Oil spills

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Oil spills
According to Fattal et al., oil spills in marine environments can have long term effects not only to wildlife, coastal habitats and fisheries but also to human beings respectively (889). Even though the number of oil spills has decreased from tanker accidents, accidental oil spills caused by maritime transport are still a significant source of pollution for the oceans in the world. Oil spills can occur when individuals make mistakes or become careless thus causing an oil tanker to leak oil into the ocean. In addition to that, oil spills can occur when equipment breaks down thus making the tanker to get stuck on shallow land. This eventually forces individuals to start driving the tanker thus resulting to creation of a hole that initiates the leaking of oil. When two countries are at war, one of them may decide to dump oil into another`s country ocean to gain attention or make a point. Some people also dump oil illegally into the oceans as they do not want to spend a lot of cash on decomposing their waste crude oil or breaking up the oil.
Effects of oil spills on the environment and how it affects the world
Over the years, oil spills have significantly contributed to marine and coastal pollution thus causing disturbance of the coastal environment. The potential harmful effects of this hazard have been taken into account through the implementation of preventive actions in Coastal zone Integrated Management (Fattal et al. 879).
Effects of oil spills on wild life and Habitats
Oil spills have a diverse impact on the wildlife and its habitats through physical contact inhalation, ingestion and absorption. Floating oil often contaminates planktons which includes fish eggs, algae and larvae of various invertebrates that inhabit the waters. Fish that feed on the plankton that are contaminated with oil spills, often affects the larger food chains including the bigger fish, birds, terrestrial animals and even the human who consume the contaminated organisms. Oil spills have a great impact on the species that use the water surface including the waterfowl and sea otters and also the species that inhabit the near shore environment ("Effects of oil spills on wildlife and habitats" 1). Due to the persistence of oil spills in the environment for longer periods often results to the shifts in population structure, species diversity, abundance and their distribution. Loss of habitat and prey items through oil spills has the capability of affecting wildlife and fish populations at large.
Impacts of oil spill on a country`s economy
Oil spill results to direct and indirect effects. The indirect effects consists of the following, loss of jobs in t...