This slideshow is about The Amoco Cadiz Oil Spill, which was an environmental disaster. It was one of the biggest oil spills of its time.

1. -Tanushree Sikdar

2. The Amoco Cadiz was a very large crude carrier(supertanker) under
the Liberian flag of convenience owned by an American company
Amoco; a global chemical and oil company that was founded in 1889 in
Indiana, United States.
The tanker had departed from the Persian Gulf and was en route
to Rotterdam, Netherlands with one schedule stop at Lyme
Bay, England with a cargo of 1.6 millon barrels of light crude oil worth
over 40 milllon (USD).

5. What
happen
ed?
When the vessel entered the English channel,
on the 16th of March, the weather conditions
were really bad.
Inclement weather conditions wrecked the
vessel’s steerage equipment completely,
preventing its maneuvering in the water. The
crew attempted to repair the rudder, but the
damage was too severe. The Cadiz
notified other vessels to standby and later
requested a tug around 11:20am, and though
tugging vessels, were prompt to respond, the
continuing rough weather forestalled the
tugging operations at the earliest. The resultant
delay caused the oil tanker to further adrift
near to the shore line, compounding the
problems.

6. All day and even throughout the night, the rescue team attempted to fix the situation. The crew
was rescued by French Naval Aviation Helicopters at midnight, but a few crew members
including the captain decided to stay behind.
However, at around 10am the next morning, the vessel broke into two, releasing the entire cargo
of 1.6 million barrels (250,000 m3) of oil, and broke again eleven days later from the buffeting of
high stormy seas.
Severe weather resulted in the complete breakup of the ship before any oil could be pumped out
of the wreck, resulting in its entire cargo of crude oil and 4,000 tons of fuel oil being spilled into
the sea.
No crew person lost his life though the captain undertaking his responsibility monitored the
condition in situ, till he was suitably discharged from his captaincy duties.

9. After
effect
s….
The resulting oil spill from the Amoco Cadiz was the largest to that
date. A 12 mile slick formed and washed ashore onto 45 mile stretch
of the French shoreline. The nature of the oil and rough seas
contributed to the rapid formation of a "chocolate
mousse" emulsification of oil and water. More than 20,000 birds
perished and the local marine life wad deeply impacted.
Mortalities of most animals occurred over the two months following
the spill. Two weeks following the accident, millions of
dead molluscs, sea urchins, and other bottom dwelling organisms
washed ashore.
Diving birds constituted the majority of the nearly 20,000 dead birds
that were recovered. The oyster mortality from the spill was estimated
at 9,000 tons. Fishermen in the area caught fish with skin ulcerations
and tumors.
Alongside it was also observed that the reproductive cycle and the
ability of various fauna was damaged extensively, which caused grave
concerns about the oil spillage accident.
Fishing activities took a huge hit as most of the caught fishes either
showed symptoms of extensive health damage or were already dead
because of the extensiveness of the oil contamination.

10. Initiativ
es to
clean up
Government efforts were only able to recover
some 20,000 tons of oil.
By May, cleanup process remained slow-moving.
Six thousand French soldiers continued to clean tar
from the beaches and bays two months after the
spill. Thousands of volunteers who came to help
were encouraged to leave due to difficulties of
organization and lodging.
French soldiers were still searching coastlines for
oil four months after the Amoco Cadiz spill; some
felt the cleanup would never be over. U.S. scientists
believed one-third of the oil made it to shore,
leaving the rest lost to evaporation and the sea.
Overall, the disaster caused serious financial losses
-- one estimate claimed the price of cleanup efforts
and business losses exceeded $100 million dollars.

11. The French government presented several claims and damages to United States
courts.
In 1978, it was estimated to have caused US$250 million in damage to fisheries
and tourist amenities. The French government presented claims totalling US$2
billion to United States courts.
In subsequent legal proceedings in Chicago, United States, France was awarded
US$120 million from the American oil company Amoco in 1990.

12. “As a general conclusion, it is rather
premature to decide whether the
ecosystems and populations of the
impacted areas will ever regain their
original state, and it is also premature
to give precise indications on how long
it will take before the new or the
former stable age distributions and
equilibrium species assemblages will
be attained.”
- Published in a
French paper in
1983

13.  http://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/1983/publication-5378.pdf
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoco_Cadiz_oil_spill#Oil_spill
 https://www.shipwrecklog.com/log/history/amoco-cadiz/
 https://www.marineinsight.com/case-studies/the-gruesome-amoco-cadiz-oil-
spill-incident/
 http://www.counterspill.org/article/amoco-cadiz-brief-history