ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews major impacts of oil spills in the tropics and the techniques for managing those oil spills, including recent dispersed-oil data. All of the East and West African and Caribbean nations fall on major oil tanker routes, as do Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asian countries. Local oil depots, refineries, and ports and harbors have higher accident rates than do petroleum transport ships. Oil spills present a different problem to the environmental manager and to the environmental scientist than do most pollution sources. The environmentalist must face the fact that the "mechanical option" is likely to result in much unmanaged oil. The choice of shoreline cleanup has several environmental hazards, if the shoreline surface — in contact with the oil — has coral or vegetation, mangroves, marshes, algae, and animals. One of the best uses of concentration mortality data for species has been seen in the simulations of oil spills and dispersed oil spills.
