There’s Still Oil on This Beach 26 Years After the Exxon Valdez Spill (Part 3) | National Geographic

So we pulled into this Bay and we're waiting for the tide to drop. Down, the tide is dropping just before midnight, so we basically have to wait it out. We can look at one of these beaches where we're told there's oil, and swimming over the top of the beach are several hundred pink salmon. It is a salmon that people and animals eat. Here, there are hundreds of salmon swimming over the spot where we're told that there's toxic oil from 26 years ago. Whether or not the oil is there, we'll find out once this tide moves.

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I mean, this guy is spawning. You can see he's got the characteristics; he's starting at a hump on the top. The salmon is spawning the Next Generation. Get back in the water. He's okay.

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Pull up that map, huh? So, this is interesting. This is a map that shows the extent of the spill. Apparently, oil came to this beach and 1,500 miles that way too, down the illusion chain. So this is a beach that apparently may still have oil.

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So this is an oil Zorb that we took off the boat, and it is designed for oil to cling to it. If you dip it in water, it will come out white, and if you dip it in oil, it will come out black.

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So this rock is teeming with life. You have kelp, crab, you have barnacles, snail, you have muscles, and you have barnacles on those muscles. This is part of a food chain that we are part of, and it's not 5 years after the spill—it's 25, 26 years after an oil spill.

Look at that! I just flipped over a rock and touched the bottom of it. That's what dirt looks like. Watch.

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This—that's not dirt; it's oil. Smell this! Wow, it smells! It smells just like gasoline. A few hours ago, when the tide was high, we watched hundreds of salmon swim right over the top.

How would you like to eat a fish that swam over a bed of oil?

On the last day of our expedition, we hear that Craig has found more killer whales. We got big fins! We got the killer whales! This is awesome! He's following a pod feeding off salmon.

Hello there!

Hi! It's tedious work, but if he can collect salmon scales from a fresh kill, Craig can match the fish to a known spawning site. This helps him build a map for the food source of the killer whales.

There they are, scales right here. I got to get down down there. Should—oh yeah, I got plenty.

So these are the scales—salmon scales. Yeah, when you see them all come together like that, they're coming and get their share. You know, you get the age of the fish, and now we get the location the fish came from—in the case of salmon. Mainly, I'm interested in what species of fish they're feeding on, when, and where.

Also on the boat is Craig's wife and longtime research partner, Eva, who's written extensively on the fate of the killer whales that were caught up in the spill, especially the Chugach pod.

The females in the group are getting older. The two main females are getting older, and so it's inevitable that they're going to die off. They're post-reproductive; they're totally genetically unique. They are acoustically completely unique—like there's no other transients that sound really anything like them.

The females in the Chugach pod are now past reproductive age and will never have babies. With that, the pod will go extinct, perhaps due to the massive blow the spill had at the time, the lingering effects of the spill, or a combination of the two.

It's sort of miraculous that there's still these seven that have been swimming around for all these years now! There are systems out there that these animals are dependent on, and if you want to have these animals around, you've got to protect the systems.

When the Exxon spill occurred, it was the largest in U.S. history. Today, not only is it no longer the largest, but there are more than 50 spills worldwide that have surpassed what happened here 26 years ago.

This expedition has been remarkable. The area that we passed through is profoundly beautiful. There's no question, and it's remote. It is not easy to get here, but when you do get here, you find amazing individuals who have dedicated their lives to continuing to ring that bell and say, "Don't forget! As you dig further and reach deeper for more remote pockets of oil and sensitive ecosystems, remember how long this stuff sticks around. It kills when it spills, and it kills long after the—"

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Fact-y warning: Tuesday, today, Southwest 30 knots, sea 7 ft building to 12 ft in the afternoon. Smells like a gas station. There's this big social disruption, and then some, the survivors are ill also.