• frequency and intensity of extreme weather events and other natural hazards, including:
  • Review and update of design criteria for extreme events in light of new data.
  • Assessment of modifications to existing structures needed to prevent or mitigate damage or spillage of oil resulting from extreme events.
  • Development of response plans and corresponding response capabilities to reduce and mitigate spills in case of damage due to extreme weather events.
• To mitigate potential spills from aging infrastructure, appropriate agencies should take inventory of the existing remnants of oil storage, transport, or production activities that still need to be identified. Salvage or capping of these facilities should be prioritized based on the potential impact if the infrastructure fails.
• In order to maintain response readiness, government should assess the economic and environmental impacts of changes in marine vessel transportation on pollution risk, such as introduction of new fuel types, increased vessel size, new types of cargoes (LNG, other gases, biofuels, and diluted bitumen), and new traffic patterns and offshore infrastructure.

7.3 MINIMIZING EFFECTS

Recommendation—Response Toolbox: Regulatory mechanisms should be introduced to encourage evaluation, permitting, and deployment of new advanced response techniques when they become available. The use of these techniques during actual emergency response should be guided by the specific scenario to ensure they add value and maximize health, safety, environmental, cultural, and socioeconomic protection.

Recommendation—Integration of Science with Response: Appropriate responsible agencies should plan for effective ways for rapid scientific response to oil spills to enable scientists to mobilize to the field quickly and in concert with response operations. This should involve rapid communication and approvals between all parties to define the operationally relevant science direction and gather relevant information for future decision making with respect to minimizing the effects of the spill.

Recommendation—New Products and Fuel Types: Government should fund research needed to study the composition, toxicity, and behavior of new types of marine fuels (e.g., low-sulfur fuel oil, very low sulfur fuel oil, biofuels) and petroleum products (e.g., diluted bitumen) so that fate and effects of these products can be understood and response operations can be planned and executed most effectively to reduce impacts.

Recommendation—Human Health Effects: The governmental agencies involved in responding to an oil spill should upgrade the priority and attention given to individual and community mental and behavioral effects and community social-economic disruptions in Incident Command Structure (ICS) decision-making and response processes. The inclusion of community-based human health assessment and mitigation measures into the ICS is needed to provide a more holistic approach regarding both human and ecosystem health.

Recommendation—Protection of Key Food Web Components and Endangered Species: Large oil spills contaminating productive marine ecosystems and shorelines may inflict mass mortalities on vulnerable species such as seabirds, marine mammals, and shoreline biota and disrupt the ecology in that location. Following a spill, appropriate environmental specialists (e.g., an environmental technical specialist in the incident command structure) should promptly identify these species, and ecological linkages should be promptly identified and their abundances in the affected region should be monitored, to enable detection of these indirect effects on populations at the community level and ensure their protection.

7.4 DATA TO ADVANCE THE SCIENCE

Recommendation—Baseline Knowledge and Data: There is a need to review how pertinent knowledge and data from numerous sources are most effectively assembled, made available, and archived, given the advances and gaps in understanding noted in this report.

• The review should assess what is needed for baseline knowledge and data with recognition that both natural and anthropogenic influences (other than inputs of oil) result in baselines that are dynamic in space and time.
• Funding should be established for appropriate baseline data acquisition and curation in locations of particular interest, such as coastal areas, areas with offshore energy exploration and production, and marine transportation routes.
• Data collections would include aspects such as physical oceanography, biogeochemical processes, contaminant source surveys, critical species (e.g., endangered, abundant, vulnerable, or of commercial importance) and marine biodiversity, and pertinent metrics of human health and well-being.
• As a corollary, guidelines should be developed for collecting and analyzing baseline data immediately after and in the midst of a spill from neighboring, unaffected (control) areas, where possible.
• For example, U.S. Interagency Cooperating Committee on Oil Pollution Research member agencies, in cooperation with relevant agencies from Canada and Mexico and other interested parties, should convene a series of regional workshops and studies to inform the most efficient process of defining and assembling the evolving baseline knowledge and data. These workshops should be inclusive in gathering relevant

• knowledge from stakeholders such as indigenous peoples; diverse rural, suburban, and urban coastal communities; government agencies; business and industry; nonprofit groups; and the academic sector. The assembled knowledge and data should be stored in a useful format to support oil spill response, oil spill damage assessment, and assessment of fates and effects of oils spills and other oil inputs.

Recommendation—Data Management and Interdisciplinary Research: Given the enormous datasets being generated through advanced chemical analyses, ‘omics techniques, geoscience surveys (among others), and especially field and laboratory studies pursuant to oil spills, the committee recommends the formation of a free central, universally accessible, and curated repository of information pertinent to oil in the sea. Optimum use of such archives will require development of data analytics, data quality control, and reporting standards for associated metadata to enable integration and interpretation by, and training of, interdisciplinary teams.

Recommendation—Arctic Studies: In agreement with previous reports, there should be a concerted effort to gather information about the fate of oil in Arctic marine ecosystems, with and without ice cover, in advance of further development of this region. This would include baseline surveys (geophysical and biological), efficacy of response and mitigation options, data acquisition on natural attenuation and active remediation strategies including biodegradation kinetics at low temperature, and effects on higher organisms, populations, and ecosystems in Arctic waters and on shorelines.

Recommendation—Monitoring Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Profiles in Sediments and Bivalves: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should reinstitute the nationwide NOAA National Status and Trends Mussel Watch Program involving nationwide sampling at the suite of stations previously sampled annually for more than two decades. These samples should be analyzed for an expanded suite of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon analytes and selected petroleum biomarker compounds to provide a better assessment of the status and trends of petrogenic hydrocarbon contamination of coastal waters. Instituting this simultaneously with a collaborative program with Canada could be beneficial to both countries in assessing the status and trends of petrogenic hydrocarbon contamination in coastal waters. The human health implications of these findings to seafood safety determinations should be evaluated.

7.5 FRAMEWORK TO ADVANCE THE RESEARCH

Recommendation—Long-Term Funding for Inputs, Fates, and Effects of Oil in the Sea: As recommended in Oil in the Sea III, there remains a need for long-term, sustained funding focused on oil in the sea to support multi-disciplinary research projects that address current knowledge gaps, including those listed as Research Needs throughout this report. Research is needed to address new regulatory requirements and to improve response capabilities. The application of new data and technologies to advance interdisciplinary knowledge of fates and effects of oil in the sea will require a longer funding commitment than in typical.

Recommendation—Field Studies: As recommended in previous studies, controlled in situ field trials using real oils should be planned, permitted, and funded to incorporate multi-disciplinary research focused on important processes as well as response techniques that do not accurately scale from in vitro or ex situ experiments to in situ conditions. Additionally, funding and systemic mechanisms should be set in place by appropriate agencies to enable rapid deployment of qualified scientific personnel during actual oil spill events (i.e., spills of opportunity) to conduct appropriate, time-critical research in situ, outside the Natural Resource Damage Assessment process, while having minimal or no interference with spill response activities.

Recommendation—Employing Advanced Analytical Techniques: To answer questions asked for appropriate use in forensic analyses of spilled oils and other inputs and in damage assessment and response activities, relevant agencies and research communities should:

• Incorporate recent advances in analytical chemistry techniques in standardized protocols. Continued expansion of the use of these techniques in research efforts connected with inputs, fates, and effect studies is strongly encouraged. The preceding should be accompanied by rigorous quality control and quality assurances for sampling and analyses underpinned by preparation, calibration, and maintenance of a suite of existing and expanded appropriate Standard Reference Materials by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology and comparable agencies in Canada and Mexico.
• Expand the current libraries of oil characteristics with more detailed analyses and reference oils.
• Utilize and continue to develop and validate ’omic technologies, and their rapid advancements, targeted at individuals (microbes to higher organisms) through environmental samples encompassing population and community compositions to provide information on oil fate and short- and long-term direct and indirect effects of oil exposure.

7.6 RESEARCH NEEDS TO ADVANCE THE SCIENCE

Chapters 4, 5, and 6 include detailed lists of specific research needed to advance understanding of fates of oil in the sea, of effects of oil on the marine environment, and of minimizing those effects through improved response. Tables 4.5, 5.4, and 6.3 include the committee’s recommendations on research needed to fill important gaps and to continue to progress oil spill science.