On March 24, 1989, the supertanker Exxon Valdez was making its way through Prince William Sound after having been fully loaded with crude oil at the Valdez Marine Terminal in Alaska. The decision was made to deviate from the normal shipping lane due to small icebergs as opposed to slowly smashing through them. As a result, the Exxon Valdez struck Bligh Reef and ran aground. The ship’s tanks ruptured, resulting in the largest oil spill in U.S. waters at the time, with 10.8 million gallons of crude oil leaking into the water.
A similar tragedy occurred in the two-part “Coyote Tears” storyline of the Green Arrow comic book, published in early 1990. Writer Mike Grell constructed three separate narrative threads around the grounding and subsequent rupturing of the Argon Warrior supertanker in the Gulf of Alaska. The first involved Green Arrow’s hunt for the missing Captain Springsteen, while the second follows a coyote as she surveys the damage on the environment caused by the oil spill. The final thread deals with the half-truths and spin by Argon Oil to minimize the public relations damage to the multibillion-dollar corporation.
Captain Springsteen was reportedly operating the Argon Warrior while drunk, which directly resulted in the shipwreck and oil spill. Argon Oil is thus intent on hiding Springsteen from both the authorities and media – at least for the time being – and secretly transport him to a corporate-owned cabin deep in the Alaska wilderness. Back in Seattle, a restless Green Arrow decides to do what he does best, i.e., hunt, and heads for Alaska to track down the captain.
Accusations of drunkenness were likewise lobbed against Exxon Valdez captain Joseph Hazelwood. Like Springsteen, Hazelwood vanished after the initial reports of his drinking made the front-page news, but unlike his counterpart in Green Arrow, Exxon had nothing to do with the disappearance. The following week Hazelwood reappeared at his home in Long Island and voluntarily surrendered to New York police.
Hazelwood had a reputation of being a heavy drinker since college and was arrested for drunk driving in 1984 and 1988 while off duty. On the afternoon of the oil spill, Hazelwood visited the Pipeline Club in Valdez. Witnesses claimed he drank two or three vodkas, but Hazelwood later admitted to only two beers. In either case, Hazelwood’s actions were in violation of restrictions against any consumption of alcohol within four hours of ship duty.
Whether or not Joseph Hazelwood had addition libations after his visit to the Pipeline Club is debated, as well as whether he was actually drunk onboard the Exxon Valdez. He was found innocent of “driving a watercraft while intoxicated” – as well as “criminal mischief of the second degree” and “reckless endangerment” – during his subsequent criminal trial, with only the charge of “negligent discharge of oil” earning a guilty verdict.
“Sea otters whose fur becomes matted and loses its insulation quality often die of the cold, despite efforts of volunteer clean up crews,” the news media reported in Green Arrow. “Mothers attempting to lick their pups clean are poisoned by the oil, and even if brought in are frequently beyond help. Bald eagles feeding on the oiled carcasses washed ashore are dying as well. And another danger has appeared – bears awakening from the winter’s hibernation are attracted by the rotting carcasses on the beach and have come looking for an easy meal. It is not known how susceptible these great carnivores are to the toxic effects of the oil, but their presence poses a danger to clean up crews. So far there have been no serious encounters, but it seems just a matter of time.”
The real-world Prince William Sound was home to a plethora of wildlife – underwater, in the air, and near the shorelines. An estimated ten to twelve thousand sea otters lived in the region, as well as assortment of bears, deer, wolves, and coyotes. Over two hundred species of seabirds either permanently or as part of their migratory travel paths were likewise present in the Sound. While Exxon hired professionals to operate animal rescue facilities, the citizens of Valdez and Cordova opened their own as well, one specifically for birds and the other for sea otters.
As the Green Arrow comic book correctly notes, otters were especially vulnerable to effect of the oil spill. They rely on their underfur for insulation against the cold and oil negated that insulation, causing otters to succumb to hypothermia. Sea otters likewise continually groom their fur by licking it, resulting in them ingesting the oil. Journalist John Keeble visited the sea otter rescue center in Valdez on April 9 – fifteen days after the spill occurred – by which time 103 otters had been admitted, with half of them dying shortly thereafter. An Argon Oil executive in Green Arrow told the media, “I flew over the spill site myself this morning, and while we did see a few oiled birds, we did not see any dead sea otters.”
Reality was obviously quite different. More than any other image, the sea otter became the “poster child” for the environmental damage done by the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
As for the “oiled birds” mentioned in Green Arrow, John Keeble wrote in his 1999 book Out of the Channel: The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill in Prince William Sound, “The birds came in hypothermic, too, because of the way oil breaks down their natural oils. They were warmed, tested, washed with Dawn detergent, then rinsed and put in pools to see if they floated. If they floated, they were sent to the drying room and fed a mash through a tube until they recovered to the point where they could eat fish.”
By May 1989, over 16,000 dead birds and 700 dead sea otters had been found, with thousands more still dotting the oil-stained beaches. It was eventually estimated that 2,800 otters perished as a result of the oil spill, but exact numbers for any species are difficult to assess due to the normally harsh weather conditions and the spread of the oil covering such a large area of Prince William Sound.
“The Argon Oil Company’s spill response measures fall within the guidelines set by the EPA,” a corporate executive says in Green Arrow. “We are confident that the spill will be contained quickly and the damage to the environment minimalized.” John Keeble noted that the majority of statements issued by Exxon often contained similar half-truths and carefully chosen words like “concern,” “obligation,” “minimize,” “likelihood,” and “contained” that clouded their factual meaning.
The resulting spin even included a television commercial that compared Alaska tourism with actress Marilyn Monroe. An image of Monroe – with her famous mole airbrushed from the photo – was a stand-in for the state of Alaska. Just as Marilyn Monroe was still attractive without the mole, the commercial argued, so was Alaska without Prince William Sound, the site of the oil spill.
As the “Coyote Tears” narrative comes to an end in Green Arrow, images of Argon gas stations having the “n” removed from their names and replaced with an “s” are shown, with the resulting Argos stations once again attracting customers. While Exxon never went so far as to change its name, the same did not hold true for the tanker and the subsidiary that owned the ship.
“In July 1990, the Valdez, repaired at a cost of $30 million, was renamed the Exxon Mediterranean and reassigned to the Persian Gulf,” John Keeble wrote in Out of the Channel. “At first, Exxon officials explained that because of the decline in Alaskan oil production, the ship was no longer needed on the West Coast, and that giving ships names appropriate to the region they served was normal practice. In 1993, the name of Exxon’s subsidiary, Exxon Shipping, was itself changed to the far more mellifluous SeaRiver Maritime. Again Exxon officials disavowed any connection between the name change and the Alaskan oil spill. Familiarity with Exxon’s approach to language, however, might lead one to wonder if the company hoped the new pseudonyms would wipe out the ship’s former identity. What ship?”
“This is the end of my tale,” the coyote says in Green Arrow. Then in words similar to those of John Keeble adds, “But, of course, it never happened.”
Anthony Letizia