The coastal waters are most susceptible to pollution, because of the concentration of urban activities near coasts and rivers that eventually enter the sea. In Korea, metropolitan and medium size cities and ports are located near the coasts and estuary, and other coastal areas are widely used for resorts, fishing and cultivation. therefore oil spill can be a disaster to marine environment if spill accident happen in the coastal waters. In this regards, I culled the historical spill data and analyzed them focusing on the root cause of accident and the response techniques applied to the major oil spills which occurred in the coastal waters for past 16 years(1988~2003), then make some criteria of response options for future oil spill.
The results of study are as follows.
(1) Majority of spill is caused by operational failure, weather, violation of navigation rule and hull defect, therefore it requires responsible authority(MOMAF & KNMPA) to provide appropriate education and training program for ship's watch officers to be quality-upgraded, at the same time, strict inspection to hull condition should be made at the time of every inspection and/or survey.
(2) Preferable response tools employed in korean coastal waters were booming, recovery by skimmer or sorbent and dispersant use at the early stage of spill. These action such as deploying boom in the rough seas and applying dispersant to oil slick nearshore seems to be without due regard to type of spilled oil, weather condition, distance from shore and water depth.
(3) According to the historical data for past 16 years(1988~2003), mechanical recovery can be applied under the condition of SG of 0.87~0.97, wind speed of less than 20knots, current of less than 2knots and deploying only booms around sensitive area is helpful tools under dense fog. Regarding dispersant use, it can be applied under the condition of SG of 0.87~0.97, sea water temperature of more than 2℃, depth of more than 10m and it can also be applicable to the case that oil slick does not reach the shore within about 6.5 hours. However, considering that the developed countries such as U.S.A and England recently tend to mitigate the criteria for easy and prompt use of dispersant, it need to be reviewed that dispersant use is one of primary response options in Korea.
Historical response data used for this study seems to be not enough to establish the criteria for appropriate response techniques to future oil spill accidents, thus the author will continue to cull response reports and analyze to seek more practical and applicable response tools.