Science Ace term 3- Oil Spills

This is my science ace that i did this term, and i want to post it up here to show.

Oil Spills
First of all, i am going to tell you what are oil spills. An oil spill is a spillage of crude oil or petroleum in the sea. The cause of these spillages are usually oil rigs in the sea that have reptured or damaged oil tankers that leak oil in the water.

You may ask, why are oil spills so important? They are important because they can greatly disrupted the lives of the fish and animals depending on the sea for food and shelter. For example, if a bird lands on oil covered water, the bird will get coated in oil and may even ingest some oil. This is very serious and may result in the bird dying as the feathers lose their ability to insulate themselves and could freeze to death at high alltitudes. Furthurmore, if birds or marine animals ingest the oil, they will not be able to digestion properly and will also have kidney failure

Luckily, we have measures to clear oil away from the sea even though some may not be very effective. When oil reaches a shore, the government in that area will set up boomers around the body of water to prevent the oil from escaping. Skimmers are then used to clear away the oil. However this method cannot clear away much oil. On the open sea, bioremediation is used more often as it only speeds up nature's process of breaking down the oil and thus does not harm the environment as much as the other methods of clearing oil.

Some of the biggest oil spills in history are:
1. The Persian Gulf War: 4million barrels of oil were spilt
2. The Exxon Valdex: 1mil gallons of oil were spilt
3. The Monongahela River spill: 1million gallons of oil were spilt.

Some measures the government have taken include:
1.inspecting oil rigs to check for any ruptures or cracks that may leak oil into the sea.
2.Impose laws to regulate oil spills.
3.Tankers must have a double hull when delivering oil so as to prevent oil from leaking out.
4. The US enacted the Oil Pollution Act of 1990

Things we could do to lessen the amount of oil used is to use public transportation, put a container another the car engine to catch any oil andwalk or use a bicycle.
We have come to the end of the Science Ace, i hoped you enjoyed it.