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Animal Safety is Big Concern Near Oil Spill in Bay

Posted on: Thursday, 27 April 2006, 06:00 CDT

By Sandy Bauers, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Apr. 27--Oil-skimming vessels in the upper Delaware Bay continued yesterday to clean up a seven-mile-long oil spill that a tugboat detected early Tuesday.

Coast Guard officials still did not know who or what had caused the spill, which they continued to describe as minimal. The volume of oil was not known.

But New Jersey has closed 70,000 acres -- 110 square miles -- of oyster beds as a precaution. Wildlife officials in New Jersey and Delaware expressed concern about the effect on the spring influx of migrating shorebirds and spawning horseshoe crabs.

"This is not a giant Athos-level oil spill. This is a smaller one, OK, but it's a smaller one at a really bad time, with every indication of coming ashore at as environmentally sensitive an area as you could find," said John Hughes, secretary of the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control.

"We're antsy. We're nervous. We've got observers out. We've got equipment out."

Horseshoe crabs are just beginning to come ashore to spawn. Their eggs are considered a vital food source for migrating shorebirds, especially the red knot, whose numbers have declined precipitously in recent years. Computer models say it may go extinct by 2010.

In response, New Jersey is in the final stages of instituting a two-year moratorium on the crab harvest. A federal fisheries commission is also considering a ban that would include Delaware and New Jersey.

Larry Niles, head of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection's Endangered and Nongame Species Program, said he was concerned that oil might be in the water as well as on it, which could affect the crabs now moving into the bay.

"At the very least, it might impair their ability to reproduce," he said.

Officials also worry that birds may eat oiled eggs and that the early contingent of shorebirds may become oiled, too. The main influx of birds is not due until May 10 or so.

"We need to clean it up quickly, or it's going to be a disaster," Niles said.

Crews aboard helicopters from the Coast Guard's Air Station Atlantic City and the Delaware State Police scanned the bay and shoreline yesterday.

They found a "minimal amount of baseball-sized oily concentrations and sheening" on the Delaware side of the bay, according to the Coast Guard.

Terry Villanueva, manager of the Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge along the bay in Delaware, said workers there had spotted some tar balls on the shore.

She said Tri-State Bird Rescue & Research in Newark, Del., had been put on alert.

Booms have blocked the oil from entering three tributaries in the refuge that empty into the bay. In New Jersey, booms have been placed at Back, Nantuxet, Fortescue and Dividing Creeks.

Delaware's oyster season begins May 8. The beds will be assessed before any harvest is allowed, Hughes said.

New Jersey's closed area includes a six-acre Delaware Bay oyster restoration site reopened just last week after more than two years. The project received $750,000 in state, federal and private funding.

A survey by the Rutgers University Haskin Shellfish Research Laboratory estimated that the site would increase the state's 2006 oyster harvest by 13,393 bushels, an amount with a dockside value of $468,000 to $530,000, according to the DEP.

Samples of the oil have been taken for analysis to determinine the type of oil and maybe narrow down the source, said Petty Officer John Edwards, a Coast Guard spokesman.

He said he could not speculate on a source. He called that stretch of the bay "a high-traffic area for container vessels and recreational boats."

In November 2004, about 265,000 gallons of crude leaked from the oil tanker Athos I as it was about to dock in West Deptford.

ONLINE EXTRA

For Coast Guard updates,

go to http://go.philly.

com/oilbay

Contact staff writer Sandy Bauers at 215-854-5147 or sbauers@phillynews.com.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer

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