Birds Oiled at Sea

This oiling causes severe distress for individual birds and can have significant impacts at the population level. Marine oil pollution from chronic operational discharges is both illegal and preventable.

The costs of taking appropriate action to prevent such discharges make it important to quantify, to the degree possible, the severe ecological consequences of continuing to release oil into the sea. Atlantic Canada is an important crossroads for seabirds, where productive marine waters support the tens of millions of birds. Huge numbers of birds from Newfoundland breeding colonies overlap with millions of seasonal visitors - wintering birds from colonies in Arctic Canada and Europe and from the south Atlantic.