Emergency response to disasters in Gulf of St. Lawrence CBC Radio Quebec
Friday October 25, 2013
In the event of an oil spill in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, who are you going to call? The Environment ministry of Quebec? New Brunswick? PEI? Newfoundland? The federal government? That’s just one of the problems scientists from around the world pinpointed at the Ocean Innovation Conference in Rimouski this week.
Listen to this short CBC interview with Dr. Émilien Pelletier, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Marine Ecotoxicology at the Université du Québec in Rimouski. He states that it would be “almost impossible” to recover oil, if a spill occurred in the winter in the Gulf. The ice cover would trap the oil under the surface for months, with it resurfacing in the spring, especially in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence. Strong winds in the Gulf, plus the ice cover, would make a clean up in the winter next to impossible.