Canadian government and the US government, and some others have scientists who are all cooperating on a model of sea ice, it's called sea ice. Don't ask me what that stands for. But CIC, we did a project, we've been doing a project on oil spill modeling in the Arctic. And we've been getting sea ice modelers, together with oil spill modelers to think about how best to do this modeling. And sea ice isn't, is a model that's available, it's open. So scientists from all over, for example, I know that the Met folks in Canada work on CIC II, we've worked with some of those, those folks, they're excellent. And the people in Environment Canada also work. There's an excellent oil spill folks there, and also in Department of Fisheries and Oceans. So you've got some top people also working on the same projects. And and there's a lot of cooperation between the Canadian government and the US government on some of these questions. But this model of sea ice is, is really a very powerful model. But again, it needs to have information on which directions, the currents are pushing the ice, and, you know, the thickness of the ice and all of this kind of thing. And it needs to be kind of compared just like we talked about the oil spill models to what the reality is. So how do you get the thickness of the ice of the Arctic? Well, you have to use satellites a lot of times and how well do they work? And then the undersurface of the ISIS? Whoa, that's not flat. That's all sorts of convolutions under there. But how do you know what that is? We just had a team of people who are talking about that. And really, how do we even kind of make some scientific hypotheses about what it might look like so that we can maybe start to think about how we would model that in the spill. So I keep going back to the articles, I think actually, probably folks in Canada would relate to that. And of course, there's a lot of ice on the Great Lakes too. So, you know, in both those cases, so that's freshwater ice. Those are all big questions about how would all that oil move if there was a ship accident on the Great Lakes?

David Evans: 48:51

Absolutely. And I mean, I think Canadians are interested everywhere. I mean, we have a lot of snowbirds that go down. So so the Gulf of Mexico is definitely a concern as well. So

Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal Response Research Center: 49:00

yes, they sure do go down to Florida and the Gulf here, right? Yeah.

David Evans: 49:06

Well, I realized we've we've gone over our time, and I don't want to keep you anymore. But maybe if you could just one final quick question. If someone listened to this podcast, and they may have already been concerned about oil spills, if they want to have their voice heard, or if they don't know how to get involved in an oil spill response, or being able to change their actions that might improve the outcome of an oil spill, or somewhere to donate, what would you what would you pass along to that individual?

Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal Response Research Center: 49:34

I think the biggest thing that any of us can do right now is to decrease our fossil fuel footprint. You know, my students, remind me, Hey, you are commuting from Maine down to New Hampshire. Do you realize how much gasoline you're using? Etc, etc. So I take the train now? Well, it's a little less convenient, I must say, but it's got its advantages, and on my carbon footprint has been greatly reduced. And I think we each have to think about how so much of what we do uses fossil fuels if we get food from remote locations, right instead of using food grown locally. How does it get there? Fossil fuels? Right? All of those things if you want to decrease over time, the number of spills, we all decreased our fossil fuel usage, there'd be less fossil fuels shipped, and therefore, there will be less this.

David Evans: 50:38

Absolute Absolutely. I couldn't say it better myself. Thank you so much for speaking with me. Oh, sorry.

Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal Response Research Center: 50:44

Thank you very much for speaking with me, David. It's been a real pleasure. Call back anytime, David. It's been a pleasure. You've asked really, really good questions. And it's been enjoyable.

David Evans: 50:56

Wonderful. Thank you so much. And I'll put links in the show notes to everything that we talked about into your to your group.

Dr. Nancy Kinner, Coastal Response Research Center: 51:03

Thanks so much, David. You drink too much. Yeah.

David Evans: 51:06

Bye bye. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode all about oil spill response. Thank you so much to Dr. Nancy Kinder for speaking with me was an absolute blast and she persevered through audio difficulties. If you want to learn more about Dr. Nancy kinders work, and what we're doing here in Canada as well, in terms of oil spill response, I'll leave links in the show notes to all of that. So look for links to the coastal response Research Center, Noah's office of response and restoration DFO, and Environment Canada. I'm the host and producer David Evans. And I just like to thank the rest of the team, specifically Paul Polman, Lee Burton, and the rest of the aquatic biosphere board. Thanks for all of your help. And to learn more about the aquatic biosphere project and what we're doing right here in Alberta telling the story of water, you can check us out at aquatic biosphere.ca. And we also have launched our new media company, ABN quad a biosphere network, which you can find that the public place dot online and search for the aquatic biosphere network channel, where we will actually be posting all of the video episodes that we're going to be creating this year. So tune in. They will be out for the next little while but very excited to start sharing video content as well as our interviews. If you have any questions or comments about the show, we'd love to hear them. Email us at conservation at aquatic biosphere.org. Please don't forget to like, share and subscribe. Leave us a review. It really helps us out. Thanks and it's been a splash