Date of incident: November 7, 2007.
Location: Central San Francisco Bay, California.
Trustees:
Case status: Immediately following the release of oil, the Natural Resource Damage
Assessment (NRDA) Trustees arrived on scene to begin the time-critical assessment of natural
resource injuries. The Trustees are working in cooperation with representatives from
the Responsible Party. The ongoing NRDA efforts have been organized to focus field efforts on
a number of critical resource categories, including fish, birds, marine mammals,
beaches, wetlands, eelgrasses, rocky intertidal habitat, human use and cultural/historical
resources. These multiple specialized resource teams have been in the field collecting
the time critical data necessary to document information about degrees of oiling in each of
these habitats, oil toxicity, observations of dead and oiled wildlife, and other impacts
that will ultimately be used to scale appropriate restoration in the NRDA.
Overview: The container ship M/V Cosco Busan struck a portion of
the fendering system for the Delta Tower of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in San Francisco Bay,
CA, at 08:30 PST November 7, 2007. The collision tore a large gash in the hull of the vessel,
and 58,000 gal of fuel oil (IFO 380) was released into the water. The oil quickly spread to other
parts of San Francisco Bay and the outer coast (north and south of the Golden Gate), washing
ashore along many miles of sensitive coastline, including beaches, rocky intertidal habitats,
coastal lagoons and wetlands.
