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Birds at North Sea oil and gas installations
Volume 13/Number l / J a n u a r y 1982
industry and public, should include a detailed description of the proposed study, includings its location, duration, methodology and support requirements and should be submitted to Regional Director, USFWS, 1101 East Tudor Rd, Anchorage, Ak 99503.
Seychelles New marine polltltion laws in the Seychelles recently promulgated mean that vessel owners, operators of landbased facilities or oil-transferring equipment will be liable to jail terms of up to five years and fines of up to 200 000 rupees (1 rupee=US $0.16) for discharging oil into the republic's territorial waters. Under the regulations proof that the oil was discharged to save a vessel, to prevent damage to it or its cargo or to save lives, or proof that the spill could not be stopped or prevented will mitigate liability. Anyone with such proof is required to report the position and estimated volume of any discharges to the Seychelles Harbour Master. Pollution control officers have been appointed to enforce the regulations with the right to board and investigate vessels within the Seychelles territorial waters which extend 200 miles into the Indian Ocean from each of its major island groups.
Scotland Half of the total otter population in the Shetlands was killed after the oil tanker Esso Bernicia crashed into the
Sullom Voe terminal in 1978, according to a study report by zoologists at Aberdeen University. The scientists, who have just published their findings in Volume 20 of Biological Conservation, say that they found 13 corpses out of a population of about 50-100, and state that three times as many others could have died, either from eating contaminated seabirds, grooming oil-covered fur, or by the oil destroying the insulating air layer in otters' fur which is vital to their keeping warm.
Canary Islands The need for 'ports of refuge' was again highlighted recently when Port authorities at Tenerife and Las Palmas refused to allow the fully laden Liberian tanker Schelderix into the Canary Islands for repairs. The 230 000 tonnes tanker began leaking oil after a crack developed in a port wing tank, while en route from the Persian Gulf to Rotterdam.
Middle East Bahrain has been selected as the location for the first Oceanexpo-Middle East Marine exhibition and symposia which is to be held from 15 to 18 February 1982. Among plans to be presented will be the Saudi-Sudan Commission's proposals to exploit the metal-bearing sediments of the Red Sea, Jordan's oceanographic project in the Gulf of Aqaba, and the development of the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia.
0025-326X/82/010005-02 $03.00/0 Pergamon Press Ltd.
Marine Pollution Bulletin, Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 5-6, 1982 Printed in Great Britain
Birds at North Sea Oil and Gas Installations A couple of years ago there was a great public concern over reports that many birds were being killed at North Sea gas flares (Fig. 1). We summarized the early records and described a year of more intensive investigations at the BP Forties Field during 1978-79 at the time (Mar. Pollut. Bull., 10, 124-125; North East Scotland Bird Report for 1978), and observations in the same autumn at Phillips' Ekoflsk Field to the south have been described by F. Hauge and S. Folkedal (Far Fuglefauna, 3, 220-226). R. A. F. Cox has since summarized observations at all Phillips' installations throughout the North Sea annually in North Sea Bird Watch Annual Reports, and P. Hope Jones has described more intensive investigations at Shell's Brent Field to the north by a Nature Conservancy Council 'Birds and Sea' unit financed by the UK Offshore Operator's Association (Br. Birds, 73, 547-555; Birds 8, 30). It appears to be generally agreed that the commonest species are, as might be expected, seabirds, notably the large Larus gulls, Kittiwakes Rossa tridactyla and Fulmars Fulmarus glacialis, which tend to gather under the lights at night to roost or feed on plankton. Only occasional stray landbirds are reported until the visibility deteriorates, with a maximum of 4500 thrushes circling the Brent Bravo
platform in fog and low cloud on 13 October 1979. Hope Jones reports that while some exhausted birds fell into the sea, most were still able to continue when the weather cleared, and deduced that the main risk was that they might be delayed while on migration.
t=
~bo •••Brent ~ "NiniQn . --
o°
~'~'
"Beryl
• °
.
~
D"
~'
oEkofisk
.~J~p
f
Fig. 1 0 i l f i e l d s mentioned in the text.
Marine Pollution Bulletin
Fig. 2 Infra-red satellite photograph of the weather over the Northern North Sea at 1452 h on. 13 October 1979. (Photograph supplied by Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics, University of Dundee.)
The meteorological situation then affords an interesting contrast to that which resulted in a large bird kill at the Beryl Field on 26 October 1976, illustrated in my previous note (Mar. Pollut. Bull., 10, 124-125). Figure 2 shows an infrared satellite photograph of the weather over the northern North Sea at 1452 h on 13 October 1979. There is an anticyclone over Iceland, and the cloud and fog along its southern boundary are covering Shetland (S) in the upper left-hand corner. Further south, cloud moving ahead of a depression over the Bay of Biscay is obscuring Aberdeen (A), although it has not yet covered Norway (N) to the east entirely. Presumably migrants took off from Norway while the weather was still clear there the previous evening, and were then drifted west in the easterly airstream ahead of the front approaching from the south until they came down in fog over the Brent Field (B) in the morning, where they remained until the weather cleared with the passage of the front north during the day. Since they had not been in the air long there was little mortality. This is an example of the 'cyclonic approach' to Britain described by Kenneth Williamson (Proc. X I Intern. Ornithol. Congr., 178-186) compared with the 'anticyclonic approach' shown in Mar. Pollut. Bull., 10, 125.
Before we become too complacent, it may also be useful to place on record that a scrutiny of the original records of the pioneer enquiry carried out by Bryan Sage has now provided a clue to the origin of reports of a mass mortality of storm-petrels at a drilling rig in Shetland waters in October 1973 which originally gave rise to complaint, in the form of a footnote " n o personal observations, but large numbers of 'small brown birds' killed during burning off at night". It now seems likely that there was in fact an incident then, though it probably involved landbirds rather than stormpetrels so that it was not recognized. It also seems increasingly clear that such events are unusual, presumably because, as shown by past radar observations (E. Eastwood, Radar Ornithology, London, 1967), few landbirds reach that area except as a result of drift by offshore winds. In such conditions it seems likely that far from delaying the birds, oil installations serve a useful function as landmarks which enable the birds to control their tendency to drift out to sea until the weather clears and they can resume their journey (Ibis, 122, 536-540).
W. R. P. BOURNE
industry and public, should include a detailed description of the proposed study, includings its location, duration, methodology and support requirements and should be submitted to Regional Director, USFWS, 1101 East Tudor Rd, Anchorage, Ak 99503.
Seychelles New marine polltltion laws in the Seychelles recently promulgated mean that vessel owners, operators of landbased facilities or oil-transferring equipment will be liable to jail terms of up to five years and fines of up to 200 000 rupees (1 rupee=US $0.16) for discharging oil into the republic's territorial waters. Under the regulations proof that the oil was discharged to save a vessel, to prevent damage to it or its cargo or to save lives, or proof that the spill could not be stopped or prevented will mitigate liability. Anyone with such proof is required to report the position and estimated volume of any discharges to the Seychelles Harbour Master. Pollution control officers have been appointed to enforce the regulations with the right to board and investigate vessels within the Seychelles territorial waters which extend 200 miles into the Indian Ocean from each of its major island groups.
Scotland Half of the total otter population in the Shetlands was killed after the oil tanker Esso Bernicia crashed into the
Sullom Voe terminal in 1978, according to a study report by zoologists at Aberdeen University. The scientists, who have just published their findings in Volume 20 of Biological Conservation, say that they found 13 corpses out of a population of about 50-100, and state that three times as many others could have died, either from eating contaminated seabirds, grooming oil-covered fur, or by the oil destroying the insulating air layer in otters' fur which is vital to their keeping warm.
Canary Islands The need for 'ports of refuge' was again highlighted recently when Port authorities at Tenerife and Las Palmas refused to allow the fully laden Liberian tanker Schelderix into the Canary Islands for repairs. The 230 000 tonnes tanker began leaking oil after a crack developed in a port wing tank, while en route from the Persian Gulf to Rotterdam.
Middle East Bahrain has been selected as the location for the first Oceanexpo-Middle East Marine exhibition and symposia which is to be held from 15 to 18 February 1982. Among plans to be presented will be the Saudi-Sudan Commission's proposals to exploit the metal-bearing sediments of the Red Sea, Jordan's oceanographic project in the Gulf of Aqaba, and the development of the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia.
0025-326X/82/010005-02 $03.00/0 Pergamon Press Ltd.
Marine Pollution Bulletin, Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 5-6, 1982 Printed in Great Britain
Birds at North Sea Oil and Gas Installations A couple of years ago there was a great public concern over reports that many birds were being killed at North Sea gas flares (Fig. 1). We summarized the early records and described a year of more intensive investigations at the BP Forties Field during 1978-79 at the time (Mar. Pollut. Bull., 10, 124-125; North East Scotland Bird Report for 1978), and observations in the same autumn at Phillips' Ekoflsk Field to the south have been described by F. Hauge and S. Folkedal (Far Fuglefauna, 3, 220-226). R. A. F. Cox has since summarized observations at all Phillips' installations throughout the North Sea annually in North Sea Bird Watch Annual Reports, and P. Hope Jones has described more intensive investigations at Shell's Brent Field to the north by a Nature Conservancy Council 'Birds and Sea' unit financed by the UK Offshore Operator's Association (Br. Birds, 73, 547-555; Birds 8, 30). It appears to be generally agreed that the commonest species are, as might be expected, seabirds, notably the large Larus gulls, Kittiwakes Rossa tridactyla and Fulmars Fulmarus glacialis, which tend to gather under the lights at night to roost or feed on plankton. Only occasional stray landbirds are reported until the visibility deteriorates, with a maximum of 4500 thrushes circling the Brent Bravo
platform in fog and low cloud on 13 October 1979. Hope Jones reports that while some exhausted birds fell into the sea, most were still able to continue when the weather cleared, and deduced that the main risk was that they might be delayed while on migration.
t=
~bo •••Brent ~ "NiniQn . --
o°
~'~'
"Beryl
• °
.
~
D"
~'
oEkofisk
.~J~p
f
Fig. 1 0 i l f i e l d s mentioned in the text.
Marine Pollution Bulletin
Fig. 2 Infra-red satellite photograph of the weather over the Northern North Sea at 1452 h on. 13 October 1979. (Photograph supplied by Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics, University of Dundee.)
The meteorological situation then affords an interesting contrast to that which resulted in a large bird kill at the Beryl Field on 26 October 1976, illustrated in my previous note (Mar. Pollut. Bull., 10, 124-125). Figure 2 shows an infrared satellite photograph of the weather over the northern North Sea at 1452 h on 13 October 1979. There is an anticyclone over Iceland, and the cloud and fog along its southern boundary are covering Shetland (S) in the upper left-hand corner. Further south, cloud moving ahead of a depression over the Bay of Biscay is obscuring Aberdeen (A), although it has not yet covered Norway (N) to the east entirely. Presumably migrants took off from Norway while the weather was still clear there the previous evening, and were then drifted west in the easterly airstream ahead of the front approaching from the south until they came down in fog over the Brent Field (B) in the morning, where they remained until the weather cleared with the passage of the front north during the day. Since they had not been in the air long there was little mortality. This is an example of the 'cyclonic approach' to Britain described by Kenneth Williamson (Proc. X I Intern. Ornithol. Congr., 178-186) compared with the 'anticyclonic approach' shown in Mar. Pollut. Bull., 10, 125.
Before we become too complacent, it may also be useful to place on record that a scrutiny of the original records of the pioneer enquiry carried out by Bryan Sage has now provided a clue to the origin of reports of a mass mortality of storm-petrels at a drilling rig in Shetland waters in October 1973 which originally gave rise to complaint, in the form of a footnote " n o personal observations, but large numbers of 'small brown birds' killed during burning off at night". It now seems likely that there was in fact an incident then, though it probably involved landbirds rather than stormpetrels so that it was not recognized. It also seems increasingly clear that such events are unusual, presumably because, as shown by past radar observations (E. Eastwood, Radar Ornithology, London, 1967), few landbirds reach that area except as a result of drift by offshore winds. In such conditions it seems likely that far from delaying the birds, oil installations serve a useful function as landmarks which enable the birds to control their tendency to drift out to sea until the weather clears and they can resume their journey (Ibis, 122, 536-540).
W. R. P. BOURNE