The Black Tide

As the 207,000-ton supertanker Marpessa sailed serenely past West Africa on the second leg of her maiden voyage, an explosion suddenly ripped her hull. Last week the shattered hulk slipped to the bottom about 50 miles off Dakar. Marpessa was the biggest oil tanker to sink to date. Fortunately, she was empty--a narrow escape from what has become a serious threat to the surprisingly vulnerable ocean.

The potential for oil-pollution disaster has increased along with the size of tankers. In World War II 16,000-ton tankers were standard. Today 300,000-ton behemoths ply the sea, and larger ships are planned. As the Torrey Canyon dramatically demonstrated in 1967, one ship can cause a major calamity. In the past five years 94 tankers have foundered; two collisions occur every week. Then there is the rising risk of dangerous pollution from offshore oil wells. Last spring a presidential panel investigating the Santa Barbara Channel blowout concluded that the U.S. faces one major oil spill every year after 1980.

Pernicious Pollution. Dramatic oil spills in coastal waters capture the public's concern by killing countless marine creatures and sea birds. But more pernicious is the long term effect of chronic pollution from tankers flushing their storage compartments at sea. That, along with other everyday mishaps, adds up to 284 million gallons of spilled oil every year--about ten times the amount that oozed from the Torrey Canyon, and enough to coat a beach 20 ft. wide with a half-inch layer of oil for 8,633 miles. Scientists are increasingly worried that this oil could be poisonous to ocean plankton, a key source of photosynthesis that produces most of the earth's oxygen.

Currently Congress is considering a stiff bill to make oilmen liable for pollution in coastal waters. In Brussels last month, delegates from 49 countries met to tackle the problem of assigning liability for oil spills on the high seas. What is left unsolved is a really efficient way of removing oil from the ocean without further damaging marine life. In Manhattan last week, oilmen attending a three-day conference on oil spills, sponsored by the Federal Government and the oil industry, were told that spreading straw on top of the water is still one of the best ways to sop up the black tide. But, as Lavon P. Haxby, an expert on oil control, put it: "In an age when we can reach the moon, we should be able to do better than this."

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