Exxon Valdez oil spill lingers in Alaska
In one fishing village, residents say they've never recovered from the 1989 disaster. Now the Supreme Court is hearing arguments on whether the company should pay $2.5 billion in punitive damages.
CORDOVA, ALASKA — By way of telling his story, and the story of this fishing village, Mike Maxwell -- born, raised and hoping to die here -- wants to talk about what happened to the herring.
They were the little kings of the sea in these parts. They ran so thick in Prince William Sound that some days, it was said, you could walk on the water stepping on their silvery-blue backs.
When the Exxon Valdez spilled its oil in March 1989, the world saw images of blackened seabirds and otters and seals, of bloated whale carcasses and once-pristine beaches covered with crude. Hardly anything was said about the herring.
No one at the time understood the fish's central place in the ecosystem, nor did anyone know the herring's demise would lead to years of hardship for the people here.
"It's scary what we didn't know," says Maxwell, 47, a scruffy, balding, big-boned man with a small voice.
The herring disappeared four years after the spill -- long after intense public scrutiny had faded and the story line had devolved into squabbling between lawyers.
Exxon claimed the region recovered quickly. Government scientists, however, said oil remained and was still working its way through the ecosystem in a process that would last decades. At the back of a local tavern, hand-scrawled graffiti expresses a common sentiment here: "Oil spills are forever."
In December, nearly 19 years after the spill, scientists published the most definitive study of its kind linking Exxon oil with the collapse of the herring population. Oil killed adult herring, but more significantly, it damaged eggs and larvae.
Surviving fish developed lesions in their livers. Larvae hatched prematurely and never grew to their full 8 or 9 inches. They showed depressed immune systems, which made them susceptible to disease.
The population, which used to be scooped up by the millions of tons, never recovered and, from indications, may never return.
Countless species, including salmon, depended on the little fish as a food source, said Richard Thorne, a fisheries scientist and coauthor of the study. And Cordova fishermen, like Maxwell, made a living on herring. He fished in the summer and mended nets in the winter.
