Best Way to Protect a Bay? Be Prepared

Imagine 2,000 gallons of crude oil spilling into Washington’s Padilla Bay. Which places need protection first? Where should booms be placed to capture the spreading slick? How can they be deployed in a shallow bay that is also home to one of the largest eelgrass meadows in the nation?

The Padilla Bay Reserve is helping local groups navigate questions like these with data, monitoring, and a workshop focused on disaster response to oil spill risk. The event engaged participants from NOAA, the United States Coast Guard, Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, Samish Indian Nation, Skagit County, Washington’s Department of Ecology, local oil refineries, and others.

“I wish there were more opportunities to participate in workshops like this one,” observes Conor Keeney, an emergency management specialist with Marathon-Andeavor Petroleum.  “By including a diverse group of stakeholders, natural resource experts were able to inform regulators, industry representatives, and response contractors about areas of concern. After the workshop, there was field work that led to a new protection strategy at Saddlebag Island. I attribute that and the relationships we’ve built directly to the workshop.”

The nearly 8,000 acres of eelgrass protected by the Padilla Bay Reserve are home to salmon, herring, crabs, and many more marine species that are key to the state’s fishing and tourism industries. It’s also bordered by oil and natural gas pipelines, a railroad that transports oil, and a highway that delivers refinery products across the state. Coordinated oil-spill prevention and response is vital to protect the bay’s wildlife and the many benefits it provides. The Padilla Bay Reserve is well-suited to help meet that need, according to Roger Fuller, the Reserve’s stewardship coordinator.

 Low tide at Padilla Bay reveals a sweeping expanse of eelgrass habitat and the challenges of navigation during an oil spill. Image courtesy of the Padilla Bay Reserve.

“The workshops helped us understand how the Reserve could be involved in a spill response and what more we should be prepared to do in terms of monitoring and research,”he says. “It was clear that we can help response crews be more effective at preventing ecological damage through our local expertise.”

For example, Reserve staff have already digitized a navigation map that will help responders wind their way through the bay’s sinuous channels, avoid grounding, and access sensitive habitats that need protection. They also have led land-based tours of the places that would be involved in oil spill response so that planning partners can see firsthand how different seasons, tides, wind directions, and water-level conditions could affect the team’s proposed landing sites and boat operations.

“We’d like to have a sampling plan ready, so that the Reserve is poised to initiate research in the event of a major incident,” says Fuller. “Identifying baseline data gaps now is helping us prioritize our monitoring work; we need to have good baseline data and tested protocols in place prior to an event.”

This kind of foresight and planning could be helpful beyond Padilla Bay, according to Jude Apple, the Reserve’s manager.

“What we learned about improving oil spill response here can also be used in neighboring bays, such as Fidalgo and Samish,” he says. “We plan to revise the existing response strategies for different habitat areas in the Reserve and coordinate our internal efforts around habitat response and recovery and potential post-spill monitoring.”