Drift Cards Dropped

This note just came in from Katie over at Friends of the San Juans…

Sample drift card – click for larger image

We just dropped 400 ‘drift cards’ – forest certified, biodegradable plywood cards, each with a unique serial number – along oil tanker routes in the Gulf and San Juan islands. We chose today because it is the 25th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Today’s launch, organized by FRIENDS in the US and Raincoast Conservation Foundation and Georgia Strait Alliance in Canada, is part of a larger study to map the path an oil spill might take, and inform our understanding of the impacts of a potential spill on the Salish Sea as a whole. The cards were dropped at Turn Point in Haro Strait and Bird Rocks in Rosario Strait, high-risk locations in the shipping lanes. The cards carry a simple message: this could be oil.

The project is in response to the fossil fuel export projects proposed in BC and Washington which would add an additional 2,620 vessel transits per year to the already crowded waters of the Salish Sea, making it one of North America’s busiest fossil fuel shipping corridors. A single spill from the larger tankers and cargo ships associated with the proposed projects could have a devastating environmental and economic impact on par with the Exxon Valdez.

On March 24th, 1989, the Exxon Valdez struck a reef in Prince William Sound, spilling more than 11 million gallons of crude oil. Despite containment efforts, the oil coated 1,300 miles of coastline. Twenty-five years later, an estimated 20,000 gallons of Valdez crude oil is still in Alaska’s sand and soil.

Please help us with this research project by staying on the lookout for the pink drift cards on local beaches and shores. To report a card that you find and view the results of the study to date, visit www.SalishSeaSpillMap.org. To report a card by phone contact our office at (360) 378-2319.

Thank you for your support!
Katie

P.S. And if you find a card, we’d love it if you could take a picture of you holding the card – share it with us, and we’ll share it on our Facebook page!

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