The iconic Torrey Canyon oil spill of 1967 - Marking its legacy

Peter G.Wells

International Ocean Institute, Dalhousie University,
 6414 Coburg Road, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 4R2, Canada

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history:

Received 29 November 2016

Accepted 5 December 2016

March 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the SS Torrey Canyon oil spill and cleanup, off the Cornwall coast in

the English Channel. It was the world's first major supertanker disaster. It was a signature event in the marine

pollution field, especially related to oil spill response and the initiation of scientific studies of monitoring and

researching the fate and effects of oil in the sea. This paper recalls this event, notes our growing understanding

of marine pollution and global efforts for cleaner seas, and encourages further work on both oil and the many

emerging environmental issues affecting the marine environment.

© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Next year (March 2017)marks the 50th anniversary of the SS Torrey

Canyon supertanker oil spill and cleanup, off the Cornwall coast in the

English Channel. It was the world's first major supertanker disaster

(Hall, 2007; Barkham, 2010). Itwas a signature event in themarine pollution

field, especially related to oil spill response and scientific studies

ofmonitoring and researching the fate and effects of oil in the sea. Its anniversary

is an opportunity to recall this event, to note our growing understanding

of marine pollution and global efforts for cleaner seas, and

to encourage further work on both oil and themany emerging environmental

issues affecting the sea.

The Torrey Canyon was a very visible and well-documented spill,

given its location and size (119,000 tonnes of Kuwait crude). It killed

N25,000 seabirds and numerous other marine organisms, engaging

public attention for months. The spill coated beaches in southern England

(approx. 200 km of Cornish coast), the Channel Islands, and

northwestern France. It stimulated several UK studies reported upon

soon after the event (Corner et al., 1968; Nelson-Smith, 1968, 1972;

Simpson, 1968; Spooner, 1968, 1969; Southward and Southward,

1978; Zuckerman, 1967), two books (Cowan, 1968; Smith, 1968), and

scientific concern about coastal pollution from oil and many other

toxic chemicals, in numerous countries. At the time, relatively little

was known about the fate and effects of petroleum derived hydrocarbons

in the sea. The event was also followed shortly afterwards in

North America by the barge Florida spill in Buzzards Bay,Massachusetts

(1968), the Santa Barbara oil platform blowout off California (1969),

and the tanker Arrow bunker C spill in Chedabucto Bay, NS, Canada

(1970). All of these events helped initiate several decades of marine

oil spill impact and recovery studies.

The Torrey Canyon spill was burned, bombed, sprayed with

chemicals and physically removed from shorelines. It was the first,

major offshore and shoreline use of chemicals on a large spill. Unfortunately,

theywere first-generation dispersants (solvent-emulsifiers) and

detergents (solvent based cleaning agents, ITOPF, 2014). They proved to

be of limited effectiveness for the job of dispersing the oil at sea and for

cleaning the beaches, and where used on shorelines, they caused considerable

further ecological damage. The spill gave dispersants a bad

name that has lasted for decades.

The spill also occurred at a time when environmentalism was becoming

a prominent force in western society. Rachel Carson's Silent

Spring (Carson, 1962) had just been published to great acclaim. Toxic

waste dumps were prolific in the USA (these eventually led to super

fund site cleanups), there was the wide-scale use of Agent Orange in

Vietnam, and countries were recognizing the implications of the

burgeoning global human population. Public and political concern,

from local to international, was mounting.

It was shortly after the Torrey Canyon spill that the predecessor of the

Marine Pollution Bulletin began, initiated by Dr. Robert (Bob) Clark, University,

Newcastle upon Tyne, England. It was a mimeographed Newsletter

with a limited distribution to aquatic and marine pollution

specialists. Clark then became the first and long standing Editor when

the newsletter transitioned with Pergamon Press to the current journal

in 1970.

The influence in the marine pollution field left by the Torrey Canyon

disaster, and followed by the other accidents (some mentioned above),

has beenmulti-faceted. Over the past 50 years, there has been a huge investment

in oil pollution research, and research on a vast array of other

chemicals and physical threats to the sea. For oil, the result has been

thousands of papers and reports, and several major syntheses, such as

the US National Academy of Sciences and National Research Council reviews

of oil in the sea (NAS, 1975, 1985; NRC, 1989, 2003, 2005). The

Marine Pollution Bulletin xxx (2016) xxx–xxx

E-mail address: Oceans2@ns.sympatico.ca.

MPB-08232; No of Pages 2

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2016.12.013

0025-326X/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Marine Pollution Bulletin

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/marpolbul

Please cite this article as: Wells, P.G., The iconic Torrey Canyon oil spill of 1967 - Marking its legacy, Marine Pollution Bulletin (2016), http://

dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2016.12.013

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