James Pope
English 101-004
Mrs. Libka
1/28/13
Oily bird
Oil spills are horrible and harm all of the sea life, but also harms animals that don’t live in the sea like the pelican in the picture. Oil spills greatly effect birds in a few ways. First of all it inhibits there flight which could easily kill them. If a pelican got caught in an oil spill and couldn’t fly away, then he would just have to float along with the oil until he could dry off his wings. Secondly, it affects the bird’s food source. Pelican’s main diet is on live fish from the ocean, but when an oil spill occurs and all the fish are dead or can’t be reached by the pelican, then he has to work harder to find food. Even if the fish aren’t dead, they could still be poisoned because of the oil spill and potentially kill the pelican if it eats it. Not only does the oil spill effect the wildlife that thrives off the ocean, but it also effects the environment and people around it. An oil spill can poison large portions of water making it extremely difficult for the people living in that area to find fresh seafood. Also it affects people like surfers and others that frequent the beaches. Most importantly it affects the sea life. An oil spill turns the ecosystem in the ocean upside down. When the fish die from the oil spill then that means another fishes food supply is gone which could start a chain reaction and knockout a lot of the life under the sea. It is always important to take initiative to make sure that stuff like this never happens. Man isn’t perfect so were going to make some mistakes, but we need to really give it our best effort to make less off an impact on the natural world as possible. Maybe in the next couple years with the technology we have we could potentially not even need to pump oil anymore.