OIL, CLEANUP STILL WREAK HAVOC ON MARINE LIFE, NEW STUDIES SAY

By CHARLES WOHLFORTH and KIM FARARO
Daily News reporters

ANCHORAGE- Fish and other marine life that live along beaches around Prince William Sound were severely harmed by the Exxon Valdez oil spill and its cleanup, according to three studies recently made public. And they say the damage is continuing.

Here are the new findings:

* Small fish that live in gravel along the beaches in the Sound were found to contain enzymes linked to carcinogens, according to a Department of Environmental Conservation study this summer.

* Clams appear to have survived the spill, but not the cleanup. Beaches that were cleaned of oil were found to contain only one-tenth the number of clams on beaches left undisturbed, says a National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration study.

* Marine organisms, which were killed in large numbers last year, have continued to die at an alarming rate on Green Island in the Sound this summer, according to University of Alaska Fairbanks biologists.

Each study represents a narrow attempt to establish the extent of the damage from the spill. Much of the research being done has been shrouded in secrecy by the state and federal governments' pending lawsuits against Exxon. Attorneys for the government fear disclosure would hurt their cases.

But the DEC planned its own study on the spill's effect on fish because state officials insist that the oil buried in beaches is still harming marine life and must be removed. That study, released Tuesday, showed that small fish that live in the beach gravel and were exposed to oiled water showed significantly higher levels of an enzyme linked to cancer than did fish in unoiled water. The state had collected fish and placed some in water near areas heavily hit by the spill, and others in areas relatively unaffected. The enzymes were found in the livers.

Other studies have shown that fish produce the enzyme when exposed to oil pollution. Those studies also show that the enzyme can spur the conversion of some hydrocarbons which make up oil into carcinogenic compounds.

"This study shows that the assumption that has been made that oil is no longer causing stress on the environment is wrong," said Randy Bayliss, the state's cleanup chief. "The watchword has been let Mother Nature do this and that, but Mother Nature's livers are not very happy."

The study, and a related Fish and Game study, also showed the enzyme exists in some commercial fish, including pink salmon fry. Fish and Game's study on salmon fry is not complete, and DEC said its sampling of other commercial fish was too small to draw any scientific conclusions.

Bayliss said, however, this does not mean that commercial fish are threatened, nor that people are at risk from eating affected fish.

"A lot of studies have shown Alaska's seafood is safe to eat," he said. "All this means is that there is some stress on some fish. What degree of that stress will cause cancer in fish no one knows and no one knows what it means to eat fish with cancer. You can't jump from one level to the other."

Bayliss plans to use the study to back up the DEC in its battle to force further beach cleanup than that deemed necessary by federal spill officials. The DEC and the Coast Guard have been debating how much cleanup is necessary, and when its harmful effects outweigh the advantages of removing the oil.

State and federal spill officials recently have been arguing about the best way to clean up oil left on Ushagat Island in the Barren Islands. The state wanted oil removed from the site, but Coast Guard Rear Adm. David Ciancaglini, the federal official in charge of the cleanup, recently denied that request.

The Coast Guard has ordered instead that workers uncover oil estimated by the state at 5,000 gallons so it can be washed away by winter storms. On Tuesday, Bayliss said he hoped the report would cause Ciancaglini to change his mind.

Ciancaglini said Tuesday he just received the report and needed time before commenting. An Exxon spokesman said the company had not yet received the report.

Despite the state's contention that more cleanup is needed, another recently released study by NOAA argues that past cleanup work could have proved harmful.

NOAA's study is expected to take several more months, but the agency's Alan Mearns said researchers have already found that clams were nearly wiped out by cleanup work. NOAA compared beaches that were never oiled, with beaches that were oiled but not clean and beaches that were oiled but received at least one dose of treatment to remove the oil.

The unoiled beaches and the untreated beaches had about the same quantity of little neck clams apparently the oil did not reduce their numbers. But the treated beaches had only a tenth as many clams as either the oiled or unoiled beaches that weren't treated, Mearns said.

Cleanup work last year ranged from teams of workers wiping rocks with absorbent pads to barges mounted with high-pressure nozzles to blast the rocks with scalding water. A NOAA study last year found that the hot water was killing most of the living organisms, as well as plants and creatures living underwater near the shore.

University of Alaska Fairbanks Professor Glenn Juday said organisms have continued to die at an alarming rate even this summer. He was studying three sites on Green Island before the spill. Last summer, his team found many of the oiled organisms were dead.

Then, this summer, they returned and were surprised to find even higher mortality. Juday said he didn't know if the additional die-off was caused by continued poisoning from oil that remains, or if the organisms were damaged by the initial hit of oil and simply took a year to die.

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