On Good Friday in 1964, Alaska experienced the largest earthquake in North American history, lasting 5 minutes and registering a record 9.2 on the Richter scale. The epicenter was in Prince William Sound.
As the ocean floor shifted, causing tsunami waves as high as 70 feet that reached as far as Hawaii and Japan, it not only severely damaged or destroyed villages and communities around the Sound, it also forever changed the depths in the Sound, rendering most navigational charts obsolete and permanently uplifting some areas as much as 6 to 30 feet.
We were quick to take note that many of our charts for the Sound include warnings that some areas haven’t been recharted since the earthquake in 1964, and therefore may not be accurate. Not comforting when you’re in a vessel with a 7-foot draft.
On March 24, 1989 … another Good Friday exactly 25 years later … the Exxon Valdez struck Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound. Most people remember seeing news images of this environmental disaster, which up until the BP rig explosion in April, was the largest oil spill in U.S. waters in history, releasing 11 million gallons of crude into the Sound.
By comparison, the Valdez spill is less than the amount of oil released into the Gulf of Mexico the first two weeks following the Deepwater Horizon explosion … and here’s the real kicker … 20 years later some areas of Prince William Sound are still saturated with toxic oil … and several species, like the herring population, have never recovered.
So it was with great trepidation … which quickly turned to indignation … that on Wednesday as we made our way to the port of Valdez, we sailed past Bligh Reef. Take note in the adjacent photos … Bligh Reef is not only well marked with a lit beacon … it’s 2 MILES LONG and clearly visible if you are navigating properly with charts!
You’d have to be blind, asleep … or I guess very drunk … to not see Bligh Reef on a chart. It’s an example of human error at its worst … at a huge cost to both the wildlife and humans who made a living in those waters … and a mere $900 million civil settlement paid out by Exxon over 10 years.
Today, 20 years after the spill and major restoration efforts, they estimate it may take decades, and possibly centuries for the oil to disappear entirely.
Sadly, one can only imagine the implications for the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and its surrounding ecosystem …
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