THE AMOCO CADIZ OIL SPILL 

 DISTRIBUTION AND EVOLUTION OF OIL POLLUTION IN MARINE SEDIMENTS 



by 



Michel Marchand, Guy Bodennec, Jean-Claude Caprais, and Patricia Pignet 



Centre Oceanologique de Bretagne - CNEXO 

 BP 337, 29273 BREST CEDEX, France 



INTRODUCTION 



In March 1978, the supertanker AMOCO CADIZ was stranded on shallow 

 rocks off Portsall (north Brittany), 2.5 km from the coast. Two hundred 

 twenty-three thousand tons of a mixture of Arabian light crude oil 

 (100,000 t) and Iranian light crude oil (123,000 t) flowed into the sea 

 without interruption from 17 March to 30 March. The maximum extent of 

 the oil slicks is presented in Figure 1. At this point, about 360 km of 

 coastline were polluted by the oil. 



The analyses of oil in seawater, measured by UV fluorescence spec- 

 troscopy (Marchand and Caprais, 1981), revealed that the oil spill 



FIGURE 1. Maximum extent of oil slicks on the sea surface, 17 March to 

 26 April 1978. 



143 



