The Exxon Valdez oil spill happened 26 years ago today
Eva Saulitis, a breast cancer survivor and orca researcher who documented the spill as it unfolded, wrote for onEarth last year about returning to Prince William Sound on the 25th anniversary to heal not only from the pain of the event but also from the crisis playing out in her body.
“As a grad student in her twenties, filled with rage at what I witnessed daily, a sense of purpose carried me through that toxic summer 25 years ago—a drive to document the spill’s impact on orcas, a drive to do something meaningful, and a drive to act against Exxon’s attempts to whitewash the incident, already underway. That was my only stay against despair. It felt like madness: oil everywhere, media spectacles of the cleanup, boats and helicopters and planes harassing orcas. And yet, all the while, life kept trying to do what it had always done. Nature’s force asserted itself with plankton blooms, salmon runs, and births of seal pups on oiled rocks. And I, too, pushed on mechanically in order to survive.
Twenty-one years later, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. The date was April 20, 2010, the day the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. For the next 87 days, as I endured surgery and round after round of chemotherapy, I watched the billowing plume of oil erupting from the sea floor and radiating across the Gulf. Memories of the Exxon Valdez disaster rose to the surface, breaking through the whitewash of time and amnesia and self-protection.”
See more photos and read more of this amazing article here.
Photo cred: Top: Jim Brickett, Middle: Chris Mueller, Bottom: NOAA