injured birds and leave it to specialists to rescue the animals. one look at a distressed oiled pelican arriving at the center answered part of my question. the birds are dangerous and can be aggressive when under stress. note to bp reporter, you would be dangerous and aggressive too if some one smother you d with crude oil. understanding what an animal is going through, plucked out of the sticky oil and put into the world of man, gives workers the passion and staying power to get the sea birds ready for release, as quickly and safely as possible. one bird rescued is one victory over the comings there will be many victories and some painful losses. workers all along the gulf coast are using every ounce of their experience, skill, and compassion, to assure far more victories. you know, before bp press release theater i admit i was having a hard time keeping track of all the victories in the bp
pelican arriving at the center answered part of my question. the birds are dangerous and can be aggressive when under stress. note to bp reporter, you would be dangerous and aggressive, too, if someone had just smothered you with crude oil. understanding what an animal is going through, plucked out of the sticky oil and put into the world of man gives workers the passion and staying power to get the sea birds ready for release as quickly and safely as possible. one bird rescued is one victory. over the coming months, there will be many victories and some painful losses. workers all along the gulf coast are using every ounce of their experience, skill and compassion to assure far more victories. you know, before bp press release theater, i admit i was having a hard time keeping track of all the victories in the bp oil disaster, all the winning. the fish and wildlife service reported today that of the not quite 2,000 birds collected in
bill: we know the suffering of wildlife in the gulf region, from the oil spill is bringing back memories of another disaster, these are pictures no one can forget from 1989. the exxon valdez tanker hitting a reef in alaska, and the lessons learned in the recovery of alaskan wildlife would apply today. dan springer traveled to alaska last week and is back now, in seattle, and, years later, dan what are we learning of the impact of oil on animals. reporter: well, consider this, bill, 21 years ago the exxon valdez ran aground, a billion dollars has been spent studying the spill and while we ve learned a lot from those studies there is still a lot we don t know, for example, precise numbers of animals killed. they are really estimates, we didn t know how many were there or fish, prior to the spill. but, the estimates are staggering. up to a quarter million sea birds were killed. about 2500 see animals.
shoreline in the gulf that we would expect, but we also know that fisheries could be impacted for generations to come. jane: dan, years later what are those experts saying about how the oil in prince william sound actually did affect the wildlife? reporter: well, we know there s still lingering oil in the prince william sound, 21,000 gallons, and so it s the foraging animals like the sea otters still going in looking for food and still pulling up some oil from 21 years ago. we know that a quarter of a million sea birds were killed, 2800 otters, hundreds and hundreds of seals. in fact, the seals didn t die from eating or ingesting the oil, they died from inhaling the toxic fumes. so different animals died in different ways. twenty-two killer whales were killed, some of them because they lost their way in the prince william sound because two adult tea females were kill inside the oil spill, so they learned a lot about the social
that there is a second leak that has not been addressed. what the company says it must do here is to completely seal off the well head and that s not exactlied to happen for at least several days, if not much longer. juliet. david, we also want ooh update on the environmental impact and we saw some of your stories over the weekend, with the birds being cleaned. have you had any updates on that? one of the things that got an a lot of attention, a group of scientists spent weeks on a research vessel in the gulf and what they said they discovered is a series of underwater plumes of oil that they believe came from the spill. one of the scientists told us that the oxygen level near these plumes is about 30% less than normal, and that could pose a problem to marine life. now, another consequence of the oil spill, a number of sea birds, as you mentioned have been injured. one woman who went fishing this afternoon was about 15 miles out at sea when see says